For centuries, artists have been captivated by the female form. From the exaggerated bodies of Neolithic fertility figurines to Renaissance heroines, the female body is a constant thread in the history of art. In daily life, people select clothing and accessories to act out a particular role or version of themselves. The women in these portraits are no different: to those who observe, their costumes are chosen to signify their wealth and status, national identity, or even their mythical alter egos.
With this in mind, we are prompted to ask: who is being looked at, and by whom? In 1972, art historian John Berger wrote on the subject: ‘One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.’1 Elegant and finely rendered, women are nonetheless objects of our gaze. Two artists — Angelica Kauffmann and George Romney — present a theatrical vision of femininity. Adopting costume and props of the stage, these images offer heightened, yet distinct, views of women.
Angelica Kauffmann, Italy/England/Switzerland/Austria 1741-1807 / The deserted Costanza c.1783-84 / Oil on canvas / 83.2 x 65cm / Gift of The Hon. (Sir) James R. Dickson MLA 1900 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
Of the paintings highlighted, only one was created by a woman — The deserted Costanza c.1783–84 (illustrated) by Swiss artist Angelica Kauffmann. Kauffmann is among the few female masters whose name and works have made their mark in European art history. Trained by her father from an early age, she was one of two female founding members of the Royal Academy London in 1768. She lived in a number of major European art centres, including Milan, Florence, Rome, Venice and finally London, where she was admired for her great talent, particularly in portraiture.
The deserted Costanza illustrates the opening scene from Pietro Metastasio’s eighteenth century libretto for Joseph Haydn’s operetta, L’isola disabitata. In the painting we see the soprano, Costanza, overcome with grief after discovering her husband has abandoned her. Indeed, Kauffmann’s painting adopts the operatic drama of its source text. Constanza’s body appears limp and heavy; her eyes roll back dramatically, looking far beyond the frame. Arms outstretched, she carves her testimony on a rock with a broken sword.
Kauffman’s image is undeniably theatrical, and perhaps borders on the rhetoric of female ‘hysteria’. However, rather than a realistic portrait of womanhood, the painting is an exercise in performance. Through props, costume and gesture, the female figure performs her role as grieving wife. In this light, we can see the scene as a knowing act: the soprano plays out her sorrow and her gender to heightened extremes.
George Romney ‘Mrs Yates as the Tragic Muse, Melpomene’ 1771
George Romney, England 1734-1802 / Mrs Yates as the Tragic Muse, Melpomene 1771 / Oil on canvas / 238 x 151.5cm / Gift of Lady Trout 1988 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
George Romney wields theatricality to a different effect in his neoclassical rendering Mrs Yates as the Tragic Muse, Melpomene 1771 (illustrated). This portrait, commissioned by the leading tragedienne of the day, Mary Ann Yates (1728–87), eschews the high drama of Kauffmann’s Costanza for a pale, austere depiction of a mythological muse. Mrs Yates was a successful figure in Georgian theatre who was nearly 20 years into her acting career at the time of this portrait. She was well known for her roles as Shakespearian heroines, but here she adopts the guise of the Greek Muse of Tragedy, Melpomene. Shown in three-quarter profile, Mrs Yates’s gaze is fixed beyond her audience as she clasps a small dagger (one of Melpomene’s attributes) in her right hand. She is both resplendent and calm in her neoclassical garb, apparently in control of her role as she adopts the contrapposto pose of a classical sculpture rather than the fluid, emotional gesture one might expect from an actress.
Romney was one of the most successful portraitists of the late eighteenth-century, and his work is found in significant collections across the globe. His sitters, who were predominantly female, were often leading social figures including several actresses. While both Kauffmann’s evocation of Costanza and Romney’s portrait of Mrs Yates depict dramatisations of a fanciful character, the latter contains a second layer. Mrs Yates not only plays the role of mythic muse but also performs herself. In Romney’s portrait, she enacts a stately, almost ethereal, version of herself, far removed from the frivolous reputation of actresses in the eighteenth century.
Pippa Milne is former Associate Curator, International Art, QAGOMA and now Senior Curator, Monash Gallery of Art. Sophie Rose is former Assistant Curator, International Art, QAGOMA.
Endnote 1 John Berger and Michael Dibb, Ways of Seeing, Penguin, London, 1972, p.47.
