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Managing ARX
Written by the co-ordinator of the past three ARX events which have taken place in Perth Western Australia. Four views on the exchange See also the articles by Vivienne Binns, Anne Kirker and Ian Howard in this issue of Artlink.
Art and the Economy
There's Magic in your Hands
Looks at the artist in residence program for Thancoupie at the Hamley Bridge Primary School South Australia in May 1992.
Art and the Economy
Vicious Circles: Women's Exclusion from Contemporary Visual Art
Written with Cassandra Cavanaugh with graphs illustrating participation of women in the various sectors of the visual arts.
Art and the Economy
The Brush-Off Syndrome: Stage Design, History and Visual Art in Adelaide
Clear discussion of the issues facing stage and set designers in the visual arts world.
Art and the Economy
The Art of Living
The place Ecopolis 2, the world's first ecocity. The time -- mid-afternoon 3rd November 2007.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Creating Livable Places
Affecting one's city, state or country requires wit, wisdom opportunity and a sense of fun. Robert McNulty, President of the extraordinarily successful Washington based 'Partners for Livable Places' gives a thumb-nail sketch of the last 15 years of the organisation and some of the tools they have used as operational forces for action.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Willmot Playspace Project
Willmot Play Space has taken place over a four year period and has involved the conversion of a disused football field inot a community park.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Acoustic Futures. Sound Noise and Urban Design
Our town planners, our architects and we ourselves need to rethink the city. If downtown spaces, internal and external, are to become inhabitable, there needs to be a dramatic shift away from narrowly architectural conception of them and their functions towards an acoustic analysis.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Women's Ideal Environments
It seems clear enough that women feel loss and the lack at the heart of the consumer society. But the creation of other riches, even in imagination, is hard to achieve....We need nevertheless to imagine other worlds, other ways - all of us- in order to sustain hope and inform desire.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
2040: A Message from the Future
The Brisbane Community Action Group CART (Citizens Advocating Responsible Transport) have recently won two awards....
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Sustainable Canberra
Australia's capital shows the way in applying sustainability to a city.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Material Re-Creation
A new paradigm of design is starting to emerge as a result of the efforts of those members of the design community who are concerned with the extent, as well as the underplaying, of our global environmental crisis.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Architecture and Lyndall Milani's Installations
Lyndall Milani uses sculptural installations to question the place of architecture in the landscape and within human life.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Solar Houses: an Introduction
Faced with these complexities, it is hardly surprising that many designers find the proto-type solar house to be a preferable starting point.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Working with Rules
We all use rules. By looking at them critically we will precipitate a dynamic evolution in our understanding and practice of designing 'with the environment'.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Andy Goldsworthy: Everything in the City is Nature
British artist Andy Goldsworthy came to Australia for three weeks in July to work on site at Mount Victor Station east of the Flinders Ranges. During the 1992 Festival of Arts photographs of the works made at Mount Victor and an installation was shown at the Artspace at the Adelaide Festival Centre, a survey of past works was on show at Yarrabee and Goldsworthy produced a permanent work for the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
The Essential Gift of Ceremonies: Towards a Poetics of Scarcity
"In modern architecture we find difficulty in managing the relation between the physical presence of a building and its intimations of the mental and spiritual. Our architectural objects rarely serve as objects of intermediation between the ordinary, the physical and the present on the one hand, and the mystical, the spiritual and the abstract on the other...."
