APT6 - Do you want the good news or the bad news?
Kohei Nawa | PixCell-Elk#2 2009| Japan b.1975
It was probably my own fault. I went to see this exhibition on a hot Sunday afternoon towards the end of the school holidays.
See, I don’t generally dislike children, and those who know me know that I come into a fair bit of contact with them in my day to day life. Essentially, I have plenty of opportunity to dislike them, but choose not to. This, I believe, makes me a pretty top person.
But seriously, I became pretty negative about the little brats today.
And this is something that always irks me about APT exhibitions. For the love of God, either control your children or find another way to entertain them that doesn’t involve impinging on the happiness of other humans.
I knew I was in trouble when, within a two minutes of walking into GoMA, I was happily reading an artist bio and was suddenly surrounded by a swarm of children, led by a crazily-attired gallery staff member with a microphone. She was not only leading the gaggle of over-excited children, she was encouraging them to yell at the top of their voices.
What a way to promote the peaceful contemplation of art.
But you know what, adults are just as bad.
I took some deep breaths, disentangled myself from the screaming young ones, and went into a different space. Here, I was confronted with a man who was actually singing.
Loudly.
So I scowled at him a scowl that chilled him to his bones. He wasn’t much in the mood for singing after that.
People have different opinions about the ‘democratization’ of art.
See, I want people to appreciate art, experience it, actually go and see stuff. I don’t think people should feel that art is exclusive.
But I also don’t think it should be a mindless form of entertainment that can’t be differentiated from going to the playground, or, in the case of singing-man, a trip to the pub. I think it is completely disrespectful, not only to other people in the gallery who went to the trouble of a) parking at Indro, b) catching a bus and c) walking in the heat to be there, but also it is disrespectful to the artists who actually put thought and feeling into the creation of these works.
Okay. Rant over.
Here’s what I liked:
Hiraki Sawa
This was my favourite.
I was about to walk right on past the Level 2 Media Gallery. Pretty glad I didn’t.
Sawa’s contribution to the APT6 was a three-screen video installation work. You walk into a big, dark room with slightly disorienting sound effects emerging and receding, in turn startling and soothing.
I made my way to and settled myself on a leather poof and there I sat for about twenty minutes. As much as I am scornful of people with cameras in galleries (look with your eyes, people!), I wish I had had mine with me because even the silhouettes of my fellow gallery goers were beautiful and artistic. Everything was in black and white, and was a completely wonderful experience.
Watch one of his works here. Seriously. Do it. You won’t get the full effect but it will still be worth it.
I was particularly moved by Sawa’s artist statement on the work in the APT6, which was entitled ‘O’.
I like circles. The ferris wheel, the rocking horse, the aircraft all describe a slow and steady journey from one place to another and back again. You end where you began, and in between nothing takes place. An airport is always an airport, and one airport is like any other – an iconic symbol of nowhereness. Coming full circle is movement without displacement. In that time, you simply are, and all change is in the looking.
As a child in my hometown, night-time was much darker than it is now. One night, I went to the other side of the river with my dog and was struck by the brightness of the moon in the thick black sky. The moon was always there, its presence and brightness were nothing special. It was not the active light of the sun, which illuminates your daily life, but a strong and present brightness which at that moment startled me.
There is a home in the mountains near the river near the sea. It is tall and old and its floors are of cracked red clay. It is full of things in piles and heaps and layers, yet empty of both absence and presence. It has known too many people and framed too many lives to be missing only one of those. Instead it stands where it is, bathed in light and shadow, and does as it pleases.
This work brings together domestic objects spinning endlessly; the vast expanse of a desert landscape; the distant fields of the moon’s surface; the empty interiors of a house long abandoned, a home not waiting for its absent owner’s return but simply left alone to be …
Gonkar Gyatso
I’ve talked about Gyatso before, from his solo exhibition at Jan Murphy. I can’t get over these works. They’re incredible and beautiful.
Sopheap Pich
Pich’s works were within an exhibition entitled The Mekong, which, funnily enough, features artists from the Mekong region of South East Asia.
His name is a bit like mine. This is why I liked him.
Kidding.
Pich hails from Cambodia, and his works represent his homeland both in their materials and in their form. Pich uses rattan and bamboo to create semi-abstract forms that are frequently left free for interpretation. Others provide commentary on cultural hybridism, a theme that seemed to run through this year’s APT.
Sopheap Pich | Buddha 2009 | Cambodia b.1971
Reuben Paterson
This work took up an an entire wall on the ground floor of the gallery. It was big. As I was looking at it, two separate groups of people around me were trying to work out how he made it so big.
I’ll tell you how he made it so big. The work is made up of 16 separate canvases (this is most easily seen in the blue canvases in the corners). It is really impressive in real life.
Reuben Paterson | Whakapapa: get down upon your knees | New Zealand b.1973
Apparently, in Maori, ‘papa’ means something broad and flat and ‘whaka’ means layered.
Isabel & Alfredo Aquilizan
No I didn’t just include this to try and look less like I hate children. I was actually really struck by this work.
The artistic duo work with notions of collection and collaboration, using materials from the community to create some pretty cool installation works.
The one at APT6 was made up of aircraft created by children from schools across Brisbane. They were hung, mobile-like, from the gallery ceiling and adorned the walls.
And one more…
Charwei Tsai
This was a bit cool.
Charwei Tsai | Mushroom mantra 2008| Taiwan b. 1980
This work is made up of fresh mushrooms in real dirt, written upon in caligraphy with black ink. It plays on ideas of transience versus permanence.
The text written on the mushrooms is from a central Buddhist test, Heart Sutra, which explores the idea of emptiness and the relationship between the individual and the universe.
What I didn’t like:
Apart from the obvious, which you no doubt gleaned from my earlier goings on…
Campbell Patterson
I was left feeling extremely dissatisfied, somewhat bored and slightly resentful after observing videos of this guy drinking soda water and trying to make himself burp. Likewise watching his brother chewing and him not chewing. Likewise him lifting his mother. Likewise him watching TV whilst sandwiched within a fold-up bed. You get the picture.
* Note *
After writing this, I became aware that 16-26 January is Kids’ APT Summer Spectacular, an action-packed 11 day festival for Kids!
So it really was my own fault.