Featured image: Angelica Kauffmann’s The deserted Costanza c.1783-84
We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing on 3 March of the much-loved artist, organiser and mentor to many, Lee Wen (1957-2019). A central figure in Singaporean contemporary art for three decades, Lee contributed the performance Journey of a yellow man no. 13: Fragmented bodies/shifting ground 1999 to ‘The 3rd Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art‘ (APT3), and in doing so created one of the abiding images of the exhibition series.
Born in Singapore in 1957, Lee Wen turned his back on a banking career to pursue studies in art at La Salle-SIA College of the Arts and City of London Polytechnic. Alongside Amanda Heng, Koh Nguang How, Zai Kuning, Vincent Leow and others, Lee Wen became one of the earliest members of The Artist Village (TAV). Founded by the performance and installation artist Tang Da Wu in 1988, TAV functioned as an open studio promoting interdisciplinary experimental practice, highly engaged with the world around it. With the closure of the original village in 1990, TAV became an itinerant entity no less committed to creative interventions into the fabric of Singaporean social life.
Watch ‘Journey of a yellow man no. 13’, Brisbane 1999
It was during this period that Lee Wen developed the Yellow Man, his best-known performance persona. Stripping to his trunks, Lee Wen would coat himself entirely in yellow paint, exaggerating his Chinese-Malay ethnicity, and undertaking actions in a variety of spaces, from conventional galleries to city streets. For his participation in APT3, Lee Wen’s Yellow Man carried an animal heart from a suburban home through the Brisbane CBD to South Bank. Splitting the heart on the steps of the Gallery, he uttered with simple sincerity the words ‘Open heart’. An unceasing interrogator of social and cultural norms, Lee Wen offered the following reflection:
The sun was rising over the riverside where we waited with last night’s revellers by the anchored ferry. The sky was turning brighter as birds began to greet the morning with their songs, I rejected all manner of intoxications and watched the performance of lovers communicating their inner desires through pure and simple actions, faded meanings and re-solidified aspirations. I bid unemotional goodbyes to all beneath the shower of love and left, to experience unexpected rebirths again yet again. Closing the door, did I not leave those nightmares behind? Those mistaken glories, re-invented into memory, imagined as histories. How many times? How many times more?
During an effective ban on performance art in Singapore that lasted the best part of a decade from 1994, Lee Wen staged the Yellow Man’s journeys in a range of international locations, ever broadening interpretations of his colouring as he moved between cultural contexts. He travelled widely, participating in activities of the transnational performance collective Black Market International as well as the Command N group in Tokyo, where he also taught at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. In December 2003, the Future of Imagination festival, which Lee Wen organised with fellow artist Jason Lim for the Substation arts centre amid shifting cultural attitudes, effectively marked the return of performance art to Singapore, and was staged regularly until 2011.
Lee Wen accumulated an immense history of exhibitions, performances, workshops and teaching projects, participating in the Singapore Biennale (2014), Busan Biennale (2004), the Havana Bienal, (1997), Gwangju Bienniale (1995) and the 4th Asian Art Show, Fukuoka (1994), among many, many other events. In 2005, he received Singapore’s highest cultural award, the Cultural Medallion, for his services to contemporary art. His particular combination wit, humility, generosity, philosophical complexity and artistic vision will be greatly missed.
Lee Wen discusses ‘Journey of a yellow man no. 13’
Subscribe to QAGOMA YouTube / Lee Wen speaks at the opening weekend of ‘The 3rd Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT3) in 1999, Queensland Art Gallery
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Feature image detail: Lee Wen’s Journey of a yellow man no. 13: Fragmented bodies/shifting ground (still) 1999. The work has become central to QAGOMA’s collection of performance documentation.
‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) Opening Weekend culminated in a symposium with visiting artists, curators and academics from Australia, the Asia Pacific and further afield. Zara Stanhope, with Tarun Nagesh and Ruth McDougall, outlines some of the pressing ideas that arose in the development of the current exhibition and formed the platform for discussion, and reflects on the questions that will continue to inform our understanding of art and culture throughout this diverse region.
