The fifth artists' regional exchange, 1998-1999
The December 1998 issue of the BulletinNewsweek featured a spread of articles that examined Hong Kong and Singapore as rivals vying for pre-eminence. Interestingly, both journalists and artists were chosen to contribute to the issue, each one reveling in the competitiveness between the two countries. Reportage combined with heartfelt banter proved a heady blend and served to highlight the structural and emotional depths of the rivalry.l
Just prior to this, the Australian-based Artist's Regional Exchange (ARX) had embarked on a project which was a watershed in its history: it was extended from being a Perth-only presentation to becoming a mobile residency that took in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. This had been an ambition held by ARX management committees and staff since the project's inception in the mid-1980s. The need to disperse ARX had been reiterated at the four previous events in Perth, all of which involved large numbers of artists, writers and curators from some eight countries in the region. It had seemed imperative that all artists have the opportunity to experience the complexities of territorial, physical and conceptual displacement in a real rather than in an hypothetical manner. Previous ARX events, while successful, had privileged the Australian participants. Nonetheless, some rewarding alliances prospered and are sustained today.
The establishment in 1997, therefore, of a partnership with representatives from Singapore and Hong Kong and the launch of ARX5 in Singapore in October 1998, marked significant milestones for the organisation. It was hoped that the new format would reinvigorate ARX as a model for fostering cross cultural exchange and reaffirm its relevance as an event that actively and demonstratively interrogates the notion of cultural exchange. Perhaps no one counted on... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline