Fiona Tan Sherman Contemporary Art FoundationSherman Coming Home
Fiona Tan
Coming Home
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Contents in association with the National Art School
12 Preface Anita Taylor Fiona Tan 14 Introduction Gene Sherman Coming Home 19 Colour Plates A Lapse of Memory 47 Disorient
74 Essay Infinite Crossroads Juliana Engberg
82 Production Credits
84 Artist Biography
88 Artist Bibliography
92 Contributors
94 Acknowledgements
13 It is with enormous pleasure that the National The extension of the project to include the Preface Art School (NAS) joins with Sherman NAS Gallery is a direct outcome of discussions Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) to involving the Deans/Directors of the three present ‘Fiona Tan: Coming Home’. The major art schools in Sydney in May 2009, held proposal to extend the project – commissioned at the invitation of Dr Gene Sherman, in which Anita Taylor by SCAF – across our two venues represents a Gene and her team at SCAF proposed an Director significant new partnership for NAS. I believe ongoing dialogue to explore opportunities to National Art School the opportunity afforded by this collaboration engage more extensively with the art students establishes an exciting new direction for both of Sydney. Most importantly, SCAF and NAS our organisations. share a commitment to supporting outstanding The two Sydney venues are each hosting a exhibitions that underscore the value of art and separate body of work: Disorient, 2009, first culture in our society. shown to great acclaim in the Dutch Pavilion at The hard work, commitment and dedication the 53rd Venice Biennale, is screening at SCAF in of a number of individuals are required to Paddington, and A Lapse of Memory, 2007, is deliver an exhibition of this scope. I would like being shown in the NAS Gallery in Darlinghurst. to thank especially Dr Gene Sherman, Anna Fiona Tan is a leading international artist. Waldmann, Amanda Henry and Dolla Born in Indonesia, she grew up in Australia and Merrillees of SCAF; Katie Dyer, Curator /NAS now lives and works in the Netherlands. Tan is well Gallery Manager; Danielle Neely, NAS Gallery known for her film-based museum installations, Intern; the installation team; and the staff of archival constructs and photographic works that NAS. Most importantly, we extend our deepest explore and interrogate collective memory and the appreciation to Fiona Tan. construction of identity. Grand in scale, acutely intimate in observation, the works of Fiona Tan demand both space and time to absorb, to reflect and to distil the richness of their visual examination and meaning and to situate our own experience in relation to them. Beautifully executed and skilfully crafted, Tan’s work has, perhaps, a particular resonance within the historical and contemporary context of NAS, which is housed in the old Darlinghurst Gaol (1841–1912). As a site of historic significance, the former prison is redolent with history and memory, the traces of which can be seen inscribed within its walls. As we educate the next generation of artists, the philosophy of the fine art education on offer here is that of a strong commitment to the teaching of the traditions of each subject discipline in order to engender skills, facility and confidence in each individual. These qualities of observation and skill, and an engagement with the tracing of history and memory, of past and present, closely correlate with the underlying themes in Tan’s work.
15 September 2001, Yokohama, Japan: the city’s initiation rite wherein twenty-year-old women Introduction Triennale of Contemporary Art promised to engaged in a coming-of-age archery ritual. The be variously illuminating. The usual line-up of artist had chosen to focus exclusively on the international artists was thoughtfully integrated young faces – images of absorbed concentration into a complex arrangement of local and – forgoing full body views, the targets and Dr Gene Sherman emerging practitioners, housed in a series of overall context. Chairman and Executive Director wharves in this design- and art-designated city The artist’s oeuvre, I later discovered, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation port. Australia was admirably represented by comprised a subjective visual anthropology Shaun Gladwell (nurtured and represented founded in photographic and filmic by Sherman Galleries) and an exceptional representation. Tourism has, in part, distorted large-scale work by compatriot Craig Walsh. our view of the world. Exotic places are I was there to support Shaun, to mediate sanitised, homogenised and reconstructed in his work for collectors, identify future order to market their saleable assets. Fiona opportunities, and interface with curators, Tan’s creative journeying was based on the critics and press to maximise the experience for perception of otherness and the desire to the artist and validate the confidence placed in explore identity in all its current and traditional him by both government and my own gallery. complexity: Tuareg, 1999, archival footage of Time to see the sprawling overall show was North African children; Countenance limited but essential in order to absorb and (Documenta), 2002, 200 filmic portraits of evaluate the overall context within which Berliners; Correction, 2004, 300 portraits of Shaun’s work was selected. I moved through male and female prisoners and prison guards in the exhibition rapidly, encountering new work California and Illinois; Vox Populi, Norway, by well-loved artists, dismissing perceived 2004, collected portraits of hundreds of attempts at innovation, pausing briefly and unknown Norwegians drawn from scanned passing impatiently. images of temporarily donated family albums, I was stopped in my tracks by a compelling meticulously sorted, edited and composed. moving-image work – Saint Sebastian, 2001, by Le tout Berlin, the Norwegian nation, the Fiona Tan – a rotating rollcall of young, unfortunately burgeoning American prison traditionally dressed Japanese women, filmed population; Fiona Tan’s work relies heavily on with bow and arrow in hand, concentrating on documentary filmmaking with anthropological unseen targets. The title resonated. Saint perspectives. And yet, using existing footage, Sebastian, martyred for spreading the Christian her own film footage and an irrepressible desire message, whose images, venerated by the gay for ordering, classifying and foregrounding community, I had scrutinised when devouring types, archetypes and stereotypes, the artist Yukio Mishima’s monumental tetralogy, The gently and insistently, with subtlety, urges us to Sea of Fertility, during my two-year reading consider who we are and how we fit into the stint of contemporary Japanese literature. overall category of humanity. Mishima’s fascination with Saint Sebastian In September 2008, seven years after my first extended to photographing himself in poses encounter with Fiona Tan’s work, I travelled, reminiscent of the Christian martyr’s death. again in haste, from my short-stay base in The Tan images remained with me and over Amsterdam to Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, in the years I pursued both the background to the pursuit of another Tan work. Tomorrow, 2005, work I had seen and her work in general. It was included in an important group exhibition, appeared that she had fought for and won Be(com)ing Dutch, curated by Charles Esche permission to film a Kyoto-based annual and Annie Fletcher, with the overt aim, it seemed
