Prior to and beyond the inaugural Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) at the Queensland Art Gallery in 1993, there has been growing interest in contemporary art practice of the Asian region amongst Australian art institutions and curators. This represents a radical shift of focus from the predominantly Eurocentric aesthetic that has characterized much of Australia's contemporary art appreciation to date. Writing of the inaugural Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery Director Doug Hall defined the exhibition as a "landmark event and the first of its kind of this scale in the world to focus on the contemporary art of Asia and the Pacific ... ". [1] The overwhelming success of the current Triennial exhibition and its accompanying conference-which attracted some six hundred artists, curators and writers from Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe-reflects this shift still further.
While a number of Australia's state and national galleries have yet to catch on, smaller independent and university-run art spaces are similarly active in the exhibition of contemporary Asian and Asian-Australian art. Collaborative touring exhibitions represent one way in which changing perceptions towards the region are manifested. Two such recent exhibitions which coincided with the APT were Above and Beyond: Austral/Asian interactions, a collaborative project of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and the Institute of Modern Art (curators Clare Williamson and Michael Snelling), and Rapport a joint exhibition of the Monash University Gallery and Singapore Art Museum (curators Natalie King and Tay Swee Lin).
These exhibitions address in differing ways some of the ideas that historically have shaped Australia's relationship with Asia. The former exhibition, which comprises works by thirteen artists residing in Australia, takes a more academic approach. Artists have been included... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline