Dragon seeds and flea circuses: some moments and movements in contemporary Chinese art

Post-revolutionary China was a time of testing boundaries of official tolerance and experimentation with the newly accessible Western art ideas. The first art exhibitions were held and groups formed, as artists started to realise they were not, as Mao said, just the hair on the skin of socialism. Resistance to the old political order and a deliberate courting of Western buyers with post-Mao imagery has to give way to finding an original voice.

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Sonabai at the APT: difference, indifference, formality

Kajri Jain

Expanding Horizons: Art from Taiwan

This article looks at the recent history of cultural exchange between Australia and Taiwan and briefly examines the background of the shifts occuring within the Taiwanese art scene from an Australian context. Furthermore it examines some of the continuities and changes in the late 1990s with a particular emphasis on the works by artists Wu Tien-Chang and Wu Mali included in the Second and Third Asia-Pacific Triennial.

Deborah Hart

Cheo Chai-Hiang Thoughts and Processes (Rethinking The Singapore River)

Cecily Briggs, Singapore art Museum & Nanyang Academy of Fine Art, 2000, 132pp RRP $40

Angela Valamanesh

Home

Art Gallery of Western Australia 5 February - 15 April 2000

Annette Pederson

Focus on Asian Women Artists

Anne Kirker

Radicalising Tradition: Painting in Pakistan

The teaching of miniature painting has, since the 1980s when it became a part of the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, become a highly respected and important traditional genre. The role of miniature painting also came to represent many of the anxieties that entangled this postcolonial society in search of its own identity. Hashmi examines the importance of this artistic form with reference to the works of Nahid Fakhruddin, Shahzia Sikander, Imran Qureshi, Tanzeen Qayyum, Talha Rathore, Aisha Khalid and Nusra Latif.

Salimi Hashmi

Shifts and Transitions in Indonesian Art and Society

This article looks at the East Timor crisis and the attempted boycott of the APT 3 at the Queensland Art Gallery subsequent to Indonesian artists participating in the event. Marianto examines this in relation to the shifting powers in Indonesia at the time from the ruling of President Habibie to the fourth leader Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) and presents a list of what could be considered seven strands of artistic concern within Indonesia: The critical group, alternative art, art for art's sake, conventional art, marginalised individuals, media-influenced art and feminist artists.

Dwi Marianto