17 to me, to explore, explain and expand upon the The Tan family’s forced migration from It is our great pleasure and privilege to present group of experienced, dedicated individuals changing make-up of contemporary Holland. President Suharto’s 1960s Indonesia to Fiona Tan’s work as our first2010 SCAF artist’s make our ambitious projects possible: Laura Fiona’s work again stood out. Tomorrow placed a Melbourne, Hong Kong, Holland, Cologne, project. Originally we talked about an early 2009, Brandon, Aaron de Souza, Barry Sechos, Mark group of teenage Swedish students in a large- Norway and further afield is relatively well water-themed commissioned work for Sydney. Gowing and Fiona Egan contribute in essential scale horizontal line and left them shuffling known – and in today’s global village meshes The exhibition was postponed as a result of and meaningful ways to our events and projects. uncertainly, interacting awkwardly, posing, with thousands of other dislocations, Fiona’s invitation to represent the Netherlands at Thank you all for past efforts and in posturing and pretending to be comfortable in displacements, business forays and voyages of the Venice Biennale. Disorient’s significant impact anticipation of the timely and successful their shoes. Blonde, traditional, European types discovery that mark the era in which we live. in Venice and relevance for our part of the world delivery of SCAF’s 2010 programme. were clearly outnumbered by students from Her own travels take place in both time and led to the decision to feature and contextualise To Brian Sherman AM, our patron and my varying backgrounds. All clad in youth’s space and are represented in picture worlds, this work in our Paddington space, while also life partner of forty-two years, and to our ubiquitous jeans and tee-shirt combinations, they both present and historical. The portrait is the partnering with the nearby National Art School children and their partners, thank you for your read as individual portraits and as a collective medium through which her exploration often (NAS) to screen A Lapse of Memory, 2007, incredible generosity in supporting a time- image of both European society in transition and moves, echoing the Golden Age of Dutch allowing us to emphasise and solidify our consuming and costly endeavour whose only the indomitable spirit and promise of youth. In portraiture, which coincided with an earlier expanding education outreach. goal is to benefit the community in which we Amsterdam itself I was privileged to see a Dutch and European global expansion. I am hugely appreciative of Fiona Tan’s live and the artists who are essential to our lives, commissioned Tan work in the Rijksmuseum, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation commitment to this project and of the support and to add a modicum of sanity and joy to a alongside but separated from Dutch Master (SCAF) is now two years old and has six given by Frith Street Gallery, London. I feel world that often seems bereft of either. portraits. My interest in and engagement with the projects (four international and two Australian) privileged to have had the opportunity to work work continued to build. and eight publications to its credit. We have with one of Australia’s most inspirational June 2009 and the critically important commissioned work by world-renowned curators, Juliana Engberg. We look forward to Venice Biennale: Fiona Tan represented the dissident and increasingly beleaguered Chinese our new, important NAS partnership, and to Netherlands and the centrally placed Dutch artist Ai Weiwei, by India’s favoured Jitish working with Curator/Gallery Manager Katie Pavilion welcomed a continuous stream of Kallat and by Japan’s SANAA duo, whose Dyer and NAS Director Anita Taylor, and international visitors during the busy senior partner Kazuyo Sejima has recently been their students. Our newly minted SCAF/NAS vernissage. Marco Polo’s thirteenth century appointed Artistic Director of the 2010 Venice internship alliance and SCAFFOLD, our voyage from Europe (Venice) to China, then Biennale Architecture Exhibition. In their late start-up student membership programme, aim under the Mongols, and his subsequent twenties and early thirties respectively, to be both innovative and inclusive. We look diaries recording life in the Xanadu court of Taiwanese-born and Paris/New York-based forward to our continuing partnership with Kublai Khan, seem in retrospect a natural Charwei Tsai introduced us to a creative Margaret Throsby, whose artist interviews do subject for Fiona Tan’s Venice work. Intrepid practice steeped in Buddhism, and Indigenous so much to deepen and develop our mission, to voyaging, forays into totally unknown artist Jonathan Jones’s light-filled works welcoming Caroline Baum, whose task will be communities, exoticism coupled with sober signalled body markings, minimalist traditions to mesh literature and the visual arts in a commentary and unparalleled discoveries all and Aboriginal housing issues. A magical multiplicity of creative ways, and to greeting characterise Marco Polo’s extraordinary exhibition of Asian and Middle Eastern films many forum participants over the course of decades-long reach into the greatest and documentaries, in partnership with the the year. It is their insights and expertise that conglomerate empire of the medieval world. Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern flesh out our projects, bringing them to the Religious tolerance and intercultural curiosity Art (QAG/GOMA), drew the strands of attention of wider, less specialised audiences. allowed Marco (with his father and uncle) to SCAF’s mission together – commenting on To our partnering institutions past, present give and receive knowledge. They travelled current issues in our region and in central Asia, and upcoming – Campbelltown Arts Centre, from Jerusalem, encountering vastly differing expanding contemporary art definitions to QAG/GOMA, NAS and the Sydney Writers cultures and communities before overcoming include film, the privileged creative medium of Festival – we give special thanks. the inhospitable deserts of North Western our time, and grouping a number of significant, Thank you to our superb staff, General China and finally reaching the Mongolian known artists together with lesser known Manager Dolla Merrillees, Associate Director emperor’s summer court a short distance from practitioners in an exhibition that then travelled Amanda Henry and our wise and wonderful present-day Beijing. to Brisbane’s invigorating state art museum. adviser Anna Waldmann. These and a small
18 19 A Lapse of Memory
He feels lost within his various selves, his possible biographies. They trap him into a scenario which he does not want to live. This place can only serve him as a halfway hotel. Henry is waiting for a story he can make his home.
Patiently, Henry is waiting for a story which he can make his home. His forgetfulness is perhaps his greatest virtue. His journey is one yet to be taken.
21
Disorient
The neighbourhood produces silk in plenty, besides ginger, galingale, spikenard, and many other spices that never find their way to our part of the world. After leaving Ho-ching-fu the traveller rides westward for eight days, through a country full of towns and thriving commercial and industrial cities and fruitful gardens and fields. I must add that it is also full of mulberry trees, whose leaves are the food of the silkworms.
49
A Lapse of Memory trompe l’oeil effects andobjet exotique are the Infinite Crossroads props of an imaginary topography: a world within a world, within a world that does not exist Juliana Engberg In a restless sea perches a cage: an empty except as imagination and interpretation. Artistic Director skeletal form that permits the elements to pass Tan’s camera identifies the painted fronds Australian Centre for Contemporary Art through its blackish bars. It is a melancholy of palm trees that articulate the internal domes; relic, a mysterious folly of a thing. With its a fabulous gilt dragon holds a chandelier aloft; dome and rib arches it resembles the gilded carpets and ceilings are delivered as quasi- cages, shaped like palaces or temples, used to cosmological maps and charts; a Mandarin house domesticated birds. Beautiful jails. imp appears from out of a curtain; a Chinese If you have not been there you might not merchant propositions a maiden with the gift recognise that this is the shell of the western pier of pearls. Ziggurat, florette and geometric pleasure pavilion in Brighton, England. But patterns fill all visual space; no area is since I have, I do. Nevertheless, this is neither permitted to be open and clear. here, nor there, in the scheme of things. This Tan’s scrutiny reveals the palace interior as a ghost architecture, added to by bird sounds, the Leibnizian fold of place and space; a multiplicity waves and the strange tones of a musical of subjectivities, as suggested by Foucault and instrument, sets the mood and scene for Fiona Deleuze.1 An apt and evocative setting for a Tan’s A Lapse of Memory, 2007. The wrecked narrative that entwines the concepts of nomadism pavilion is a shanty ruin that alludes to a flimsy, and diaspora, and the intermezzo state she unaccountable and precarious nostalgia. requests of her character, in which he will perform Tan’s scene moves to the interior space of the his ritualised meanderings as he waits, as the Royal Pavilion, also in Brighton. We never see its narrator tells us, for a story he can call home. exterior extravagance: John Nash’s fantasia of There is an abundance of trompe l’oeil orientalist architecture that combines tent and artifice and the painted scenographies depict onion flourishes; a concoction of splendidly ornamental lakes, bird life, pagoda architecture. hybridised domes, minarets, balconies and Domestic oriental scenes and random filigrees pagodas that reference the Moghul palaces of and emblems pay attention to shadow and India and Byzantine basilicas. Tan’s story is not structure: fore, middle and far ground, and concerned with the hedonistic Regency of density. However, they are, in reality, flat as a George IV and his seaside trysts with his mistress- tack. These fictive oases provide no depth or wife Mrs Fitzherbert. Nor the forbidden-ness of real harbour for the traveller who must remain this liaison, which created the need for such a in a kind of narrative limbo. In seafarer’s pleasure-bubble architecture, born of imperial parlance, this place is the equivalent of the navigations and false tales. The specifically doldrums where boats, with the sails drooping, historical is not something that Tan pursues. In remain at the mercy of capricious equatorial fact, it is quite the opposite of her intent. winds and fateful, unplotted fits and starts. Dislodging the actual architecture from its The painted vignettes that offer views of interior by denying the exterior as she does, Tan far-flung destinations are paradoxically ultra- perhaps implies a phantasmic link; it is as if the interior spaces conjured by the mind. They are sentinel ghost pier has a visceral centre, a hidden decorative lacunae: blind spots that obliterate the tangibility. The interior space we encounter is possibility of real sight. Created in the Chinoiserie intricate and elaborately detailed, but didactically, fashion of faux orientalist motifs by a number of diagrammatically outlined rather than actually British and French artisans, they work against organic. It is a chimeric space. Decoration, individualisation by means of miniaturisation
77 and hybridisation. This over-elaborated interior Henry is Henry and he is his own world. He and we are informed before we see. All remains the National Museum of Vietnamese History in illustrates Foucault’s proposition of the inside as has feet with soles softly wrinkled like a unstable and quixotic, as it must be in a place Hanoi, Vietnam, where (prior to the United States a folded operation of the outside; a labyrinthine desert-scape. His aged arms have folds of skin that never was, and by definition of its own myth trade embargo being lifted in 1994) I saw and captivating place that disallows linear and weight. His skin is luminous, on the way to and metaphor never will be. The narrator makes nineteenth century wooden cabinets filled with the development and exterior movement. transparency, but resists disappearance. His us see things that are not there, and creates evidence of culture – a display indebted to the Tan’s character ‘Henry’ is not flat, but he is uniform of undergarments offers a gentle Henry, who is a character in the eccentric space French colonial taxonomy I suppose – and of the trapped in this smoothed and folded interior texture to his being. When he drums himself of topographical fiction – a gentle, yet pernicious Museum Fatahillah (Jakarta History Museum) in land. We discover him slowly like a terrain, and with clenched knuckles in preparation for Tai imperial space that implodes upon itself. Indonesia, where the Dutch embedded themselves then suddenly, as if he has been spirited into this Chi exercises, his body amplifies like a drum. He and their fetishisation of the Balinese. place from some other dimension. He stands in shuffles, grunts, breathes and flinches. Rubbing In Tan’s video fresco, everything is round, like front of a beautiful orientalist scene presented as his hands together, he makes sounds like Disorient the brass-bell rotund-ness of the Buddha’s belly: if in a theatrical proscenium arch. A vista of sandpaper against wood. the body of the decorated ceramic vases; the artifice. A parable space. Momentarily Henry Henry inhabits this interior as if it were a plump folds of the stone Ganesh; beads, bowls, appears disoriented and abandoned. Eventually ship. He is deck boy and captain of this vessel Another pavilion. This one unadorned and jars and reptilian coiled things. All are spherical, his body makes noise and his actions obtain a that buffets from shore to shore, bumping against simple. Modernist in temperament and style it textured and anti-flat. We pan through this kind of self-purpose. one improbable place to the next. He cleans the represents the utopian functionalism of Dutch assortment of things: bird cages (again); chests Henry reminds me of Foucault’s decking and rearranges the cabin. Using a architect Gerrit Rietveld, who hoped the plain of drawers; Indian idols; wooden textures, woven Renaissance ‘madman’ who sets out to sea and torchlight – an enlightenment tool – he seeks formalism of his buildings would advance fabrics, carpets; rich emblems made in dense finds himself ‘put in the interior of the exterior, knowledge in the red and yellow landscapes that openness, and a social learning between earth colours of red and terracotta. All a kind of and inversely … a prisoner in the midst of what offer vague accounts of places never visited. He structure and inhabitants; an architecture, he tropical, lush forest of cultural signs and things. is the freest, the openest of routes: bound fast at has a little suitcase and an umbrella: the eternal hoped, in which cognition and the senses would Except for the unexpected appearance of a the infinite crossroads. He is the Passengerpar accoutrements of the everyman traveller, the be enhanced and enabled by the lack of little ceramic group of figures. I think it’s Mao excellence: that is, the prisoner of the passage’.2 migrant and the outsider. He slips in and out of obstructive and reductive ornamental and his Children of the Revolution inside a bottle Even though he is likely an embodiment of wakefulness and slumber. He is a hapless fool eccentricity and bourgeois embellishment. or some sort of glass cabinet. They are shiny and imaginative personae like Sinbad, Ulysses, and a wise sage. He is a dispossessed and exiled This is Olanda, Holland, the Netherlands. colourful and not at all like a relic; more akin to a Foucault’s Renaissance sailor, or Coleridge’s monarch: a Lear, a mad King George, and an A small parcel of land, gravel and built nostalgic collectable. Now that I am alert to this ancient mariner – a stand-in for all fictional emperor without clothes. Henry is ensnared structure claimed on behalf of its culture in the visual intervention, other items seem less secure sojourners – Henry has a tangible corporeality, within these narratives and myths. Giardini, Venice, Italy, which was once a part in their historical, archaeological place. Television even if it is frail and ‘worn at the edges’, as the This palace-ship, steered by its improbable of Byzantium. The pavilion is a shell space in and computer monitors are also on shelves; narrator so beautifully suggests. Perhaps he is a crewman, takes on the tale of all voyages of which different things might dwell, briefly, reproduction furniture and collectable icons start body-double for Zheng He, the fourteenth discovery pre- and post-colonial. Henry travels during la Biennale di Venezia. I have come to to take on the surface of plastic and modern century explorer whose voyages, with Wang from East to West and then West to East. At Venice to view Fiona Tan’s Disorient, 2009. materials. They are given equal position in this Jinghong, encompassed ports in Southeast Asia, each destination he is foreign and other: pointed Tan presents two video works in Disorient. increasingly non-hierarchical accumulation of South Asia and East Africa, and have become at, feared. He breaks taboos. His actions have One is a nomadic account, the other a material cultural evidence. Some are there as multiples of known as ‘Eunuch Sanbao to the Western disastrous consequences. He is nostalgic for a gathering. Neither is like the flat, smooth-space multiples. Questions of authenticity are useless. Ocean’. Later in Tan’s narrative we are told that place he cannot remember and has never come lands we have previously encountered in the One might say all are as authentic as each other. Henry is Ang Lee, a Chinese traveller who from. He repeats this ritual journey ad infinitum: Chinoiserie concoctions of Henry’s world in As if like an object, a male figure ventures to the new world of the West where he his story never ending because he must remain A Lapse of Memory. In this instance the images dressed somewhat like a Buddhist monk encounters red hair and long noses. But Ang Lee without a final destination. But he has a destiny, that play on the walls are totally different to the – ubiquitously attired in the orange is a Taiwanese filmmaker responsible for such and that is that he is required to remain blank illusions that deflect Henry and leave him clothing that has made this religious order diverse cinematic hits as Sense and Sensibility, ontologically homeless. His voyage leaves a abandoned in a no-home place, consigning him such a favourite with photographers who Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, phosphorescent trail picked out in lights that to a perpetual coming-into-being state. love colourful regimentations and lines Hidden Dragon. Perhaps I misheard ‘Eng Lee’, follow in his wake: fragile and ephemeral. The first seems almost museological. Artefacts of people in robes with umbrellas – lies and perhaps Henry is, like the Chinoiserie that The narrator’s story, too, slips in and out of have been gathered and assembled en masse like napping in a corner. The television monitor surrounds him, lost in translation. sequence. We witness before we are informed an endless cabinet of curiosities. It reminds me of plays a film of Chinese boats punting
78 79 along another grand canal. The bridge and albatross in its air, and dips and rises with the People were murdered for the camera: and some thirty years I have been visiting this city. I am looks similar to the numerous Venetian waves and wind that push boats through the sea. photographers and television camera crew always struck by the evidence that one is more arches, but is taller, more steeped. The In ways, it reminds me of the narrator in Chris departed without taking a picture in the hope that polished and shiny than its twin because it is film is early twentieth century, I guess. Marker’s 1983 filmSans Soleil. It recalls Henry. in the absence of cameramen acts might not be used: it is the one twisted during each entry and I cannot help but think of Jorge Luis The voice settles in the images of the second committed. Others felt that the mob was beyond closure. Other doorknobs demonstrate the Borges, to whom Foucault refers in the video, even while it appears to also narrate the appeal to mercy. They stayed and won Pulitzer persistence of orientalist designs – florette, introduction to his Order of Things: wunderkammer of objects in the first. This video prizes. Were they right?4 ziggurat and geometric patterns – utilitarian moves between the smooth and striated space and incidental objects that hold a history of This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, described by Deleuze. The narrator’s voice is I did not mean to stray down that path, but geopolitical flux and imperial control. Venice is out of the laughter that shattered, as I read even, formulaic. His words, abbreviated from the there it was, hidden in a travelogue that appeared a patina of such ornamentalism. the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my texts of Venetian explorer Marco Polo, catalogue smooth enough but now seems riddled with all En route I eat a croissant that the people at thought – our thought, the thought that bears the people and places in a steady, predictable list: kinds of punctums. Ruptures now seem Bar da Gino call a brioche, and which the people stamp of our age and our geography – breaking religion, trade, customs, appearance. The same inevitable. For instance, the jog of memory that at Brunetti’s in Melbourne call a cornetto. Some up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes kind of information now catalogued by the CIA occurs when I see that the girl who stares out at say it was invented by a chef by the name of with which we are accustomed to tame the wild and its database. The colour of the video has been the camera bears an uncanny resemblance to the August Zang in Vienna; others claim it was profusion of existing things, and continuing long calibrated to resemble the saturations of National ‘Young Afghan Girl’ famously photographed by created much earlier to celebrate the European afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse Geographic magazine photo-journalism. Even Steve McCurry in 1984; a photograph named defeat of a Muslim invasion at the Battle of Tours our age-old distinction between the Same though Tan’s images are contemporary, they have one of the most recognisable cover images of by the Franks in 732, the shape of the croissant and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain the hue of historical document. National Geographic magazine. In Tan’s video representing the Islamic crescent. Before I board Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that The traveller lists his ports – Armenia, she appears twice: in the market, and at the the vaporetto I pass the Senegalese street vendors, ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Madagascar, Cathay, Japan and others – and scene of seizure in which a man is led away, also known colloquially as the vu compra, who Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling ticks off his inventory of facts. All the while, the presumably to his execution. peddle knock-off designer bags, belts and pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, camera films terrain, faces, crowds and activity in Suddenly – disjunctively – the image of the artefacts – the Prada brand in particular. (h) included in the present classification, (i) a smooth taxonomy of Other. Faces stare back Dutch Pavilion comes into view. Carefully I travel over water and this reminds me of frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very at the intrusive gaze of the camera. Where once dispersed short scenes show the dismantling of the Tan’s opening shot in A Lapse of Memory. fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having we were led to believe that the averting of eyes film set, subtly revealing that thewunderkammer Travelling in Venice always reminds me, too, just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a was based on superstition or modesty, we must was filmed in the pavilion itself. The artefacts from of Visconti’s Death in Venice, and the music of long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment now believe this steady returned gaze is a refusal the previous video are assembled on its porch and Mahler. There are many cultural of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one to participate passively in this ethnic cataloguing. inside its white, modernist, open space. Cardboard constructions of place, and this is one of great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, Along with the disembodied voice we boxes that have housed the modern reproductions them. Gondolas glide by. Later I will be is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another become one with the eye of the camera, of Buddhas and orientalist bric-a-brac are piled surprised to have not registered the similarity system of thought, is the limitation of our own, which passes through clouds and travels over up, waiting for re-filling perhaps, or just unpacked. of Venetian gondolas and Chinese canal the stark impossibility of thinking that.3 mountain ranges to deliver us to scenes in which A small model of the Dutch Pavilion occupies vessels. It seems obvious once you think about truck carcasses are carried over rocky ranges, space on a wooden shelf. Perhaps we are mistaken it. Just as when you think of Italian spaghetti Of course, I also think of Foucault. This video women pray at a wall, opium poppies bob in the but we can imagine, from a previous minute of and Chinese noodles, yum cha and ravioli. of artefact and archive is filled with depth and wind and are then harvested, fireworks explode. footage, that it has been recently manufactured in layers, recessed spaces and complicated tunnels. Firecrackers or bombs – I hesitate, in my mind, a reproduction furniture workshop in Asia. The This multiplicity of representations implies the to confirm which. glance of the little pavilion reminds us that we are Endnotes sedimentary archaeology of cultural formations. We travel through marketplaces that take on in a space within a space, within a place that is 1. See Gilles Deleuze, Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, University of A voice murmurs in the space. Well the appearance of military occupations: an part of the construction of culture. The voice Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1992. 2. Quoted in Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, Continuum (Athlone Press), modulated, worldly: world weary in cadence. execution might take place. Surely this is not trails on: cataloguing, generalising; never quite London and New York, 1988, p. 81. A British accent; cultivated, but not aristocratic; enacted for the camera as a journalistic stunt. touching its subject. 3. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Vintage Books, New York, 1994, p. xv. imperial, yet not imperious. It fills space. The The role of the outsider as witness is undoubtedly Upon leaving the Giardini, I pass iron gates 4. Harold Evans, quoted in Sarah Charlesworth and Barbara Kruger, sound of the voice washes the room; it rolls like a compromised. I remember reading a quote by with doorknobs fashioned as turbaned heads of ‘Glossolaia’ in The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960–1982, exhibition catalogue, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, tide around the walls. The voice carries seagulls Harold Evans, the journalist: Moors. I have noticed these many times over the 2004, p. 259 (originally published in Bomb, no. 5, spring, 1983).
