The Public Life of a Private Collection – Asian Art Collectors in Focus

What role have collectors played in the formation of a contemporary Asian art discourse in Australia? This panel discussion brings together a number of collectors  who have been broadly involved in the development of contemporary Asian art in Australia, from the 1980s through to the present.

Do private collections have a public role?
What motivates a collector to share their collections? How important is it for a collector to engage in a relationship with institutional bodies to ensure that their collection plays a wider role in serving the cultural life of a city?
How do private collections intersect with institutional agendas?
How can they nurture, benefit or antagonise the artistic process?

These are a number of questions to be discussed. The panel will look at ways in which collectors have supported and nurtured a discussion of contemporary Asian art in this country, and to speculate their future role in shaping its history.

Venue: 4A Centre for Contemporary Art
181-187 Hay Street
(between Pitt and George streets)

Bookings essential
Produced by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in partnership with Art Month

The exhibition presents a selection of emerging, mid-career and established artists including Eric Bridgeman, Will French, Shen Shaomin, Cyrus Tang, Jason Wing and Soo Joo Yoo who examine the shifting cultural alignments between Asia and Australia.

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art’s curatorial approach has been to look at shifts in contemporary visual arts practice due to the increased mobility of ideas, skills and exchanges that occur within the vast socio-cultural networks of Asia and Australia. The artists’ work in this exhibition reflect these shifts. No longer is identity articulated simply from a position of cultural background and migration. It is also formed through technology, history, globalisation, economy, industry and the accumulation of cultural knowledge.

If you are in the area we hope you will join us for a drink. There will be brief talks about the show by curator Samuel Zammit and some of the participating artists.

The exhibition continues until 21 March 2012. The opening Hours for this exhibition are 8.30-5.30 Monday – Friday.

4A Exhibition at the Australia Council
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art exhibition at the Australia Council
Venue: Foyer of the Australia Council
Address: 372 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, Sydney
Opening Hours: 8.30-5.30 Monday – Friday

Due to the inclement weather. We have had to cancel tonight’s screening

However…

The gallery is still open till 830 tonight, we have moved the bar inside, so if you wanted to still pop by, join us and the Grasshopper and Kirin crew for a Friday evening drink in the Gallery. It’s a great opportunity to see our current exhibition Edge of Elsewhere.

Apologies for the inconvenience, you can blame Sydney’s weather.

 #cinemaalley

Introduction

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art is pleased to present Double Vision, a presentation of single and two-channel video works for Cinema Alley 2012, 4A’s annual street cinema experience.

In developing the 2012 Cinema Alley program, 4A has been working closely with a number of key contemporary artists and filmmakers from the Asia-Pacific region. Tonight’s screening includes a selection of work that has been especially reconfigured for presentation on the double screen street cinema format. Originally developed as a single-channel piece, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s work Happy New Year: Memorial Project Vietnam II has been transformed into a mirrored sequence, drawing viewers into a memorising underwater experience. Peter Alwast has also reformatted his key work Janek the Cloud to create a simultaneous encounter, whilst Miao Xiaochun presents his work RESTART in stereo played across both screens, amplifying the dizzying characteristics of his grand 3D animated narrative.

We are also pleased to be able to support a number of young artists animators, whose work has been included at the beginning of the program. Each year since 2010, we have included the work of these locals into the mix. Congratulations to Tianli Zu and Jenifer Lo.

We hope you enjoy!

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba

Happy New Year:Memorial Project Vietnam II  (2003)

Single channel digital video 15min. Courtesy: Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo/Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York/ the artist.

Commissioned and produced by the MATRIX Program at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA with assistance from The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.

Jun Nguyen Hatsushiba’s projects reflect on the physical and emotional struggles humans endure, particularly communities facing trauma. Happy New Year: Memorial Project Vietnam II is part of a body of work shot entirely underwater in the Indochina Sea. It pays homage to Vietnam’s history and national identity. In a bizarre yet festive cultural ritual, the work depicts a puppet dragon as it dances underwater, buoyed along by numerous divers. Displaced, de-contextualised and struggling to comprehend the suspended environment, the visual poetry of this cultural ritual is overshadowed by the underhanded political content of the work, which refers to the devastating Tet Offensive launched on the eve of the lunar New Year in 1968. The balls of colourful powder that explode amidst the performance symbolise the souls of the countless Vietnamese boat people who looked beyond the shores of Vietnam for salvation and perished at sea.

