Impressions of the 8th Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh
The Asian Art Biennale in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is indeed a significant commitment realised by a country many art enthusiasts seem to overlook.
More from this Issue
The Enigma of Japanese Contemporary Art
Japanese culture at the end of the twentieth century was at an intersection of past, present and future. Exhibitions including Against Nature at the Grey Art Gallery in New York (1989), Japanese Ways, Western Means at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane (1989), A cabinet of Signs at the Tate Gallery Liverpool (1991) and Zones of Love at the MCA Sydney (1991) showed for the first time the complex and urban basis of Japanese art in the 1980s, a time of considerable transition in Japanese art practice. Featured artists included Shigeo Toya, Kimio Tsuchiya, Yasamasa Morimura, Takashi Murakami, Emiko Kasahara, Masato Nakamura, Yukinori Yanagi, Katsushige Nakahashi and Tatsuo Miyajima.
Australia and Asia: Friends and Family
The past 10 years have seen the building of ties between Australians and Asians through the interactions occasioned by the three Asia-Pacific Triennial exhibitions in Brisbane. There are now many personal and binding friendships across the region which did not exist before. This changes our concept of 'region' significantly.
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.
Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1859-1939
David Walker, University of Queensland Press, 1999, 312pp, paperback RRP $29.95