80 81 Appendix
83 Image Credits A Lapse of Memory, 2007 Disorient, 2009
Pages 20–31: Production stills, Royal Pavilion, Brighton Pages 48–65: Production stills, Dutch Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale Photography: Fiona Tan Photography: Per Kristiansen, Stockholm Pages 2–5; 32–43: Video stills Pages 6–9; 66–71: Video stills Cover and pages 44–45: Installation views, Royal Institute of British Cover and pages 72–73: Installation views, Dutch Pavilion, Architects, London 53rd Venice Biennale Photography: Alex Delfanne, London Photography: Per Kristiansen, Stockholm All works and images courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London All works and images courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London
Production Credits HD installation, colour, 5:1 surround HD-cam safety master, HD HD installation, colour, 5:1 surround 2 HD-cam safety masters, 2 HD projector, hard disc player, surround amplifier, surround speakers, projectors, 2 computers, 2 surround amplifiers, surround speakers, loop duration 24 mins duration screen A 17 mins, screen B 21 mins Filmed on location at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. Filmed on location in the Dutch Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale. Funded by Arts Council England, South East; Frith Street Gallery, Commissioned by the Mondriaan Foundation for the Dutch Pavilion, London; Netherlands Film Funds; Mondriaan Foundation; 53rd Venice Biennale. Brighton & Hove Arts Commission. Funded by the Mondriaan Foundation and Frith Street Gallery, London.
Cast and crew Cast and crew
Cast: Henry Johan Leysen Cast: Marco Polo Francesco Grigoletto Written and Directed by Fiona Tan Voice-over spoken by Michael Maloney Production Manager Jaap van Hoewijk Voice-over excerpts from Marco Polo’s The Travels, 1298/9 Director of Photography Stef Tijdink Concept and Direction Fiona Tan Edited by Fiona Tan Director of Photography Stef Tijdink Art Direction Camilla Robinson Art Direction Vincent de Pater Sound Engineer Tom d’Angremond Edited by Mario Steenbergen, Fiona Tan Sound Design Hugo Dijkstal Sound Design Hugo Dijkstal Gaffer, Grip Dirk Nijland Camera Assistant Steven van Beek Camera Assistant Jacques Ghijsels Grip Daan Dillo Production Assistant Mufidah Kassalias Gaffer Maarten Rijnbeek Music Richard Deutsch Best Boy Oscar van Rijn Film Lab Soho Images, London; Cineco, Amsterdam Props Elsa Oskam Film Transfer Valkieser, Amsterdam Set Dresser Mark Hammel Produced by Fiona Tan Art Direction Administration Wilma Scheumie Set Construction Albert Kuipers With thanks to Mario Steenbergen, Peter Delpeut, Albert Elings, Gilane Artist’s Assistants Camilla Robinson, Nina Yuen Tawadros, John Gill, Jane Hamlyn, Charlotte Schepke, George Windsor, Archive Researchers Gerard Nijssen, Marty de Jong, Fiona Tan Soen Houw and Lesley Tan, Marry Knol, Ruben and Niels Dijkstal, Archival Material AP, Nova, NOS Journaal, VPRO, IKON, RVU, Royal Pavilion, Museums & Libraries, Brighton & Hove City Council, Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum, Nederlands Filmmuseum Brighton Photo Biennial 2006, South East Film & Video Archive Set Photography Per Kristiansen Producers Floor Onrust, Sanna Fabery deJonge, Family Affair Films Production Manager Noortje Wilschut Production Assistant, Venice Ankie Schellekens Camera Camera Rentals, Amsterdam Lighting Rental & More, Venice Postproduction AVP, Amstelveen Supported by Juist Just
With thanks to Rob Birza, Marente Bloemheuvel, Saskia Bos, Danniel Danniel, Dag Erik Elgin, Goert Giltay, Joost de Haas, Kees Hin, Marita Jonsson, Johan Pousette, Ine Legerstee and Rob Docter (Stichting Rietveld Paviljoen), Joep Munstermann and Robert Clarijs (Anything is possible), Ronny Temme (Nederlands Filmmuseum), Tom Kleijn (Nova), Wouter Zwart (Nos Journaal)
85 Artist Biography 2004 Cinéma du réel, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France Correction, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Cinema sim, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil US; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, US Dome, Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art, Hiroshima, Japan (2005); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US (2005) Échelle d’Attitudes, Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne, France Recent Works, IASPIS Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden Éclats de frontières – Recent Acquisitions, FRAC, Marseille, France Fiona Tan, Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, Japan Greenwashing, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy 1966 Images Narratives/Narrative Images, Centre Régional de Photographie Born in Pekan Baru, Indonesia 2003 Nord Pas-de-Calais, Douchy-les-Mines, France New and Recent Works, Frith Street Gallery, London, UK Geschlossene Gesellschaft, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 1988–92 Berlin, Germany Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 2002 Inaugural Exhibition, Inelcom Collection, Madrid, Spain Fiona Tan – Akte 1, Villa Arson Nice, Centre National d’Art Peripheral Vision and Collective Body (inaugural exhibition), 1996−97 Contemporain, Nice, France; De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Museion, Bolzano, Italy Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunst, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Art, Tilburg, the Netherlands (2003); Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Prospect.1, New Orleans Biennial, multiple venues, New Orleans, US Germany (2003) 15 Years/Part III, Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, Japan Lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands Self and Other: Portraits from Asia and Europe, National Museum 2001 of Ethnology, Osaka; National Museum of Art, Osaka; Asian Film and Video Works, Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, Japan Art Museum, Fukuoka; The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama; Matrix 144, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Prefectural Museum of Cultural History, Kanagawa, Japan Connecticut, US Os Trópicos/The Tropics, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Solo Exhibitions May You Live in Interesting Times, Galerie der Hochschule für Janeiro, Brazil; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany; National Gestaltung und Kunst, Luzern, Switzerland Gallery of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa 2010 Rain, Galerie Elisabeth Kaufmann, Zürich, Switzerland Fiona Tan: Rise and Fall, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland; Recent Works, Galerie Michel Rein, Paris, France 2007 Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (forthcoming); Cine y Casi Cine 2007, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, Spain Freer & Sackler Galleries, Washington DC, US (forthcoming) 2000 Contour. Continuïteit, Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, the Netherlands Fiona Tan: Coming Home, Sherman Contemporary Carwreck Cinema, Aussendienst, Hamburg, Germany Culture hors-sol, BAC (Bâtiment d’art contemporain), Art Foundation and National Art School Gallery, Sydney, Australia Lift, Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Geneva, Switzerland Disorient and Other