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1968 and currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He received his tertiary education in the USA having earned a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art after receiving his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s films explore Vietnamese history and national identity, and have referenced issues such as the displacement of Vietnamese ‘boat people’ after the Vietnam War. The underwater setting for the artist’s internationally celebrated films such as Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam – Towards the Complex – For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards, 2001, and Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point – Memorial Project Okinawa, 2003, refers to Vietnam’s relationship to water with its long coastline and river basins and to the country’s folklore. Nguyen-Hatsushiba has held solo exhibitions in New York, Vienna and Rome and his work has been included in numerous major group exhibitions including the biennales of Shanghai, Venice, Istanbul, São Paulo and the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art in 2009.

Liang Wei

Gesture (2007-9)

Two-channel HD DVD, 10 minutes 10 seconds
Courtesy the artist

Liang Wei is a painter and film artist who produces works that explore the relationships between peoples’ inner lives and their social circumstances. In her work Gesture, a group of businessmen in a meeting engage in a dynamic pantomimed discussion without dialogue. In an absurd yet humorous parody of human relations in a business context, the artist reduces communication to its most primitive form, reflecting on the difficulties that we often face to communicate in the contemporary world. Although absent in dialogue, the work also serves as a reminder that there are many forms of personal expression.

Liang Wei is an artist based in Beijing China, she studied at L’Art Plastiques Universite Des Sicences Humanies De Strasbourg, France. She has exhibited widely, including Bourgeoisified Proletariat, Shanghai, China; China Power Station III, Mudam Luxembourg; Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai; Art Basel Miami (2007); China Power Station, Battersea Power Station London.

Hiwa K

Moon Calendar (2010)

12 minutes, Single-channel video
Courtesy the artist

Moon Calendar is a work by Iraqi artist Hiwa K that documents the rehearsals of an unrealised performance that was to take place in 2007 at The Red Security Building in northern Iraq – one of the many infamous goals used by former dictator Saddam Hussein to detain political prisoners. Pressing a stethoscope against his chest, Hiwa K  dances to the rhythm of his heartbeat in the former prison, which is now the Iraqi National Museum of War Crimes. As the intensity of the dance builds, the playfulness and composure of the performance begins to dissolve, eventually giving way to a feverous trauma as the artist struggles to keep the rhythm of his feet and heartbeat synchronised. Drawing attention to the irregularities of the lunar calendar and artist’s isolation from his surroundings, Hiwa K forms a direct relationship between the performance and the historical events and trauma of the people who were detained, tortured and killed in The Red Security Building.

Hiwa K is a visual artist and musician born in Iraq. Following his graduation from secondary school, Hiwa K continued his education in self-education circles in his home country surrounding himself with visual artist, intellectuals, musicians and actors. He has had numerous solo exhibition in Europe including Chicago Boys While We Were Singing They Were Dreaming, Serpentine Gallery, London (2010), As If It Was Here Long Before, Kunstbuero, Vienna (2011) and For A Few Socks of Marbles, Laboratorios 987 at MUSAC, León, Spain (2012). Hiwa has been included in a number of prominent group exhibitions including Manifesta 7, The Rest of Now, X-Alumix in Bolzano, Italy (2008), The View from Elsewhere Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2009) and will also be showing in this year’s Intense Proximity, La Triennale Paris, curated by Okuwi Enwezor.

Peter Alwast

Janek the Cloud (2007)

Digital animation, 4 minutes
Courtesy the artist

Peter Alwast’s artistic practice encompasses drawing, painting, video and digital animation. Often synthesising these practices, Alwast produces work that contains multi-layered representations that examine the intersection between public and private space. Shifting between discs of footage depicting Gold Coast housing estates, memories of a family painting, green characterless backgrounds and the omnipresent narrator – a Cloud named Janek – the work suggests the loss of orientation and struggle the artist experienced when relocating from Poland to Australia. Encompassing all of Alwast’s creative preoccupations – the idealism of painting, virtual space and the mechanical construction of feelings – Janek the Cloud examines the relationships between subjectivity, objectivity and the disjuncture of memory.

Peter Alwast completed his undergraduate degree at Queensland University of Technology in 2001 before receiving a Master of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design (New School University) in New York. He has received numerous national and international awards for his work including The Premier of Queensland New Media Award, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2008) and the Samstag International Travelling Art Scholarship (1999). He has exhibited widely in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. His work is held in both public and private collections in Australia and the United States.

