/APT8/ The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial at the Qld Gallery of Modern Art

Words: Saskia Edwards 

Images: Jonathan Rae

“One thing that was really apparent to me and also very beautiful were the amount of saffron robes.

“It was almost as if the landscape was orange, that you couldn’t go to any parts of South East Asia without seeing this colour orange in your periphery and in your vision.”

That’s according to Cambodian-born American artist Anida Yoeu Ali, who’s described as one of the ‘rockstars’ of the APT8.

Her work at the exhibition centres on Cambodia as she takes on the persona of the Buddhist Bug.

Anida Yoeu Ali dresses as the Buddhist Bug in a long spiraling tube with feet sprouting out at its tail end. It’s somewhat Alice in Woderlandian - like the blue caterpillar. Of course, the fabric is that same vivid saffron that’s so evocative of Asia, Cambodia and Buddhism.

While being distinctly Buddhist, the bug also wears a sort-of hijab. As Anida says, it references the “Islam that my parents carried back to the U.S. with them that they preserved for me and then my rediscovery of Cambodian Buddhism”.

Anida left Cambodia when she was five years old. She lived through the Khmer Rouge, a period of Communist rule in Cambodia remembered for genocide. And this has resulted in dysphoria for Anida, with her life riddled with “war and the displacement and the refugee identity”.

However, Anida is not dwelling on the past.

“I felt this very palpable energy among my colleagues among the artist community in which there felt like a critical mass in which the artist community was finally addressing the present moment and not just locked in the time, in referencing the past, the past trauma. 

“So to me it was a really exciting part and I knew we had something special that intersected with the reign of progress and modernisation and urbanisation that’s happening at a tremendous rate in Cambodia while the level of poverty increased.”

Beyond a performance piece dressed as the Buddhist Bug, Anida presented a film as part of the exhibition. It follows the bug for a night in Phnom Penh.

She begins at a carnival where the rides drench her in neon light. And then she rides around the busy streets of the city, her head poking through the roof of a took-took. She goes past a market and to a nightclub. There she finds young Cambodian women - some “empowered”, others not - dancing in mini skirts and tank tops with old white men.

All of this captures something very elemental and visceral about Cambodia. On one hand it seems to show the progression of Cambodia and how it has been thrust into the luminous modern world. But also it reveals how the nation is still growing. People are still largely on bikes and scooters. There’s an insidious invasion of Western culture. And, in a way, it still has that wild untamed beauty of Asia - where food is cooked on the side of the road, traffic is monstrous and anything could happen.

As a whole, APT8 has a great focus on the Pacific. There’s an abundance of oceanic art. Often, it’s in a contemporary style, with live tattooing, performance art and photography. But it’s all weaved together with traditional icons. Plus, on the opening weekend there were a few people in ethnic dress - often part of installations - wandering around the gallery.

Of course, there’s more at APT8 than a person can really absorb. But take time, it’s worth it.

Robert MacPherson 'The Painter's Reach' at GOMA

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

At times while walking through Robert MacPherson’s ‘The Painter’s Reach’ show, you feel like you could be at your local grocer, or driving through a small town somewhere like the Granite Belt. 

The exhibition revels in the everyday. There’re signs with mundane and sometimes surreal messages splashed onto them - always in the bold, imposing and rusticated style of MacPherson. Many of the works have a dry, rough feeling about them, much like the nature of processed wood and some of Australia’s landscape. And objects of everyday life are celebrated like benches, shirts, dry cleaning.

More than 40 years of MacPherson’s career is explored in this retrospective. It looks at his process, obsession with the medium of paint and social commentary. That includes a reflection on the history of “miracle drug” M & B 693 to treat gonorrhoea.

But throughout Robert MacPherson’s works there seems to be something inherently, and evocatively Australian. Each of his works conjure up a memory, understanding and distinct feeling of what Australian life is.

Michael Parekowhai: The Promised Land at GOMA

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

What is the promised land?

It’s that milk and honey elysium. That prophesied paradise. And it’s something that’s written into our history, mythology and self perception.

You’ll find it at the end of 40 years of walking, at the end of the world, at the end of your life or in a new city, a new country, a new person. 

Over the last 26 years of practice Michael Parekowhai has navigated his way through through this idea and how deeply it streams through our sense of identity.

Maud Page is the Deputy Director of Collections and Exhibitions at GOMA and curator of Michael’s current exhibition there ‘The Promised Land’.