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Built Form for Well-Being, Not Just Comfort
Looks at issues of energy self sufficiency -- battery banks and photovoltaic solar collector panels.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Aleks Danko: Day In Day Out
Two recent shows in Melbourne of installations by Alex Danko have investigated issues indirectly referring to architecture and the private and social body within the Australian environment.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Designing from the Inside Out: Women, Design and Architecture
'Choose a woman architect - there is a difference!' proclaim a multitude of stickers all over Sydney. Constructive Women, the Sydney based association of Women Architects and Planners decided it was time for a new approach.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Places for Souls to Play
Looks at the work of Gabriel Poole with statements by Gabriel Poole.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Eco-design Conference at RMIT
Eco-design is probably one of the most far reaching topics to be assembled under the banner of one small hyphenated word. The linking of ecology with design is for many still a novel concept....conference held at RMIT 17 -19 October 1991.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Response to the Climate in the Top End
It never gets really cold in the Top End. But it does get very humid during the Wet. However, simple steps in house design can make the house comfortable and you don't need fans and air conditioners.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Artists and the Mt Leuseur Campaign
Artist's involvement in the Mt Lesueur Campaign -- 200 km north of Perth, Western Australia.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Let There be Light and Power
Berwyn Lewis talks to solar physicist Bruce Robins. Imagine 6 billion people simultaneously turning on lights and electrical appliances. This apocalyptic drain on power would plunge us into an eternal blackout with devastating effects on the environement.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Willunga Garden Village
Willunga Garden Village is a 20 acre allotment subdivision on a 10 acre site on the slopes of the north facing Willunga (South Australia) escarpment.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Aspects of Earth Building in New Zealand
New Zealand is not only snake less and nuclear free but also has a tradition of earth buildings. In pre European times, Maori utilised the ground's insulating properties by partially sinking thatched roofed houses into the ground.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Earth-Sheltered Building using Timber
Earth sheltered housing is not new. The most common way of keeping the soils at bay has been with reinforced concrete and masonry walls and roofs.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Res B: a Design Proposal for Brisbane
In Brisbane the older suburbs are distinctive and a prime source of identity for this sub-tropical city. The timber tradition has left us a rich heritage. For this proposal we have taken an existing suburb with houses on 800m2 blocks. The houses are simple single frontal address buildings.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Supporting Remote Places
Today's temperature will be around 37 degrees. At 6 am the relative humidity was 94%. The Monsoon winds haven't found their bearing to the north west, and the prediction is that el nino will prolong the build up this year - a late wet>
Art, Architecture & the Environment
On Empowering Clients and Collaborative Design Processes
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead)
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Collective Bargaining. Co-op Housing; an Overview
The South Australian Co-operative Housing Bill allowed for the creation of a new housing authority to administer co-operative housing independently of other forms of public housing was passed in October 1991. This coincides with the Federal Government's recognition, through the National Housing Strategy, of the need to explore "innovative forms of social housing which fit between the extremes of private and public tenure."
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Artworkers On the Urban Frontier
Australian cities cannot continue to grow in the manner to which we've become accustomed. The environmental, social and economic costs are simply too great. There needs to be a qualitative change to the way we build and live in them.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Merz: Tapping the Energy
Written with Paul Mutton. Merz is a new urban artist's village in the inner city suburb of Brompton, South Australia. Photos and drawings of the project.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Prospect: Building on its Imagination
In these days of environmental awareness it is pleasing to see a growing awareness of the need to improve urban environments. This is not to say that we should, yet again, be looking after the concerns of people over and above the needs of the natural environment.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Community Architecture: High on People Power, Low on Fossil Fuels
Gregory Burgess and Associates are a remarkable architectural practice which places high value on the collaborative design process with clients and users as well as low energy use now has three major community projects to its credit...