Kiran Subbaiah

Flight Rehersals (2003)
Single-channel video, 3 minutes 30 seconds
Courtesy the artist

Kiran Subbaiah works across a range of artistic media including installation, internet and video art. Using irony and deadpan humour, Subbaiah employs his artistic practice to subvert the form and function of objects, questioning the relationship between use and value whilst highlighting the contradictions inherent in everyday life. In his work Flight Rehearsals, Subbaiah takes subversion to the next level. In a humorous exercise in deductive logic and emancipation, Subbaiah attempts to overcome the laws of gravity by demonstrating that the secret of flight is to repeatedly jump before gravity has time to act.

Kiran Subbaiah was born in Karnataka, India in 1971. After receiving his bachelor degree in Fine Arts, Subbaiah continued his studies at the M.S University in Baroda, India, where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in 1994. In 1999, Subbaiah once again undertook a MFA degree, this time at the Royal College of Art in London, graduating with a major in sculpture. Subbaiah’s artistic practice examines the contradictions of daily life, subverting the form and function of everyday domestic objects to question the relationships between use and value. Subbaiah has undertaken a number of artist residencies and workshops in India and Europe, most notably at the Stifung Kuenstlerdorf Schoeppingen, Germany (2005); Skoki Workshop, Poznan Akademie, Poland (2002); and Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France (1998). Subbaiah’s selected exhibitions include The View from Elsewhere, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2009); Indian highway, Serpentine Gallery, London, England (2008); Singapore Biennale, Singapore, (2008); Chalo India, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, (2008); Mirror Worlds, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Australia (2005); and Me, Myself and I, Kashi Gallery, Cochin, India (2005).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Faith (2006)
Two-channel digital video, 11 minutes 5 seconds
Courtesy the artist

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a Thai independent filmmaker and artist. Encompassing experimental film, video installation and other multi-media platforms, much of Weerasethakul’s artistic practice deals with the relationship between memory, politics and social issues firmly grounded in Thailand’s cultural and historical landscape. Weerasethakul’s frequent shifting from cinematic to film art formats has allowed him to develop an innovative form of non-linear filmmaking, endowing his work with a strong sense of dislocation. Freely moving between genres of romance and science fiction, Weeraseethakul’s double-channel work FAITH provides a tender portrait of lost love and transformation.

Weerasethakul’s films and contemporary art projects have led him to widespread international recognition and acclaim. He is considered to be one of the driving forces behind Thai cinema, and his work often spreads across cinema and exhibition practice. In 2010, Weerasethakul received the prestigious Palme d’Or prize at the 63^rd Cannes Film Festival for his feature film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – the first Southeast Asian film in history to win the award.

Nasim Nasr

Lion and Line (2011)
Two-channel digital video, 5 minutes 5 seconds
Courtesy the artist

Lion and Line is a work by Nasim Nasr that symbolically examines the relationship that Iranians continue to share with their ancient Persian history. Referencing a local Iranian coin game called Sheer o Khat or ‘Lion and Line’ – named after the two coins involved in the game, one of which depicts an image of the historical Persian Lion symbolising the kingdom of Persia, and the other a contemporary coin with a number underlined – the work depicts a hand individually tossing coins onto a mid-nineteenth century colonial map of Persia and its surrounding territories. The coins – spread against the antiquated topography of modern day Iran – open a dialogue between the past and present of a country whose people continue to identify themselves with the name of a country that no longer exists.

Nasim Nasr graduated with a BA in Graphic Design from the Art University of Tehran in 2006. In 2011, she completed her Master of Visual Arts at the University of South Australia, having moved to Australia in 2009. Her drawings and photographs have been featured in numerous exhibitions and festivals in Iran and Australia, including CACSA CONTEMPORARY 2010: THE NEW NEW, Border Crossings: Human Rights Adelaide Art & Film Festival, Format Artist Space, Adelaide; Walker Street Gallery, Melbourne and Boston Biennial Project, 51st Venice Biennale, Venice 2011. Her artworks have been published in Art & Australia, Broadsheet, Eyeline, Artlink and Realtime. She recently received a Public Projects grant from the Adelaide City Council and Helpmann Academy Developing Art Grant.

FRIDAY 3 FEBRUARY 2011
PARKER STREET, HAYMARKET
8PM SCREENING/7PM BAR OPENS

Free event, booking essential

Boitran Huynh-Beattie was a curator, writer and critic with a specialisation in contemporary Vietnamese-Australian art. Many will remember her recent project Nam Bang! which charted the ongoing complexities of Australia’s engagement during the Vietnam War.  Most of her work and projects related to Vietnam’s Diaspora. Her work with the community and with Vietnamese artists in Australia was remarkable and she will be missed . She had recently been an Asialink resident at the Ho Chi Minh University of Fine Arts.

4A would like to extend deepest condolences to Boitran’s husband Ray Beattie and family.