The Asia Pacific region today looks very different to how it did in 1993, at the time of the first Asia Pacific Triennial. In the current climate, in which countries across the region are navigating competing ideologies of nationalism and globalism, the Gallery continues to consider how best to host and present the work of artists who raise their voices against complex geopolitical, economic and environmental forces. ‘The right response’, said QAGOMA Director Chris Saines, in his welcome to APT9 symposium delegates ‘is to continue to provide an open and safe platform for art and artists to flourish by widening the audience for this discourse’.1
Symposium welcome
Chis Saines, QAGOMA Director and Zara Stanhope, Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art welcome researchers, artists and and curators to the all-day APT9 symposium and introduce some of the key areas of thought about contemporary art in the region, and its histories, conditions and voices.
The symposium was structured around three core topics that arose during the planning stage of APT9 and informed the current exhibition: transregionalism and connections between art and artists across Asia, Australia and the Pacific; the question of ‘Who speaks?’, including self-determination and cultural resilience; and the shaping of contemporary art histories in the Asia Pacific. Each session opened with an introductory speaker and was followed by a panel discussion representing a diversity of voices.
Connectivities: Conditions for contemporary art in spaces of trans-regionality
The first session focused on questions of how contemporary art is framed around regional definitions, boundaries and transnational relationships.2 The discussion highlighted the artistic opportunities and limitations affecting the creation and mobility of art in the Asia Pacific region today, how funding sources develop transnational possibilities, and how Australia, and APT9 in particular, has been able to nurture unique inter-regional relationships and dialogues. The significance of shifting borders — especially with regard to traditions, definitions and language — the movement of people, and privileging collaborative and local knowledge were all pertinent to the discussion.
One idea that directed the panel’s thinking was the notion of not one but multiple Asias. Greg Dvorak, an academic who grew up between the Marshall Islands, United States and Japan and now lives in Japan, commented that the idea of region, when imposed from the outside — from the Pacific rim looking inward — makes it easy to identify ‘at least ten different Pacifics’. Therefore, he maintains, scholars, curators and artists need to respond by looking to the past and at these roots of indigeneity. ‘It’s been very moving’, he continued, ‘to be part of the opening of APT and to see the Welcome to Country . . . to see how these connections that have always been there are being revitalised, revisited and re-understood’. Through the migration and movement of people, and these translocal connections, ‘the knowledge is already there; [it’s a matter of] reactivating it, and art has a space to do that’.3
Who speaks: Self-determination and cultural resilience on a global stage
Following a screening of Karrabing Film Collective’s documentary film Riot 2018, the second session highlighted the conditions that either enable or constrict the participation of individuals and communities within global contemporary art discourses and platforms. Kabi Kabi and Wiradjuri artist and producer Alethea Beetson framed the topic with her presentation on the ongoing politics of representation and white privilege within institutions as it applies to those not in the room — elders, ancestors and youth — and she raised the question, ‘Whom do we serve when working within institutions?’ A panel, chaired by Australian South Sea Islander curator Imelda Miller, reflected on the different contexts in which artists are creating, and the ways in which creative practice can be used to assert indigenous perspectives and ways of knowing.4
Numerous structures and conditions challenge the participation of artists and arts professionals within the contemporary art world. The questions of language, visibility and who listens — as well as who speaks — are ongoing concerns in countries that were colonised by the English-speaking world; English has become the lingua franca of contemporary art, a fact that hides a multiplicity of languages spoken in small but defined parts of the globe. In the later plenary session, Katina Davidson, the Gallery’s Assistant Curator of Indigenous Art, stressed the imperative of recognising the many nations and languages within our own land: in fact, our continent itself is transnational, and more than 200 Indigenous countries comprise the land mass that we call Australia.5
Making histories: Institutions, initiatives and artistic ecologies
The third session examined how art histories are being interpreted, questioned and rediscovered from a range of institutional and organisational perspectives within the Asia Pacific region. A paper given by Beijing curator Carol Yinghua Lu explored Socialist Realism in China in the final years of the Cultural Revolution and into the early 1980s as an example of how art history can be politicised and recontextualised. Lu emphasised the need to question how histories are written, and the paramount importance of context, which became the launching point for the panel discussion that followed.6 In the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, for instance, Māori time is complex and does not conform to Western concepts of linear history. ‘There’s no sense of a past, present or future’, explained Deirdre Brown from the University of Auckland. ‘Everything’s just moving around and everything can be interpreted according to any of those paradigms.’7
The unique focus of APT across Asia, Australia and the Pacific highlights the distinctive dynamics of the region and generates questions that a one-day event can only begin to address. However, the symposium nonetheless articulated some of the important and urgent concerns that underline the work of artists, curators and their communities, including sovereignty, visibility, self-determination and agency. These have implications for art and art-making across the region, and remind us that art is part of life. Thinking more deeply about such connections drives the curatorial approach to APT, and these discussions will be a provocative starting point for the next and future iterations of the Asia Pacific Triennial.