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Restored to Life with a Bypass
Landscape art by Roger Noakes and Flightpath.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Look See. Gnarogin Park
The headbutting syndrome which is normally associated with the oppositional mental locations of the engineering versus the environmental are here reconciled in the combined communities' new park. It should become their most treasured recreational amenity. Located two hours south of Perth, Western Australia.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Mundaring Community Park
The Shire of Mundaring is a large semi rural locality in the hills of the Darling Scarp some 35 km east of Perth in Western Australia. Large areas of natural bushland including the John Forrest National Park and the catchment areas of the Mundaring Weir are to be found within its boundaries--- so are some fascinating sculptures and installations.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Exponential Losses, Collective Guilt: The Work of Jeannie Baker
Change, and how it effects the evironment and the quality of life, is a recurring theme and metaphor in the work of artist Jeannie Baker. While celebrating the beauty and fragility of the environment she delivers a provocative and powerful message about our responsibilities towards the natural world.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Getting our Shit Together
There is a video which shows the noted Viennese artist Hundertwasser sitting on a bucket in his public home unit in Vienna City, uttering this exhortation. He then takes the bucket upstairs to a roof garden of sorts and dumps the contents into a compost bin.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Red Gum, Red Light
David Cranswick's work in Perspecta 1991 entitled Constructing Nature was one of the most successful and moving of the Western Sites Component.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
The Re-humanising of Water
Ecologically sustainable development is a stated aim of our national and state governments. Unless we can stimulate a higher and more sustained level of discussion on what this means, our progressis likely to remain fitful and unfocussed. Hopefully this article will stimulate the debate!
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Frogs and Serpents: Re-colonising the Suburbs
That the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia are part of the world thought is evidenced by Wonambi, the Rainbow Serpent....
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Memories of Water
The Sandgate Environmental Sculpture has involved the local community in both designing and creating the sculpture.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Reading the Land
The idea for a 7 day 'Reading the Land' Festival came to Wimmera River Catchment Group Chairperson, farmer, artist and environmentalist Barry Clugston during a series of salinity flights.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Science, Art and Mangroves
The Mangroves Discovery Cycle was a Community Arts Project which gave a group of school children an opportunity to explore the environment. Located in Cairns, far North Queensland.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Meadows Under the Sea
The Seagrass Project has been cited as a model community arts project. Located in Hastings Victoria, the project has been documented on video and shown on television in Austria and Canada and could potentially achieve wide international exposure.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Mudflats: A Fertile Breeding Ground for Artists
Mudflat arts believes that the landscape is not there to be painted so much as to be protected. The role has changed from one of passive painter to active member of the community.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Memories of Power
Placemaking in Newport, Geelong and North Carlton.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Gilding the Lillipilli
Tree decorating was revived in Melbourne as part of the larger Treeproject. Looks at some of the issues faced with mounting such an event.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
New Life for Gordonvale
Written with June Fermo. Looks at the issues in a townscape project, faced by the community of Gordonvale 21 km south of Cairns in northern Queensland.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Gateways Project
..the response to a site was very much tied up with the way humans had mediated the experience. Yes trees and forests were sacred but that didn't mean that you couldn't touch them. Our mediation of course must be sensitive - be fearless yet thoughtful... Series of black and white photographs accompany the article.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Arts to Ashes
In Tasmania particularly it can be difficult to be vocal about political issues. Here is a chance to be uncompromising, a chance to take risks, a chance to raise community cultural awarenes. And who says art needs to be permanent? Heres a chance to make something and then release it, to allow visual art to metamorphose into performance art. Intrigued? then follow up the article!
Art, Architecture & the Environment
The Art of Living Sustainably
Written with Andrew Bryan The increasing urgency for us to achieve a harmonious relationship with the environment is stimulating artists in many media and designers in a range of disciplines to work in new ways with one another and community groups who share this concern.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
Further Reading and Glossary
Selected book list with notes. Includes a glossary of terms including acronyms.
