Published 15 December 2021
Efforts to save the ancient city of Hanoi from redevelopment - an Australian businessman raises money and support
There are very few specialised printmakers in Vietnam, partly because of the expense of materials and equipment. Woodcuts, a traditional form, with the use of multiple coloured plates, are in demand but are now rare, engraving in both metal and plaster is growing, lithography dates from the anti-French resistance, and silkscreen was used for socialist posters in the 70s. Graphic arts are moving into the world of advertising where the money is.
Published December 1993
Women artists in Malaysia have a lot to deal with - pressures to give priority to family duties over art practice, and oppression of women while the Islamic prescription against representation makes it hard to make political statements. Hamidah Rahman, Shu-Li, Norma Abba, Eng Hwee Chu and Mastura Abdul Rahman are breaking taboos including that of including sexual content in their work. However the price they pay is marginalisation.
The US/Mexico based Border Workshop group worked on a collaborative shopfront installation in 1992 with the Cabramatta community of western Sydney where many Indo-Chinese refugee populations settled in the 70s. A large installation representing a refugee boat and a walk-in temple containing video monitors playing back student interviews with local people.
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.
A survey of the role played by politics in art and vice versa before during and after Independence from the Dutch. Artists were employed by political parties to promote their ideologies; by 1950 artists rejected this. Some were arrested for depicting social realities. 20 years later a new group took up the baton, and again incurred the displeasure of the government. Humour was adopted as a means of expressing truths.
Problems of survival of new art without subsidy have created two groups: The Artists' Village, a loose collective of artists who occupied two buildings scheduled for redevelopment, ending up in the Substation near the National Art Gallery. 5th Passage was allowed to occupy an area in a shopping centre where they made performances on environmental themes and ran very popular school holiday art programs for children.
3 major influences. Nguyen Sang (1923-1988) painted in a politically charged and nationalistic mode but always as a personal expression. Bui Xuan Phai (1920 - 1988) painted small streetscapes depicting the soul of old Hanoi, a nostalgic view. Nguyen Tu Nghiem (1922-) was more innovative looking again at ancient village sculpture in pagodas and paradoxically moves closer to a Modernist style.
'Streams of Indonesian Art from Pre-historic to Contemporary' Published by the Committee of the Festival of Indonesia, Jakarta, 1991. A series of essays by Indonesian writers. 'Perceptions of Paradise: Images of Bali in the Arts' By a US scholar Garrett Kam, Publishedby the Museum Neka, Bali, 1993. Both publications help to fill the gaps in written art history. 'Streams' tries to sanitise the history of the oppression of artists by political forces and ongoing social inequities.
A sketch of the main institutions and galleries, the prizes, sponsors and patrons, as well as a list of the main galleries was a guide to the art scene in Bangkok at the time of writing. Several of the large hotels also had commissioned murals as well as acquiring new works by contemporary Thai artists.
Indonesian printmaking emerged around the time of Independence in 1945. It began to be taught in colleges in Bandung, Yogyakarta and Jakarta and became a way of showing Indonesian art abroad. Prints are now seen in offices, banks, hotels and homes. Indonesian printmakers have participated in international print exhibitions in Norway, Taiwan, and Japan.
Artist Noelene Lucas describes the rationale behind the work The Presence of the Centre which she made at Silpakorn University in Bangkok during a residency. It deals with her perception of the landscape of theAustralian Centre as seen from 11,000 metres flying to Thailand, and the fragmentary way we perceive. It is a metaphor for negotiating our position in the world.
Thai-Australian Cultural Space was an exhibition at the Bangkok National Gallery in 1993 of works by Montien Boonma, Vichoke Mukdamanee and Kamol Phaosavasdi from Thailand and Joan Grounds and Noelene Lucas from Australia, all of whom had experience of working in countries other than their own. A common theme of the work was our relationship to nature and the spiritual in art and life.