Dr Zara Stanhope is Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art. Tarun Nagesh is Curator, Asian Art, and Ruth McDougall is Curator, Pacific Art, QAGOMA.
The authors thank all the symposium presenters and plenary speakers, the QAGOMA Public Programs team, especially Fiona Neill, Sophie Dixon and Tamsin Cull, and curators Ellie Buttrose, Katina Davidson, Reuben Keehan, co-curator Sana Balai and APT9 Interlocutor Vera Mey.
Endnotes 1 Chris Saines, ‘APT9 symposium – Director’s Welcome’, 26 November 2018. 2 This session began with a paper presented by Nav Haq (Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium) and was followed by a panel discussion with Chair and APT9 Interlocutor Diana Campbell Betancourt (Artistic Director, Dhaka Art Summit), APT9 artist Monira Al Qadiri (Kuwait), Greg Dvorak (Associate Professor, Waseda University, Japan and APT9 Interlocutor), Siddharta Perez (curator, Singapore) and Léuli Eshrāghi (artist and
curator, Australia). 3 Greg Dvorak, speaking at the APT9 symposium, 26 November 2018. 4 The second session, chaired by Imelda Miller, comprised a panel of APT9 artists, including spoken-word poet Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner (Marshall Islands/USA), Jerome Manjat from art collective Pangrok Sulap (Sabah, Malaysia), Latai Taumoepeau (Tonga/Australia) and
Mao Ishikawa (Okinawa). 5 Katina Davidson, speaking at the APT9 symposium, 26 November 2018. 6 Following Lu’s presentation, the panel for the third session included Australian academic Dr Olivier Krischer (APT9 Interlocutor), Indigenous curator Matt Poll, Yogyakarta arts manager Ratna Mufida, Auckland-based academic Deirdre Brown and Reem Shadid (Deputy Director, Sharjah Art Foundation). 7 Deirdre Brown, speaking at the APT9 symposium, 26 November 2018.
In Tongan culture, ‘Punake’ is a term used to describe artists who compose poetry and songs and choreograph them for performance. The word comes from puna (to fly) and hake (on high). Latai Taumoepeau is a contemporary Punake — a body-centred performance artist whose powerful artistic practice tells the stories of her homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga, and her birthplace of the Eora Nation, Sydney. Working in durational performance and documenting it through photographs, she addresses issues of race, class and the female body.
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Feature image detail: Latai Taumoepeau Dark Continent 2018 (Performance documentation) / Taumoepeau was part the APT9 symposium: Session 2 Panel Discussion ‘Who speaks: Self-determination and cultural resilience on a global stage’.
From the age of ten, Thai artist Pannaphan Yodmanee was taught traditional Buddhist painting techniques by a monk at her local temple, and while she draws on this depth of knowledge, she moves beyond traditional conventions to connect the symbolic, the spiritual and the secular in exciting and experiential new ways. Through years of refining traditional painting practices, Yodmanee has formed a deep understanding of philosophies and cosmologies inherent in Thai Buddhist art, which she now transforms into densely layered installations.
Yodmanee’s In the Aftermath is a complex, immersive installation, presenting delicately painted stories in vivid temperas, gold pigments and mineral paints on the uneven surfaces of a constructed ruin.
In the aftermath resembles both the decaying murals in the ruins of old temples and the rubble of demolished buildings. The installation commissioned for APT9 is based around three key elements: rocks and stones from the artist’s hometown representing the natural world; found objects and fragments of buildings; and miniatures of Buddhist icons and sacred stupas, which have been created by the artist in a range of materials.
The environment is constructed using slabs of concrete, exposed iron structures and walls primed with concrete and rocks, into which Yodmanee places objects and delicately paints conquests and battles, as well as journeys across land and sea, applied with gold leaf and using the vivid blues of Buddhist painting.
The architectural setting chronicles the formation of individual and regional identities, and explores South-East Asian histories of migration, conflict and loss, as well as destructive human tendencies. In doing so, Yodmanee’s works have developed a new platform for Buddhist art, while they simultaneously capture the interconnectedness of art, religion and history in contemporary Thai society.