Art, Architecture & the Environment
The Gordon Darling Foundation
Background to the Foundation and its support for the Artlink special issue on South East Asia. The personal interest on the part of benefactors Gordon and Marilyn Darling in the traditional cultures of South East Asia. Their mission to start the first national portrait gallery in Australia.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Australia Asia: Striking Up Conversations
Collection of items (some by other writers) relating to Asia and Australia: Adelaide Installations, and women in film program both in Adelaide Festival; Aboriginal connections with Indonesia; Australia-Taiwan exchange; art education exchanges throughout the Region; letter from Nguyen Thu of Hanoi College of Art.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Friends of Hanoi
Efforts to save the ancient city of Hanoi from redevelopment - an Australian businessman raises money and support
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Faces of Hong Kong to Australia via Singapore
The artist lived with local people in Singapore to find imagery from populist Hong Kong cinema resulting in the exhibition Mien.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Pink Herrings and Tasmanian Tigers
The artist as a gay Asian male who migrated to Tasmania to escape persecution in Hong Kong, has "copped it swee" a lot of the time. Undeterred he has produced work which addresses this theme and worked quietly towards reform of the laws against homosexuality in Tasmania.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Modern Art in Thailand: A Glimpse
A concise history of the beginnings of modernism in Thailand from the 1890s. In the 1970s the current Princess established an alternative space for young Thai artists in which the tensions between art for art's sake and art for religious purposes were evident. Politically correct art about Thai-ness was sponsored by banks in the 80s. Later political instability and environmental problems gave rise to a new kind of work challenging cultural consumerism.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Unpredictable Repercussions
The massacre of pro-democracy students in May 1992 was a watershed for Thai artists who began to identify with change, formed associations and took part in rallies, and called for public monuments to the tragedy. The City Art League was formed to present performance art in public places and the Concrete House to draw attention to AIDS through art activities. This brought social and political issues into the realm of art.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Asialink Making Pathways for Art (Part of Australia/Asia, Striking Up Conversations)
Asialink an organisation to encourage a better working understanding amongst Australians of Asia, was set up in Victoria in 1990. Since 1991 Asialink has organised a series of exhibitions of Australian art touring varoius Asian countries. Policy to always send an Australian curator and/or one of the artists to each venue to provide the human link. Artists' residencies are also an important part of the progam.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Australian Studios Hanoi (Part of Australia/Asia, Striking Up Conversations)
The efforts on the part of the author and others to set up a studio for Australian artists, writers, historians and others within the Hanoi College of Fine Arts. Support being sought from the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and the art education institutions in Australia.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Where to now?
Thai art has grafted partly grasped Western styles onto a Thai base, and the market is booming But a lack of direction and critical voices is evident in this rigid status-ridden society. Pioneering innovators like Thawan Duchanee who translated Buddhist philosophy into a modern mode lost his fire and became repetitive. Corporate patronage has encouraged this. Those who are breaking new ground include Prasong Lueuang, Vasan Sittiket, Montien Boonma, Chirasek Pattanapong.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Confronting Paradox
As a Director of the School of Fine Art at Silpakorn University, Somporn Rodboon has been instrumental in helping students get an international perspective. She invited Australian women eg Joan Grounds, Noelene Lucas, to be artists-in-residence. Diane Mantzaris arrived in 1992 and made a suite of contentious computer generated prints dealing with the May anti-democracy military crackdown.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Strange Encounters
'Art Festival: Temples and Cemeteries' is an unusual event held in Chiang Mai over three months. Organiser Uthis Utimana, lecturer at Chiang Mai University, chose to show art in temples and cemeteries as Thai people are more familiar with them than art galleries and they encourage people to contemplate life. Artists ran into trouble with religious and education authorities who misunderstood some of the pieces but were undeterred.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
To be an artist
The author recounts her education in a Thai boarding school under the male patriarchal system. As an artist she has tried to come to terms with her upbringing and her work has reflected the situation for her mother and grandmother as well as the death from cancer of her father. She describes her installation work 'Dinner with Cancer' as a commentary on consumption - "humans are not only consumers, they are also being consumed".
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Thawan Duchanee: Art and Philanthropy
Thawan Duchanee is a successful Thai artist whose studies abroad helped him to create a new Thai art which is a hybrid of western and eastern ideas. He set up a museum in Chiang Rai to promote all the contemporary Thai arts and has funded many scholarships. He was a resident artist at the University of Melbourne April-May 1993 where he created a huge painting as well as an 'Oz' version of his Thai homes using various elements as votives to nature.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
An Art Space in QSNCC
The Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre was opened in 1991. It includes an art space managed by the new company CON-tempus which strives to introduce the idea of an art dealership in an art community in which up to now artists have had to handle their own marketing and promotion. The directors hope to foster art collecting, and make artists less commercial in their outlook and more willing to create better and more radical art.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Posturings under the Bodhi Tree: The selling of Pseudo-Religion
Thai artists of the 'Buddhist Revival' claim to make Buddhist art just because they use the visual conventions of that tradition. The Tantric mandalas have been widely misappropriated. As soon as you take temple art out of the temple you run into difficulties of definition and authenticity. There is still traditional Buddhist art being made in the temples, but there is a great trade in pseudo-Buddhist art which is cheap and damaging.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Learning About Difference
Artist Joan Grounds describes the experience of her first residency in Thailand in 1989. Her lack of knowledge of Thai culture and language and having to operate in a climate where open critical debate about art or other topics was not possible were some of the challenges she faced. Since then she has returned four times to make art works in Thailand and witnessed the rapid changes which occurred over the period including a greater willingness to discuss issues.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
A Thai-Australian Exhibition
Thai-Australian Cultural Space was an exhibition at the Bangkok National Gallery in 1993 of works by Montien Boonma, Vichoke Mukdamanee and Kamol Phaosavasdi from Thailand and Joan Grounds and Noelene Lucas from Australia, all of whom had experience of working in countries other than their own. A common theme of the work was our relationship to nature and the spiritual in art and life.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Metaphor for a Delicate Balance
Artist Noelene Lucas describes the rationale behind the work The Presence of the Centre which she made at Silpakorn University in Bangkok during a residency. It deals with her perception of the landscape of theAustralian Centre as seen from 11,000 metres flying to Thailand, and the fragmentary way we perceive. It is a metaphor for negotiating our position in the world.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Modern Art in Thailand: A Glimpse
A sketch of the main institutions and galleries, the prizes, sponsors and patrons, as well as a list of the main galleries was a guide to the art scene in Bangkok at the time of writing. Several of the large hotels also had commissioned murals as well as acquiring new works by contemporary Thai artists.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Introduction to Indonesian Modern Art
There are perennial debates within art circles in Indonesia about applying terms like surrealism to local art. The history and geography of Indonesia mean that theirs is a 'different' kind of modern art which took the form of an art rejecting Dutch colonial rule. Later, in the 80s the influential theorist Dr Soedjoko advocated including traditional art and craft in the fine art canon. He predicted a shift in world focus from Europe and America to the South.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Art of Social Concern
A survey of the role played by politics in art and vice versa before during and after Independence from the Dutch. Artists were employed by political parties to promote their ideologies; by 1950 artists rejected this. Some were arrested for depicting social realities. 20 years later a new group took up the baton, and again incurred the displeasure of the government. Humour was adopted as a means of expressing truths.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
The Power of Yogyakartan Surrealism
Why has Yogyakarta produced a school of surrealist painters and what do they paint about? Life perhaps offers strange encounters, especially in the meeting of eastern and western elements,but the clue is in traditional attitudes to the ghostly or uncanny. These are transposed into scenes of modern life which are richly varied and powerful. They include one of Indonesia's only woman artists, Lucia Hartini.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Women Artists in Bali
The author organised an exhibition of work by Balinese women artists to travel to Australia with a grant from the Australia-Indonesia Institute. She took a year to research and collect work and discovered a great deal about how and why the work was made. Her brief was inclusive - not just painting but craft including the famous woven textiles and temple offerings.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Role of Galleries in Contemporary Art
Around 1983 art dealers first appeared in Indonesia. By 1990-91 there was an art boom, and galleries were operating in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, and Bali. Owners come from various walks of life, including oil trading. With some notable exceptions, there is a sameness about the offerings in most of these galleries. A brief history 1930 - 1955 describes the establishment of galleries to supply visitors interested in local art.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Exploring the Potential of Printmaking
Indonesian printmaking emerged around the time of Independence in 1945. It began to be taught in colleges in Bandung, Yogyakarta and Jakarta and became a way of showing Indonesian art abroad. Prints are now seen in offices, banks, hotels and homes. Indonesian printmakers have participated in international print exhibitions in Norway, Taiwan, and Japan.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Introduction to Art in Vietnam
Vietnam has a long and diverse cultural history with strong sculptural traditions of Dong Son and Cham ethnic groups. At various times artists went to Europe to study and French art was a strong influence. In the north a socialist realist mode flowered in the 60s and 'formalism' was repudiated. Printmaking and political posters were strong during the war. Now painting flourishes; in Hanoi 'the village' is an inspiration, in Saigon various western styles are seen.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Vietnamese Lacquer, Silk Painting and Modern Vietnamese Art
1. Lacquer painting is a very old medium which was adapted by 20thC painters including Nguyen Gia Tri. 2. The most famous exponent of Silk painting was Nguyen Phan Chanh (1892-1984) who painted villagers and country life. 3. After 1925 artists adopted oil paint and after absorbing French influences, by the 90s formed a new Vietnamese identity typified by a group of 3 senior artsits. In 1989 a group show of young artists was a turning point.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Trailblazers Recognised at Last
3 major influences. Nguyen Sang (1923-1988) painted in a politically charged and nationalistic mode but always as a personal expression. Bui Xuan Phai (1920 - 1988) painted small streetscapes depicting the soul of old Hanoi, a nostalgic view. Nguyen Tu Nghiem (1922-) was more innovative looking again at ancient village sculpture in pagodas and paradoxically moves closer to a Modernist style.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Women Achieving Against Great Odds
Women make up 30% of painters in Vietnam yet have received little attention. Women face many obstacles to success. Married women whose husbands do not approve of their practice are the most disadvantaged. A handful of women artists have become known, and one has taken part in exhibitions overseas. Previously there used to be annual group shows of women artists, but now the trend is towards solo shows.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Fine Art in Ho Chi Minh City
Interview between author and the painter Ca Le Thang about new developments in Ho Chi Minh City brought about by the open-door policy doi moi and the increasing commercialisation of fine art. Modernism is more easily accepted here than in some other parts of the country. The magazine My Thuat was formed 2 years ago as an organ of the City Fine Arts Association, and provides a forum for artists and critics to air important issues.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Changing Attitudes to Ceramics
Ceramics have a long history in Vietnam and two 13th Century centres Bat Trang and Phu Lang are still active today. Old blue and white porcelain ware used to be in common use in peasant families, but different polychrome styles are now in vogue and fake antiques are common too. In some design colleges non-functional sculptural forms and decorative motifs have replaced functional ware, but there is a healthy expansion of production nationally.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Hanoi- Heritage in Danger
Hanoi was founded 1000 years ago, and has always been an important centre, culturally and economically. Its Ancient Quarter is a miraculous human-scale blueprint for living and working and much of its original character survives today. The French Quarter built in the 19th Century was a sensitive complement to the old Asian architecture, but today all this is threatened by ugly, insensitive development motivated by greed. Hanoi needs a handsome prince to rescue her!
