The Gordon Darling Foundation

Background to the Foundation and its support for the Artlink special issue on South East Asia. The personal interest on the part of benefactors Gordon and Marilyn Darling in the traditional cultures of South East Asia. Their mission to start the first national portrait gallery in Australia.

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Images of Women by Women

Women are producing some of the most challenging art in the Philippines by using feminist themes and achieving a synthesis of art and feminism. These are drawings, paintings, 3D works in all media from papier machŽ to stone, and performance art. The work is confronting, emotive, full of vitality. Images are drawn from the kitchen, childcare, main domination, domestic surroundings and the natural world.

Imelda Cajipe-Endaya

Contemporary Arts of the Region: South East Asia and Australia

Background to how the special issue on South East Asia came about, and speculation that Australia is at the crossroads of a new sensitivity to Asian culture and a desire to be part of its development. Despite growing industrialisation Asian cultures are still distinct and hold highly contrasting attitudes to artistic expression. Thanks to Neil Manton of the Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade for his influence in funding this project.

Stephanie Britton

Confronting Paradox

As a Director of the School of Fine Art at Silpakorn University, Somporn Rodboon has been instrumental in helping students get an international perspective. She invited Australian women eg Joan Grounds, Noelene Lucas, to be artists-in-residence. Diane Mantzaris arrived in 1992 and made a suite of contentious computer generated prints dealing with the May anti-democracy military crackdown.

Anne Kirker

Strange Encounters

'Art Festival: Temples and Cemeteries' is an unusual event held in Chiang Mai over three months. Organiser Uthis Utimana, lecturer at Chiang Mai University, chose to show art in temples and cemeteries as Thai people are more familiar with them than art galleries and they encourage people to contemplate life. Artists ran into trouble with religious and education authorities who misunderstood some of the pieces but were undeterred.

Chanyaporn Chanjaroen

Hanoi- Heritage in Danger

Hanoi was founded 1000 years ago, and has always been an important centre, culturally and economically. Its Ancient Quarter is a miraculous human-scale blueprint for living and working and much of its original character survives today. The French Quarter built in the 19th Century was a sensitive complement to the old Asian architecture, but today all this is threatened by ugly, insensitive development motivated by greed. Hanoi needs a handsome prince to rescue her!

Thang Hoang Phuc

Modern Art in Thailand: A Glimpse

A concise history of the beginnings of modernism in Thailand from the 1890s. In the 1970s the current Princess established an alternative space for young Thai artists in which the tensions between art for art's sake and art for religious purposes were evident. Politically correct art about Thai-ness was sponsored by banks in the 80s. Later political instability and environmental problems gave rise to a new kind of work challenging cultural consumerism.

Apinan Poshyananda

Fine Art in Ho Chi Minh City

Interview between author and the painter Ca Le Thang about new developments in Ho Chi Minh City brought about by the open-door policy doi moi and the increasing commercialisation of fine art. Modernism is more easily accepted here than in some other parts of the country. The magazine My Thuat was formed 2 years ago as an organ of the City Fine Arts Association, and provides a forum for artists and critics to air important issues.

Quan Nguyen

Unpredictable Repercussions

The massacre of pro-democracy students in May 1992 was a watershed for Thai artists who began to identify with change, formed associations and took part in rallies, and called for public monuments to the tragedy. The City Art League was formed to present performance art in public places and the Concrete House to draw attention to AIDS through art activities. This brought social and political issues into the realm of art.

Chumpon Apisuk

To be an artist

The author recounts her education in a Thai boarding school under the male patriarchal system. As an artist she has tried to come to terms with her upbringing and her work has reflected the situation for her mother and grandmother as well as the death from cancer of her father. She describes her installation work 'Dinner with Cancer' as a commentary on consumption - "humans are not only consumers, they are also being consumed".

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

Introduction to Philippines Art and Culture

Many ethnic groups have melded to form the present day Philippines. Colonial rule and the influence of the US, Spain and Japan have all left their mark while there is still much resistance to losing traditional values. Art expression is varied and unrestricted and since the 1990s regional areas have come to the fore. Support from the state has been erratic. Artists are struggling against the onslaught of capitalist developments and art for investment.

Jeannie E. Javelosa

Writing About Craft

What is the relationship between the art or craft object and its maker? This question is put from the Philippines in relation to crafts and compares the importance of the origin or culture of the maker in that country to that in Australia. Students of Philippine crafts have applied the 'mapping' method which helps to understand the depth of tradition and their subsequent evolution into urban variants. Writers on the crafts are developing ways of exploring these questions.

Nola Anderson

An Australian Creates Space in Manila

From 1989 - 1991 artist Neil Roberts found himself engaged on a series of working visits to the Philippines. He decided to use only local materials, striking a welcome chord with his hosts. His tendency towards sparse presentation was in sharp contrast to the overload of the installations and paintings of local artists, echoing the contrast between Australian and Filipino attitudes to space. At ARX in Perth he collaborated with Cesare Syjuco who has the ART-LAB space in Manila.

Neil Roberts

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