Works, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Scenario, Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 07, Photographer’s Gallery, London, Arnhem, the Netherlands (forthcoming) Linnaeus’ Flower Clock, Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Italy UK; C/O Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Neue Börse, Frankfurt, Germany Frith Street Gallery, London (forthcoming) Extensions video – corps et figures, Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, Peter Freeman Inc., New York (forthcoming) 1999 Amiens, France Cradle, Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Global Multitude, Rotonde 1, Luxembourg 2009 Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror, De Begane Grond, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands Disorient – Fiona Tan, Dutch Pavilion, 53rd International Utrecht, the Netherlands Livet en dröm, Stockholms Kulturfestival, Stockholm, Sweden Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia Roll I & II, De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Art, Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, Galerie nationale Tilburg, the Netherlands du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France 2008 Smoke Screen, De Balie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands The Screen Eye or The New Image/L’Oeil-écran ou la nouvelle image, Provenance, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg; Countenance, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, 1998 National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania Massachusetts, US J.C. van Lanschot Prijs, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Vetítés, The Projection Project, Mücsarnok, Budapest, Hungary Fiona Tan, Chapelle du Genêteil Centre d’Art Contemporain Ghent, Belgium – Le Carré Scène Nationale, Château-Gontier, France Linneaus’ Flower Clock, Stedelijk Museum Het Domein, 2006 Island, Map Birger Jarlsgatan, Stockholm, Sweden Sittard, the Netherlands 15th Biennale of Sydney: Zones of Contact, multiple venues, Sydney, Australia 2007 Brighton Photography Biennial, Royal Pavilion Gardens, Brighton, UK A Lapse of Memory, Royal Institute of British Architects, London, UK Eine Frage (nach) der Geste, Opera House, Leipzig, Germany New from the Near Future, Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, Japan Home Productions, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore 80 Tage, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany Selected Group Exhibitions D’ombra/The Shadow, Palazzo delle Papesse Centro Arte Time and Again, Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden Contemporanea, Siena, Italy; Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro, Nuoro, 2010 Italy (2007); Compton Verney House, Warwickshire, UK (2007) 2006 Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, Tokyo The Projection Project, Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Fiona Tan, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, Canada Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan Antwerp, Belgium Mirror Maker, Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark; Artist Rooms, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK Touch My Shadows: New Media Works from the Goetz Collection, Landesgalerie, Linz, Austria; Kunstmuseum, Bergen, Norway; Pori Art Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Glasgow, UK Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland Museum, Pori, Finland (2007) Jeux de rôles, Domaine de la Garenne Lemot, Gétigné, France Work Groups and Installations, Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum für Short Voyages, Frith Street Gallery, London, UK Yesterday Will Be Better, Argauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil 2005 2005 Countenance, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK 2009 Art Today Japan, The 8th Nippon International Contemporary Fiona Tan, Baltic Art Center, Visby, Sweden Art Unlimited, Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland Art Festival, Tokyo, International Forum, Tokyo, Japan Fiona Tan, Saint Sebastian, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Art Unlimited, Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland Montréal, Canada 2008 The Gravity in Art, De Appel, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Saint Sebastian, Anna Schwartz Gallery (Melbourne International Be(com)ing Dutch, Van Abbemuseum, Eidenhoven, the Netherlands Indeterminate States, video from the Cisneros Fontanals Arts Festival), Melbourne, Australia Breeze, Gallery Nelson Freeman, Paris, France Art Foundation, Miami, US
87 Recent Acquisitions, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, 2001 Rineke Dijkstra, Tracey Moffatt, Fiona Tan, S.M.A.K., Selected Collections Kanazawa, Japan Art Unlimited, Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland Ghent, Belgium Nuit Blanche, multiple venues, Paris, France 2nd Berlin Biennale, multiple venues, Berlin, Germany Scope, Artist Space, New York, US 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan Ocean 1212-W, Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Italy Endtroducing, Villa Arson, Nice, France Unlimited.nl, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Bergen Kunstmuseum, Bergen, Norway Oeuvre politique et politique de l’oevre, Institut Français, Enduring Love, Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc., New York, US Sporen van wetenschap in kunst/Traces of Science in Art, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France Casablanca, Morocco Futureland, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Het Trippenhuis KNAW, Amsterdam, the Netherlands De Pont Museum for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, the Netherlands Respect! Forms of community/Formes de cohabitation, Germany; Bommel van Dam, Venlo, the Netherlands 16th World Wide Video Festival, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt, Germany Musée Dar Si Saïd, Marrakech Mobile Walls – Recent Acquisitions, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Don Rubell Family Collection, Miami, US Screen Tests, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, the Netherlands Rotterdam, the Netherlands Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Miami, US Shadow Play, Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark; My Generation, Atlantis Gallery/The Old Truman Brewery, London, UK 1997 Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany; Landesgalerie Linz, Linz, Austria Nuove Scene dall’Olanda, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy Cities on the Move, Wiener Secession, Vienna, Austria; PS1 Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, France Sujeto, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Léon, Léon, Spain Recent Acquisitions, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Contemporary Art, New York, US (1998); CAPC Musée d’Art FRAC (Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain) Lorraine, Metz, France Videocreación contemporánea, Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Amsterdam, the Netherlands Contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France (1998); Hayward FRAC (Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain) Provence-Alpes-Côte Sculpture Contemporaine, Institut d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France