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Printmaking in Vietnam: Old and New
There are very few specialised printmakers in Vietnam, partly because of the expense of materials and equipment. Woodcuts, a traditional form, with the use of multiple coloured plates, are in demand but are now rare, engraving in both metal and plaster is growing, lithography dates from the anti-French resistance, and silkscreen was used for socialist posters in the 70s. Graphic arts are moving into the world of advertising where the money is.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Textiles Bridging Vietnam and WA
Carpets have long been a link between East and West. In 1992 a Western Australian textile designer-maker Rinske Car-Driesens began working with the Vietnam Women's Union and a Singapore business women's body to have her carpet designs hand-knotted in Vietnam using Australian wools dyed in Albany. While Car-Driesens uses CAD-CAM technology to design them, the Vietnamese workers rely on their hand and eye skills to produce wonderful results.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Refugees Confronting Memory
The US/Mexico based Border Workshop group worked on a collaborative shopfront installation in 1992 with the Cabramatta community of western Sydney where many Indo-Chinese refugee populations settled in the 70s. A large installation representing a refugee boat and a walk-in temple containing video monitors playing back student interviews with local people.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Introduction to Philippines Art and Culture
Many ethnic groups have melded to form the present day Philippines. Colonial rule and the influence of the US, Spain and Japan have all left their mark while there is still much resistance to losing traditional values. Art expression is varied and unrestricted and since the 1990s regional areas have come to the fore. Support from the state has been erratic. Artists are struggling against the onslaught of capitalist developments and art for investment.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Indigenous Statements Now
From early 80s artists began to search for local identity - the use of local indigenous materials was part of this. One 70s pioneer was Junyee who used living plant material in performance art. Roberto Villanueva and Santiago Bose work in mixed media to explore ideas of being Philipino in a modern world. Imelda Cajipe-Endaya's paintings deal with 3rd world citizens, women, migrant workers, poverty. Roberto Feleo uses mythic narrative in a playful idiom.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Images of Women by Women
Women are producing some of the most challenging art in the Philippines by using feminist themes and achieving a synthesis of art and feminism. These are drawings, paintings, 3D works in all media from papier machŽ to stone, and performance art. The work is confronting, emotive, full of vitality. Images are drawn from the kitchen, childcare, main domination, domestic surroundings and the natural world.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Woven Textiles: The Enduring Tradition
Traditional Philipino woven textiles are still made today, keeping alive an ancient regional art form which is poorly documented in museums and not well recognised. All the varied types of weaving are described and illustrated. The patterns, iconography and styles are now seen in modern interior design and in fashion and help to maintain something essentially Philipino in a society which has taken on the trappings of world culture.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Struggle in Baguio: The Arts Guide Makes a Difference
In the 80s artists working abroad began to return to the Philippines; the author established the Baguio Arts Guild with a group of other artists in the highlands 5 hours from Manila. In 1989 the first Festival was held and has established itself as a vital proving ground for new artists as well as being part of the local community. An Arts Centre was set up in 1992. However a devastating earthquake in 1990 is just one of the many obstacles for artists in this 3rd world situation.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
Writing About Craft
What is the relationship between the art or craft object and its maker? This question is put from the Philippines in relation to crafts and compares the importance of the origin or culture of the maker in that country to that in Australia. Students of Philippine crafts have applied the 'mapping' method which helps to understand the depth of tradition and their subsequent evolution into urban variants. Writers on the crafts are developing ways of exploring these questions.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
An Australian Creates Space in Manila
From 1989 - 1991 artist Neil Roberts found himself engaged on a series of working visits to the Philippines. He decided to use only local materials, striking a welcome chord with his hosts. His tendency towards sparse presentation was in sharp contrast to the overload of the installations and paintings of local artists, echoing the contrast between Australian and Filipino attitudes to space. At ARX in Perth he collaborated with Cesare Syjuco who has the ART-LAB space in Manila.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia
The Shaping of Contemporary Art in Malaysia: New art new voices
Theatre director Krishen Jit talks to artist Wong Hoy Cheong about contemporary Malaysian art and his adoption of a figurative style of painting after he returned from study in the USA. This is being used by young artists in Malaysia as an expression of rebellion, as is performance art. Malaysian society avoids dissenting voices and has been slow to accept the angst in modernism, which perhaps has only just been fully internalised though it was introduced in the fifties.
Contemporary Arts of the Region: SE Asia & Australia