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The 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Gina Fairley
Eyeline 78/79
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As the months have rolled by since the seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT7) opened, time has become the architect for our ideas. Was our first impression ‘true’—lasting—or were we merely carried by the largess of the moment? Was it an important chapter to an ongoing archive—to pick on one of the exhibition’s themes—and do the questions raised continue to reverberate in contemporary regional dialogue? Too quickly as artists and arts professionals we fail to ‘revisit’ exhibitions with time, herded onto the next spectacular event, skewed by the reportage of success through mainstream media and attendance figures. APT7 prompted us to remember. It is not surprising then that the loose themes of transforming landscapes and transitory spaces were evident in many APT7 works, ‘suggesting ideas of regeneration, re-evaluation, and renewal’.1

The contemporary use of archiving as a mode to exercise more interactive practice and presentation has been a spur, if you like, in the known paths of exchange. It posed alternate ways of looking at how one might record a region and, with its counterpoint memory, was celebrated in APT7 through projects as varied as commissioned structures from the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea to ‘The 20 Year Archive’, a diverse non-linear suite of projects that effectively placed ‘time’ atop the soapbox as the protagonist for regional understanding. While an appropriate device to mark the exhibition’s laudable achievements on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, and indeed one which reflects international curatorial trends, this heavily didactic archive was also the most ‘dry’ aspect of this exhibition, perhaps only redeemed by Singaporean artist Heman Chong’s Asia/Pacific/Triennial (2012). 

A sound-scape of spoken texts, Chong’s work offered an... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Richard Maloy, Big Yellow, 2012.

Richard Maloy, Big Yellow, 2012. Cardboard, paint, wood. Site-specific work for APT7. Courtesy the artist and Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland. The Queensland Art Gallery would like to thank IKEA for the generous donation of cardboard for Richard Maloy's project Big Yellow. 

Heman Chong, Asia/Pacific/Triennial, 2012

Heman Chong, Asia/Pacific/Triennial, 2012. Installation view GOMA, 20 channel sound installation. Photograph Gina Fairley.