Eyeline asked several art world participants to comment on one aspect of the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial they liked and on one they did not like…
It’s a difficult task to identify and isolate one good thing and one thing I didn’t like in an exhibition the size of the Asia Pacific. The very variety and size of this triennial is inevitably rather overwhelming for the one-off weekend visitor. In addition, this region is not at all unified by what it calls art. However, I noticed and enjoyed a sense of the increasing influence of the repetitive patterning of Islamic art in the region, heralded with the watermall sculpture by Ayaz Jokhio. This influence may have been heightened by the inclusion of work from countries further afield than usually considered Asia or Pacific, such as Iran, not included in earlier APTs.
Video and DVD presentations commonly have to fight for one’s viewing attention in this scale of show, but I was very impressed with the uncanny unfolding of Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s The ground, the root, and the air: The passing of the Bodhi Tree, (2004-07). I enjoyed the fact that this was part of a coherently-framed selection, among others, within the major exhibition. And I also loved the inclusion of the sounds of Pacific Reggae.
There were also some things I didn’t personally take to, including Kohei Nawa’s elk covered in glass beads which seemed somewhat trite. I found myself repelled almost as much as I was fascinated by the contributions of the Mansudae Art Studio from North Korea. That these recently-made works are considered ‘experimental’ seems astonishing; at the same time, it is wonderful to become aware of the context of this disturbingly ‘retro’ work.
What concerns me most, however (and this may say more about me than the APT), is the impression that a significant... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline