THE TAASA REVIEW PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE: NOTES FROM HOME In these brief notes from home, TR Publications Committee members tell us about some of the things that have engaged them while in enforced isolation – TAASA Review June 2020

Carol Cains While working from home during the Covid lockdown I have been thinking about landscape – how natural landforms and built environments are depicted in different ways across Asian art.

Some of the questions that come to mind are: what elements are emphasised? how are they composed? what are these images telling the viewer? Drawing on the Asian art collection of the National Gallery of Australia, works as varied as Indian court paintings, Japanese screens, Chinese ceramics and Indonesian textiles illustrate different ways of considering and depicting the landscape, particularly through composition.

An isolated botanical specimen in a Indian Company painting, the crowded, multiple perspectives in a crowded tamasha painting of a hunting scene in Rajputana, a Japanese screen decorated with a cropped image of a skiff floating on a reedy pond are variants that each describe ways of looking at the landscape and emphasising different meanings attached to it. Melanie Eastburn Although the doors of the Art Gallery of New South Wales have been closed, planning and research towards future exhibitions continues...