Gallery, London, UK (1999); Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, d’Azur, Marseille, France 2004 49th Venice Biennale: Plateau of Humankind, Venice, Italy Denmark (1999); Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, FRAC (Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain) Rhône-Alpes, Artes Mundi: Wales International Visual Art Prize, National Yokohama 2001: Mega Wave – Towards a New Synthesis, International Finland (1999) Villeurbanne, France Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff, UK Triennale of Contemporary Art, Yokohama, Japan 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, multiple venues, Johannesburg, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands Epifyten, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, the Netherlands South Africa Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, the Netherlands ev+a 2004, Imagine Limerick, Limerick, Ireland 2000 The Second Time-Based Art from the Netherlands, Stedelijk Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US Time Zones: Recent Film and Video, Tate Modern, London, UK Art Unlimited, Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Museo Del Inelcom Collection, Madrid, Spain +Witness, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia Aussendienst, Phase 1, multiple venues, Hamburg, Germany Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico; Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France Memorials of Identity – New Media from the Rubell Family Collection, Bloemen van de Nieuwe Tijd, Noordbrabants Museum, InterCommunication Center, Tokyo, Japan Museion – Museum of Contemporary Art, Bolzano, Italy The Art Gallery at Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, US; ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain Rubell Family Collection, Miami, US; The Corcoran Gallery of Art Cinema Without Walls, Musuem Boijmans van Beuningen, 1996 Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands & College of Art + Design, Washington, US (2005); Museo de Arte Rotterdam, the Netherlands hARTware – Medienkunst aus den Niederlanden, Künsterlhaus, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, US de Puerto Rico Santurce, Puerto Rico, US (2006); Nasher Museum Etat des lieux # 2, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Fribourg, Switzerland Dortmund, Germany National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan of Art at Duke University Durham, US (2006); Haifa Museum of Et l’art se met au monde, Institute d’Art Contemporain, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany Art, Haifa, Israel (2007) Villeurbanne, France 1995 New Museum, New York, US Everything needs time …, St. Michael’s Church/Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Arslab – I sensi del Virtuale, Palazzo delle Belle Arti, Turin, Italy Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany 2003 Honiton, UK; Spacex Gallery, Exeter, UK Beyond the Bridge, Nederlands Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Rabobank Nederland, Utrecht, the Netherlands About Land, Sea and Faces, Erasmus House, Jakarta, Indonesia Exploding Cinema, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, the Netherlands Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany Appel à témoins, Le Quartier, Centre d’art contemporaine de Quimper, Rotterdam, the Netherlands Triple X ’95, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Schaulager, Basel, Switzerland Quimper, France Finsternis/Finsterre, Palazzo delle Pappesse, Siena, Italy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Contour, multiple venues, Mechelen, Belgium
88 89 Selected Bibliography 2003 2009 Bronwasser, S., ‘Do not try to draw the bow with your arms. Boecker, S., ‘Fiona Tan: Frage Nach dem Anderen’, Kunstforum Draw it with your heart’ in Home and Away, Vancouver Art Gallery, International, no. 198, August–September Vancouver, Canada Buhr, E., ‘Gehen und sehen: Die Pavilions – Niederlande, Fiona Tan’, Cooke, L., ‘Thin Cities’ in Synopsis III, National Museum of Monopol, June Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece Darley, E., ‘Nederland – Fiona Tan’, Kunstbeeld, no. 6 Books Süto, W. (ed.), Shine, Wensdroom en toekomstvisioen in de hedendaagse Delfos, P., ‘Fiona Tan’, L’uomo Vogue, May–June kunst, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam / NAi Uitgevers, Higgie, J.,‘Questionnaire Fiona Tan’, Frieze, issue 123, May Comer, S. (ed.), Film and Video Art, Tate Publishing, London, UK, 2009 Rotterdam, the Netherlands Kimmelman, M., ‘Small world crammed on Biennale’s grand stage’, Connarty, J. & Lanyon, J. (eds), Ghosting: The Role of the Archive within Volk, G., ‘Fiona Tan’ in Strangers: The First ICP Triennial of New York Times, 10 June Contemporary Artists’ Films and Video, Picture This, Bristol, UK, 2006 Photography and Video, International Center of Photography, New York, Lange, H. de, ‘Net als Marco Polo’, Trouw, 8 June Grosenick, U. & Riemschneider, B. (eds), Art Now, Taschen, US / Steidl Publishers, Göttingen, Germany Luke, B., ‘Venice Biennale’, Art World, August Cologne, Germany, 2002 MacAdam, B.A., ‘53rd Venice Biennale’, ARTnews, vol. 108, no. 7 Phaidon Press Editors, Cream: Contemporary Art in Culture, 2002 ‘Review: Fiona Tan – Disorient. Interview transcript: conversation with Phaidon Press, London, UK, 1998 Bismarck, B. von & Hoek, E., Fiona Tan: Akte 1, De Pont Foundation Fiona Tan & Saskia Bos’, Re-title.com: International Contemporary Art, Monk, P., Disassembling the Archive: Fiona Tan, Art Gallery of York for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, the Netherlands autumn/winter University, Toronto, Canada (distributed by Art Publishers Inc., Fietzek, G. (ed.), Documenta11_Platform 5: Exhibition, Hatje Cantz, Smallenburg, S., ‘Marco Polo as a tour guide at the Venice Biennale’, New York, US), 2006 Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany NRC Handelsblad, 5 June Tan, F., Provenance, artist’s book, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Seijdel, J., ‘Car wreck cinema, Über Autos, Unfälle und Zeitreisen Tuijn, E. van, ‘Nederland Fiona Tan’, Metropolis M, no. 3, June–July the Netherlands, 2008 in einem Projekt von Fiona Tan’ in Aussendienst, Kunstprojekte in Tan, F., Fiona Tan: Vox Populi, Norway, artist’s book, Book Works, öffentlichen Raümen Hamburgs, Modo Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau, 2008 London, UK, 2006 Germany Bezzan, C., ‘Fiona Tan’, Art Press, no. 348, September Tan, F., Fiona Tan: Vox Populi, Sydney, artist’s book, Book Works, De Rutter, M., ‘Half a man in a halfway hotel’, Amsterdam Weekly, London, UK, 2006 2001 27 March – 2 April Tan, F., Fiona Tan: Vox Populi, Tokyo, artist’s book, Book Works, Cooke, L., ‘Fiona Tan 1966’ in Szeemann, H. (ed.), 49. Esposizione Hochleitner, M., ‘Wir tragen alle Bilder in uns’, Kunst und Kirche, 01/2008 London, UK, 2007 Internationale d’ Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Platea dell’ umanita, Lamoree, J., ‘Een echo van de zeventiende eeuw’, Het Parool, 27 August Tan, F., Marebito, artist’s book, limited edition (500), signed and Electa, Milano, Italy Sergent, D. Le, ‘Fiona Tan’, 02 Revue D’Art Contemporain, no. 46 numbered by the artist, Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, Japan, 2001 Fletcher, A., ‘Fiona Tan: a