A public memorial will be held at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre on 11 February at 11am.

1 Casula Road (off Hume Hwy), Casula (02) 9824 1121

To be launched by Maud Page, Senior Curator, Pacific Art at Queensland Art Gallery

THURSDAY 12 JANUARY 6PM

4A CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART

Edge of Elsewhere will present major new community-engaged works by international and Australian artists.
RSVP info@4a.com.au or 9212 0380

4A Launch supported by Kirin and Grasshopper

Follow the artists projects edgeofelsewhere.wordpress.com

Exhibition dates

4A CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART
14 January–3 March 2012
Exhibition launch Thursday 12 January, 6pm
181–187 Hay Street, Haymarket
CAMPBELLTOWN ARTS CENTRE
14 January–18 March 2012
Exhibition launch Friday 13 January, 7pm
Artists in Conversation

Saturday 14 January, 10am–2pm at Campbelltown Arts Centre
Art Galley Road, Campbelltown

This group was asked to consider Harsono’s work, Rewriting the Erased (2009) as the springboard for a series of discussions into the social, political and historical impact of changing one’s name.

On Saturday 18 February 2-4pm as an outcome of their research and discussions the curatorium will present a series of public programs including a roundtable discussion with Harsono and conversation projects, that ask questions of the circumstances and contexts in which people change their names.

Join us at 4A for an afternoon of lively and entertaining discussion led by the In Memory of a Name participants.

In Memory of a Name Mini-Symposium

In Memory of A Name will present a series of interviews, stories, discussions and performance as a mini-symposium during the afternoon. The ‘symposium’ will be held in the gallery space of 4A, and will simultaneously be recorded and podcast. Included is the following lineup of presentations from participants:

1)    Macushla Robinson speaks to participants from Celebrate-Obliterate-Recreate, focusing on how each person felt about having their personal stories and objects overwritten and how they in turn felt about overwriting someone else’s story.

2)    Andreas Jaka Pratama translates the names of 3 to 4 volunteers into Indonesian in Name Filtration System. He will also proceed to teach them the correct way to pronounce them and lead them through a discussion of what they think about the names they are given.

3)    Helen Fong ponders on the big question – can changing your name change your destiny? She interviews pranic healer/lawyer Yasaiah Ross and will have him analyse the names of two volunteers.

4)    Angela Stretch produces a radio documentary on a man who named his race horse 5 dollars based on the advice of a fortuneteller and his misadventure of trying to register that name.

5)   A roundtable discussion featuring FX Harsono, Macushla Robinson, Elly Kent and Toby Chapman, Assistant Curator, Edge of Elsewhere.

Thanks to all who made it down for the In Memory of a Name Mini-Symposium. Photos from the event are now up on the Edge of Elsewhere blog.

Cinema Alley, 4A’s annual one-night only street screening of video artwork, returns with Double Vision – a lineup of two-channel (two screen) and single-channel video works from Australia and Asia. Presented across two screens to create a layering and collision of images, the moving image will be experienced in renewed ways, generating different experiences from conventional cinematic narrative.

Join in the festive spirit as 4A welcomes in the Chinese New Year. Situated on Parker Street in the heart of Sydney’s vibrant Chinatown precinct, this is a unique Sydney event not to be missed.

Since its inception in 2009, this unique project has proven to be a popular event attracting new audiences to the contemporary visual arts, and generating discussions relating to contemporary Asian culture in the city.

An Associated Event of the City of Sydney Chinese New Year Festival

DOUBLE VISION
PETER ALWAST
HIWA K
NASIM NASR
LIANG WEI
MIAO XIAOCHUN
JUN NGUYEN-HATSUSHIBA
KIRAN SUBBAIAH

APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
+ SELECTIONS FROM  THE 4A ANIMATION PROJECT

FRIDAY 3 FEBRUARY 2011
PARKER STREET, HAYMARKET
8PM SCREENING/7PM BAR OPENS

Free event, booking essential

We have organised a bus to go from 4A to Campbelltown for the Campbelltown launch on Friday night and also for the public programs on Saturday. Seats are limited. If you would like to join the bus, email media@4a.com.au with your name and a contact phone number.

Friday 13 January for the Campbelltown Launch
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art – Campbelltown Arts Centre
Departs 4A at 530PM
Departs Campbelltown Arts Centre at 9PM

Saturday 14 January for the Public Program Day
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art – Campbelltown Arts Centre
Departs 4A at 9AM
Departs Campbelltown Arts Centre at 3PM

The bus will depart and return to 4A on Parker St (adjacent to the gallery).