Did you know that ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) features a majority of female artists? We have highlighted five artists and projects and the women behind the work that makes the exhibition so rich and exciting.
Discover more
How does Monira Al Qadiri close the gap between two seemingly disparate moments in the history of the Arabian Peninsula – pearling and oil. Al Qadiri’s work comments on the intersections between commerce, culture and labour.
Why does Martha Atienza use video as a tool for social change to address the issues faced by her island community, highlighting the issues women face and the roles they play within Filipino society.
What is the significance of weaving and the dynamics of a weaving hut and their relationship to the identity and status of women within matrilineal Marshallese society. Hear stories and legends that are referenced in Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s poetry which offer insight to the complex and evolving frames of reference used to understand and explain human experiences unique to women.
Anne Noble’s interest in collaboration and her enthusiasm for art reveals the intersection of borders with other fields such as science, and the way that art can ask different questions to science. Why does Noble bring both an emotional as well as rational perspective to her work?
How does the Women’s Wealth project celebrate the resilience of the matrilineal society where land and status are passed through the female line, where this system of governance celebrates and values women’s voices and connection to the land.
5 Women artists and projects in APT9
1. Monira Al Qadiri
Through sculpture, installation and video, Monira Al Qadiri has been exploring the historic and aesthetic connections between oil and pearls, two disparate industries in the Gulf that have interconnecting histories. Both require laborious extraction and are associated with wealth and status. A major source of livelihood for the Gulf region for centuries, the pearling industry and its rich cultural traditions declined rapidly following the discovery of oil in the 1900s and the development of mass-produced pearls in Japan. Now nations such as Kuwait are preparing for a post-oil future, and Al Qadiri suggests comparisons with the historic waning of the pearling industry.
The four-sided video installation in APT9 conjures a large-scale aquarium. Onscreen, swimmers perform in a dichroic body of water with synchronised routines mimicking the repetitive movements of the pearl diver, with their actions choreographed to a contemporary remix of Kuwaiti pearling songs.
Monira Al Qadiri, Senegal/Kuwait b.1983 / DIVER (production still) 2018 / Four-channel video projection: 4:3, colour, sound / Commissioned for APT9 / Image courtesy: the artist
2. Martha Atienza
Martha Atienza uses video as a tool for social change to address the issues faced by her community on Bantayan Island in the Philippines. Her work in APT9 shows the men of her community, many of whom are fishermen or who work on large international seafaring vessels, while the men appear in the video as the actors, she also highlights the issues women face and the roles they play within Filipino society. In her broader practice, she has worked directly with the women of Bantayan island to set up hydroponic farming methods and establishing discussion groups, recorded in her video archive Para sa Aton (For Us).
Born into a family of seafarers, Atienza creates video, sound and installation works that explore the experience of being at sea and address histories of migration, labour, environmental degradation and identity. More than 400 000 Filipinos work on board some type of vessel, making them the largest group of seafaring people in the world. Atienza works to address the problems small fishing communities faces due to poverty, environmental change, and the long absence of family members at sea. Atienza’s work, while based on specifically local concerns and culture, has global significance and highlights common issues shared across the more than 7000 islands of the Philippines.
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner is a poet, teacher and performance artist born in the Marshall Islands. Her poetry primarily focuses on cultural issues and threats faced by her Micronesian people. These include nuclear testing conducted in the Marshall Islands, militarism, the rising sea level as a result of climate change, forced migration, and economic adaptation. Jetñil-Kijiner works across artistic disciplines with her poetry, often focusing on weaving, which underpins the traditional spiritual and social structure of Marshallese life.
Watch ‘Lorro: Of Wings and Seas’ performance
In her spoken-word performance created specifically for APT9, Jetñil-Kijiner uses the symbolism of the weaving process and weaving circle to explore how women’s roles and identity are shaped by Marshallese culture, the nuclear legacy, and a climate-threatened future. It draws inspiration from the Japanese dance art form of butoh to capture the metamorphic influence of the nuclear legacy on the bodies of women. The work is a weaving of words and movement, each strand connecting local wisdom with discourses of global relevance, opening the weaving circle to a new audience in APT9 – a circle defined by the open flow of learning, creativity, and a spirit of humble resilience that connects and characterises weavers of the Marshall Islands.
