TAASA Review Issues

December 2024

Vol:33 Issue: 4
Editor: Josefa Green

The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity will Eternally Cover the Universe 2019, Yayoi Kusama, at Kusama’s solo exhibition Yayoi Kusama: All About Love Speaks Forever at Fosun Foundation, Shanghai. Courtesy of OTA Fine Arts © Yayoi Kusama

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Editorial

For the final TAASA Review this year, it’s pleasing to be able to offer a range of articles on the many major Asian art exhibitions across Australia which people will be able to enjoy in the holiday season.

We celebrate the return of the Asia Pacific Triennial (APT) at QAGOMA, its 11th iteration. As always, APT curators have worked closely with regional colleagues to present major projects with both emerging and established artists and to provide a stimulating survey of new trends in the region. TAASA will be organising a visit to APT in early March 2025 (see p29).

Tarun Nagesh, Curatorial Manager of Asian & Pacific Art at QAGOMA, provides an overview of APT11 and some of the key themes which have emerged in this survey of over 600 works from across the region. Curator Abigail Bernal dives into one major multi-artist project focusing on contemporary practices from the southern Philippines and its rich and fascinating tri-culture of indigenous, Muslim and settler artists.

NGV’s exhibition this summer is a major retrospective, especially curated by the NGV, of Yayoi Kusama’s work. It reveals the astonishing breadth of Kusama’s multidisciplinary practice and features one of the most comprehensive presentations of Kusama’s immersive experiences to date, culminating in the recently created Infinity Mirrored Room—My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light, 2024.

Sydneysiders will be spoiled by several offerings from the Art Gallery of NSW that are covered in this issue.

Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance is the first solo exhibition by this artist in Australia despite six decades of international prominence. Melanie Eastburn has worked closely with the artist to present this group of eight works – four new installations and four paintings created between 2022 and 2024 – and we benefit from the insights that she offers from this ‘extraordinary and enriching’ experience.

Cao Fei’s My City is Yours at the Art Gallery of NSW is another first major solo exhibition in Australia. A prolific artist who exhibits at many international art festivals, she has been described as the ‘pioneer of the new media art of the new generation’. As Curator Yin Cai writes, visitors are invited in this exhibition to immerse themselves in a romantic and futuristic neon-lit cityscape designed by Hong Kong’s Beau Architects. Two new works have been commissioned especially for this exhibition.

A commissioned and site-specific installation Museum of Lost Memories at the Art Gallery forms part of Nusra Latif Qureshi: Birds in Far Pavilions, an exhibition that showcases Qureshi’s 30-year career with more than 100 paintings, many never seen in Australia. Matt Cox describes Qureshi’s early training in musaviri (miniature painting) in Lahore and the tension evident in her reworking of this traditional form through innovations such as recontextualising historical imagery and incorporating cutting and collage.

The NGA’s Masami Teraoka and Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints provides another example of contemporary work grounded in traditional art forms, in this case Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints synthesised with contemporary themes. Beatrice Thompson points out that Teraoka’s adoption of the ukiyo-e style has provided him with a vehicle to comment on contemporary issues like globalisation, pop-culture, sexuality, collisions between Asian and Western culture, climate change and the AIDS crisis.

TAASA members may be less familiar with the Simon Lee Foundation Institute for Contemporary Asian Art (SLF ICAA) at The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA). Rachel Ciesla covers a number of its current exhibitions such as Ayoung Kim’s Delivery Dancer’s Sphere, but also takes the opportunity to explain the curatorial philosophy and collecting /exhibition activities that have transformed AGWA’s engagement with the Asian region.

The enduring power of traditional art forms is demonstrated in Tets Kimura and Richard Bullen’s account of how they reconstructed a Noh stage, dismembered and stored after the 1988 Adelaide Festival performances by the Kanze Noh theatre troupe, at the Japanese Garden in Cowra. Planning is currently underway to use the Noh stage to perform Vincent O’Sullivan’s play Shuriken (1985) based on a tragic 1943 incident involving Japanese prisoners of war at the Featherston POW camp in New Zealand.

Our book review relates to a recent exhibition held at the Chau Chak Wing Chinese Gallery on the major collection of Chinese toggles held by the Powerhouse Museum. This exquisite and highly informative publication is capably reviewed by Jocelyn Chey.

Finally, Russell Kelty offers a tribute to Max Carter (1927 – 2024) whom he hails as one of the most generous donors to AGSA, much appreciated for his generosity and passionate advocacy for the arts.

TAASA would like to wish members all the very best for the holiday season and we look forward to providing entertaining and informative events in 2025.

Table of contents

3 EDITORIAL – Josefa Green

4 THE 11TH ASIAN PACIFIC TRIENNIAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART – Tarun Nagesh

7 MINDANAO AND THE SULU ARCHIPELAGO: ROOTS AND CURRENTS AT APT11 – Abigail Bernal

9 MY HEART IS FILLED TO THE BRIM WITH SPARKLING LIGHT: YAYOI KUSAMA AT THE NGV – Wayne Crothers

12 LEE UFAN: QUIET RESONANCE – Melanie Eastburn

15 BOOK REVIEW: CHINESE TOGGLES: CULTURE IN MINIATURE – Jocelyn Chey

16 CLOSE CONNECTIONS: THE ART GALLERY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S SIMON LEE FOUNDATION INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART – Rachel Ciesla

18 NUSRA LATIF QURESHI: BIRDS IN FAR PAVILIONS AT THE ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES – Matt Cox

20 RECONSTRUCTING AUSTRALASIA’S ONLY NOH STAGE AT COWRA JAPANESE GARDEN – Tets Kimura and Richard Bullen

22 CAO FEI: MY CITY IS YOURS – Yin Cao

24 MASAMI TERAOKA AND JAPANESE UKIYO-E PRINTS: AN NGA EXHIBITION – Beatrice Thompson

26 A LIFE OF GIVING: A FAREWELL TO M.J.M. CARTER AO (1927–2024) – Russell Kelty

27 RECENT TAASA ACTIVITIES

29 TAASA MEMBERS’ DIARY: DECEMBER 2024 – FEBRUARY 2025

30 WHAT’S ON: DECEMBER 2024 – FEBRUARY 2025

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