“You can look at that [the promised land] historically, you can look at it in terms of political terms now and there’s a lot of that kind of talk happening in political campaigns.

“But essentially, the promised land, because it looks back at history, it really is the way we might also remember our collective history and remember where we’ve come from.

“So for New Zealand and Australia that might encompass someone as famous and known as Captain Cook.”

And Captain Cook certainly acts as a centre piece for the exhibition. A three-metre tall stainless steel Cook sits in the middle of a room. The sculpture reflects the objects on the walls and as an observer, an image of yourself; distorted and warped in his own shape. And it forces the onlooker to meditate on how interwoven this person is with our own identities and perhaps, with a solemn look on Cook’s face, the reality of what attaining the promised land means.

Maud says through this piece Michael is “looking back at history and making a bit of a comment as to how we commemorate and what we commemorate and then looking at the ways we as individuals might be able to position ourselves in that history”.

Scale plays an integral role in the impact of Michael’s work. The sizes he chooses are no accident, they’re perfectly conceived to have the most impact.

“When you’re near it [the statue of Captain Cook], he’s sitting down, so you’re near it you’re almost awed by it but it’s not quite tall enough to be awed,” says Maud.

“And it’s not quite small enough for it to be an intimate relationship.

“So he just finds that exact middle ground.”

As you walk through the exhibition, Michael’s use of blank space is also apparent. He can make you feel like you’re compressed or claustrophobic walking through tight spaces or in a wide, open almost isolating expanse.

“He loves the sense that how we might breathe within the gallery, how we might physically encounter artworks and the effect that that scale has on us,” says Maud.

“So instead of being in his practice previously at a human scale, he might bring them right down to maquette size and create a completely different feeling.

“Or he might upsize some of the things that we’ve only ever seen very very small, like the small Cuisenaire rods that were used to teach kids or to teach Maori language in the late 70s and early 80s.”

Michael’s sculptures are also laced with a kind of humour - a sarcastic wit. You can see it in his elephant, tipped on its head, a seal holding up a piano and giant pick-up sticks at the foot of a ballerina.

“He is looking at colonialism, he is looking at social issues such as the employment of Maori people or the position of say Maori battalions in WWI and when they came back from the trenches back into New Zealand, what happened to them,” says Maud.

“So they’re things that are extremely visceral and very contested and the way that he brings humour into them means that he can actually make a comment on them, but also not appear too didactic, which is something that I particularly love in his practice.”

Through his shiny, playful and at times confronting sculpture Michael invites us to think about our sense of self and how that’s inseparably linked to the legend of the Promised Land.

What’s On at GOMA: Cai Guo-Qiang Falling Back to Earth, Kathy Temin’s White Forest and Everyday Magic

Images: Jonathan Rae

Words: Saskia Edwards

Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art, GOMA, is arguably the epicentre of contemporary art in the state. It’s brought Brisbane – a city sometimes compared to yoghurt in terms of culture – the likes of Andy Warhol, Matisse and Rene Magritte.

Right now, the ground level of GOMA is largely consumed by Cai Guo-Qiang’s Falling Back to Earth exhibition. If you have any form of social media you’ve probably already been bombarded by this visual masterpiece. But beyond its superficial beauty, the instillations reveal poignant existential insights. I know I’m running the risk of sounding like a didactic panel with hip-art-buzz words (ephemeral, relationship, confluence). But really the symbolism of Guo-Qiang’s work is very perceptive. The disturbed tranquillity of the animal kingdom sharing a drinking pool represents humanity’s relationship with nature. And 99 wolves circularly running into a glass wall shows the concept of the continual repetition of mistakes.

As you ascend you’ll find Everyday Magic. It’s a celebration of ordinary, pedestrian and often overlooked everyday existence. Real American Beauty plastic bag stuff. The exhibition is a compilation of artworks that explore the topic of average life’s charm – like the delicate drawings of spider’s webs, the mesmerising flirtation of flowing gold streamers and the evil messages within urban sprawl.

Kathy Temin’s White Forest has been around for a while, but the mystical adventure within the fluffy jungle never wears off. This was the first work Kathy completed after returning from a tour of holocaust sites in Poland. Instead of carrying macabre memories, the piece expresses optimism. Much like the trees can be made into a fantastical dreamland, we can too transform our world. We have the capacity for growth, hope and renewal.