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s dynamic performance Lorro: Of Wings and Seas detailing her own engagement with weaving as a site of cultural resistance and expression. Performed at the APT9 opening weekend.
Art from Micronesia is featured for the first time in the history of the Asia Pacific Triennial. The Marshall Islands artists are known for their finely woven dress mats, made from pandanus and bordered with intricate geometric designs. Jaki-ed is a weaving technique historically employed to make the mats, commonly worn prior to colonisation, dress mats express value and status and tell stories of ancestors, nation and community. A new apprenticeship program has contributed to a recent revival of the jaki-ed art form, and the collaborative workshop enabled the exchange of dialogue and ideas, encouraging artists to innovate and experiment with their work.
A practising photographer since the 1970s, Anne Noble creates bodies of work through what she refers to as ‘essays’ or ‘narratives’ of photographic images. Working against the usual idea of the rapid and instant snapshot, hers is an immersive act of looking, resulting in unexpected and thought-provoking work that gets inside her subject matter.
Noble has created a multi-part project for APT9, at the heart of which Conversatio: A cabinet of wonder is a functioning beehive or ‘living photograph’. Bees can be observed entering GOMA, before disappearing inside the cabinet and going about their normal activities; they are also visible when the cabinet is opened daily for 20 minutes at 11.45am, 12.45pm, 2.45pm and 3.45pm.
Anne Noble’s custom-built Conversatio: A cabinet of wonder 2018
5. Women’s Wealth
Women’s Wealth is a major project focusing on the closely connected matrilineal societies of Bougainville and the Solomon Islands, and the art forms made by women — from cane and pandanus weaving, to shell ornamentation and earthenware pottery.
The project explores ideas of value and the role of these art forms as a kind of wealth or currency. Women’s Wealth highlights the significance of creative spaces — such as the weaving circle — within indigenous communities and emphasises the ways in which women’s practices act as a quiet means of resilience in the face of major historical changes.
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APT9 has been assisted by our Founding Supporter Queensland Government and Principal Partner the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.
Monira Al Qadiri has been supported by the Council for Australian-Arab Relations
Martha Atienza has been supported by the Australia-ASEAN Council
Anne Noble has been supported by Creative New Zealand
Women’s Wealth has been supported by DFAT and the Gordon Darling Foundation
Feature image detail: Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s performance Lorro, of Wings and Seas
Mongolian artist Enkhbold Togmidshiirev is known for his large-scale, monochromatic canvases, as well as his Ger Project performances. Togmidshiirev staged an improvised roving performance in the outdoor spaces surrounding the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) for The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) opening weekend as part of his ongoing Ger Project.
Since 2008, Togmidshiirev has created a number of personalised structures derived from the form of the Mongolian ger, or yurt, with which he performs as a way of developing a connection with his surroundings. The ger, a large circular tent with a collapsible wooden infrastructure, is robust and portable, and highly suited to a nomadic lifestyle. Setting up a ger creates a temporary home that Togmidshiirev equates to a spiritual space. The performance commenced on the Kurilpa Bridge, with Enkhbold making his way across it before concluding the performance in the GOMA Forecourt.
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Enkhbold Togmidshiirev concluding the performance in the GOMA Forecourt
Blue Sentient 2015 installed at GOMA during APT9The spherical Blue Sentient 2015 featured in the APT9 opening weekend performance, and as a sculptural installation in the Gallery is on display with Togmidshiirev’s restrained colour-field paintings which incorporate unusual media – horse dung, felt, shrubs, ash, rust, sheep skin and tripe – which are either laid over the canvas or worked into its fibres. Togmidshiirev also incorporates collage into his paintings, while fabrics such as cotton, silk and hessian vary their surfaces. Their materiality, like the ger performances they complement, preserves a strong connection with both traditional and contemporary Mongolian life.
Delve deeper into APT9 with Mithu Sen
Mithu Sen works in a variety of media to explore and subvert hierarchical codes and rules. Through various devices and interventions she challenges our standards of social exchange, undermining the codes we come to rely on and recalibrating types of interaction.
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Feature image: Enkhbold Togmidshiirev’s improvised roving performance in the outdoor spaces surrounding GOMA for the APT9 opening weekend as part of his ongoing Ger Project.
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We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
