Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial

Yet another success, the sixth Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane has again brought together a diversity of artists throughout the region to showcase what is contemporary, inspiring, conflicting and breathtaking in art. This time the Gallery of Modern Art and the Queensland Art Gallery’s water mall were completely given to the event, which added to its scale and success. By giving over 100 artists all that space organisers of the APT ensured that each artist and their work were given sufficient breathing room, which they appear to have taken in earnest. With works ranging from the monumental, such as New Zealand artist Reuben Paterson’s huge glitter and paint on canvas, to a tiny hole-in-the-wall video that you have to bend to see, the walls and floors of the GoMA were enveloped by some of the most compelling works I’ve ever seen.

One of my favourites is Tibetan artist Gonkar Gyatso’s sticker works; the biggest being a large image of Buddah reclining on a pencil-drawn railway from Shangai to Lhasa. Evoking, what I believe to be, a Monet-sensibility Gyatso’s Buddha appears as a seamless whole image until one gets up close and is inundated by a barrage of mass-media images on stickers. And then comes the realisation that this beautiful reclining Buddha is made entirely out of stickers of Hello Kitty, the ubiquitous McDonalds, Chinese Communism, etc, etc, etc.

Also note-worthy is Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s exquisite ‘Lightning for Neda’ – six large mirror mosaic panels inspired by Islamic patterns and Sufi symbolism. To look at this work is to not only be awestruck by the delicate intricacies of the way in which the shards of mirror have been ingeniously patterned; rather, to look at this work is to also look upon your own image – jarred, disfigured and disjointed, reflected back at you.

Finally, one work in which I took great enjoyment was Shinji Ohmaki’s ‘Liminal air – descend’, an interactive installation which included the arrangement of a mass of threads into a fluid form in a single white room with a mirrored wall. The audience was invited to walk through this form which was supposed to “produce dramatic, immersive encounters.” For me personally, walking through this endless curtain of white string just took me to a magical place – it reminded me of those enchanting scenes in movies where the girl walks through a heavily-leafed forest or a succession of those psychedelic beaded curtains and has something revealed to her at the end of that short journey. It’s hard to explain, but needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

I could go on for several more paragraphs just about the amazing works I saw, but I shan’t. Overall the APT should be commended not only for its diverse, eclectic and inspiring selection of artists and artworks – covering a wide range of countries and media – but also for the way in which the exhibition itself has been curated and put together. To be able to arrange that many works in that large a space without, on the one hand, the appearance of having just put stuff wherever there’s room, and on the other, overwhelming the audience is a monumental task. According to me, it has been achieved with dignity and inventiveness. I can’t wait for APT7! [Image from gonkargyatso.com]