conversation between Fiona Tan and Annie Simons, R., ‘Top-100 van Nederlandse kunstenaars’, Elsevier 64, Fletcher’ in Berlin Biennale 2, Oktagon, Cologne, Germany no. 19, 10 May Rollig, S., ‘Hers, “Video als weibliches Terrain”’ in Steirischer Herbst, Smith, R., ‘Kaleidoscopic biennial for a scarred city’, New York Times, Landesmuseum Johanneum, Graz, Austria 4 November Shiner, E.C., ‘Fiona Tan’s “Saint Sebastian”: archers of the new age’ in Vries, M. de, ‘Liever geen meesterwerken’, De Volkskrant, 21 August Exhibition Catalogues International Triennale of Contemporary Art, Yokohama, Japan 2007 2010 2000 B.W., ‘Welten-Wandern, Pinakothek der Moderne: Fiona Tan’, TZ, Grenville, B. et al., Rise and Fall / Fiona Tan, Vancouver Art Gallery, Berg, M. van den (ed.), Fiona Tan: Scenario, vandenberg&wallroth in 28 September Vancouver, Canada, and Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland cooperation with NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, the Netherlands Beyfus, D., ‘Identity parade’, Telegraph Magazine (UK), 20 January Bos, S., ‘Fiona Tan’ in Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, ‘Fiona Tan: 80 Days’, Zoom, November–December 2009 Shanghai, China Hellweg, C., ‘Toekomstbeelden’, Museumtijdschrift 20, no. 1, Bloemheuvel, M. (ed.), Fiona Tan, Disorient, 53rd International January–February Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 1999 Hohmann, S., ‘Sterben, lachen, weinen: Fiona Tans National – Germany Berg, M. van den & T. Wallroth, ‘Fiona Tan’ in Zug (Luft), Museum psychogramme in München’, Monopol, December Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany Kwakkenbos, L., ‘Als film kunst wordt’,De Standaard, 15 January 2007 Montigny, B., ‘Visar hur tid och rum förändras’, Skånska Dagbladet, Kreuger, A. & Nacking, A., Time and Again, Lunds Konsthall, Lund, 1998 4 December Sweden Borg, L. ter, ‘Fiona Tan, Linneaus’ Flower Clock’ in Beeren, W. & Schmidt, M., ‘Mensch, Zeit und Raum’, SZ Extra, 20–26 September Roessink, M. (eds), Traces of Science in Art, KNAW, Amsterdam, the Sinnayah, S., ‘Fiona Tan: notes from the near future’, Japan Times, 19 April 2006 Netherlands Elgin, D. E., Hochleitner, M. & Sadowsky, T., Fiona Tan: Mirror Maker, Dercon, C., ‘Fiona Tan’ in The Choice of the Experts: 11 Museum 2006 Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany Directors Choose a Young Artist, International Press Centre Cumming, L., ‘As exciting as daytime TV’, The Observer, 3 September Nieuwspoort, The Hague, the Netherlands Field, M., ‘Films for people who don’t like video art’, 2005 The Independent, 1 October Cotter, S. (ed.), Fiona Tan: Countenance, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, 1997 ‘Fiona Tan retrospective’, Eye, 26 January UK Seijdel, J., ‘Fiona Tan’ in The Second Time-Based Art from the Richter, M., ‘Fiona Tan: Mirror Maker’, Camera Austria, no. 96 Fletcher, A. & Pousette, J., Fiona Tan, Baltic Art Center, Visby, Sweden Netherlands, Montevideo/Time-Based Art, the Netherlands Media Art ‘Streifzüge durch die Werke von Fiona Tan’, Tips, 8 August Landry, P., Fiona Tan, Saint Sebastian, Musée d’ Art Contemporain, Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Montréal, Canada 2005 Dykstra, J., ‘Fiona Tan at the New Museum of Contemporary Art’, 2004 Art in America, November Bonami, F. et al., Fiona Tan: Correction, Museum of Contemporary Falconer, M., ‘Contemporary art London’, The Burlington Magazine, Art, Chicago, US Articles and Reviews February Baume, N., ‘Fiona Tan: Towards the Negative Mirror’ in +Witness, Gefter, P., ‘Is that portrait staring at me?’, New York Times, 10 April Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia 2010 Glover, M., ‘The truth about human nature’, The Independent, 15 April Morgan, J. & Muir G., Time Zones: Recent Film and Video, Tate Schweighöfer, K., ‘Reisende zwischen den Welten’, Art – das Gregos, K., ‘Moving images at the edge of the real’, Contemporary, no. 71 Publishing, London, UK Kunstmagazin, February Honigman, A. 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91 Noordegraaf, J., ‘Indië in de achteruitkijkspiegel’, Jong Holland 21, no. 4 Müller, S., ‘Energie geben statt provozieren’, ART das Kunstmagazin, April Quaroni, I., ‘Ocean 1212-W – Raffaella Cortese’,Flash Art, Rosenberg, A., ‘Berlin Biennial’, Flash Art, no. 221, July–September no. 252, June–July Wulffen, T., ‘Biennale Venedig – Plateau der Menschheit’,Kunstforum Searle, A., ‘Who are you?’, The Guardian, 12 April International, no. 156, August–October Simmons, L., ‘Are you looking at me?’, The Observer, 10 April 2000 2004 Borg, L. ter, ‘Met rode ballonnen de hemel tegemoet’, De Volkskrant, Bale, I., ‘Artes Mundi, the New Wales International Art Prize’, 27 September Planet, February Jahn, W., ‘Auf der Suche nach Authentizität’, Hamburger Abendblatt, 17 April Clewing, U., ‘Zog der Ungewissheit’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 14 January Lemke, C., ‘Fiona Tan: “Scenario” im Rahmen der reihe Fisher, L. ‘Screen Gems’, Time, 20 December “Ichmaschine’’’, Springerin, February Hawkins, M., ‘Outsider’s inmate prison videos challenge our Monshouwer, S., ‘Een kinderdroom’, Kunstbeeld, September assumptions’, Chicago Sun-Times, 22 October Prins, W., ‘Fiona Tan: Scenario’, Kunstblad, no. 3, December Herbstreuth, P., ‘Review – Fiona Tan: Akademie der Künste’, Schiff, H., ‘Weltbürgeridentität gesucht’,Taz Hamburg, 14 April Flash Art, no. 235, March–April Stecker, R., ‘Fiona Tan im Kunstverein’, Kunst-Bulletin, June Orrghen, A., ‘Tan utforskar relationen mellan rörelse och tid’, Van Elsberg, J., ‘Fiona Tan: duizendpoot met vele gezichten’, Skrien, Svenska Dagbladet, 24 April no. 232, November Searle, A., ‘A very brief history of time’, The Guardian, 7 October Sperlinger, M., ‘Time Zones’, Art Monthly, no. 282, December–January 1999 Wahjudi, C., ‘Fiona Tan – ‘Akte 1’, Kunstforum International, Dorment, R., ‘It’s not art – it’s agitprop’, Daily Telegraph (UK), 28 April no. 169, March–April Hagoort, E., ‘Trance en extase bij lieve attracties’, De Volkskrant, 4 December Herst, D., ‘Fiona Tan’, Creative Camera, no. 360, October–November 2003 Moukhtar, E., ‘Smoke Screen; Tussen beeld en blik’, Skrien, no. 236 Alphen, E. van, ‘Beelden schieten, schaduwen werpen – over Fiona Tan’, Schumacher, R., ‘Weemoedige guirlande. Fiona Tan’, Het Parool, 29 April De Witte Raaf, March–April Steevensz, B., ‘Het absolute bestaat niet’, Metropolis M, January Bokern, A., ‘Shine’, Kunstforum International, no. 165, June–July Süto, W., ‘Mijn tong is niet mijn beste vriend’, De Volkskrant, 16 April Dan, C., ‘Natürlich – Holland’, Springerin, December Westen, M., ‘De bewegende beelden van Fiona Tan’, Lover, no. 1, January ‘Fiona Tan’, De Volkskrant, 22 January Hartog Jager, H. den, ‘Het spiegelpaleis’, NRC Handelsblad, 14 February 1998 Heingartner, D., ‘Reviews: Fiona Tan’, Frieze, issue 75, May Bos, S., ‘Framing is a choice’, J.C. van Lanschot Prize 1998, Keijer, K., ‘Vreemdeling van Beroep’, Vitrine, January exhibition leaflet, S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium Meizner, C., ‘Bäcker, Künstler, Ofensetzer’, Berliner Morgenpost, Didier, M., ‘De tijd vangen’, De Groene Amsterdammer, 16 September 28 December Groot, P., ‘Nederland speciaal’, Metropolis M, March Menin, S. and Sansone, V., ‘Focus video and film’,Flash Art, no. 229, Lamoree, J., ‘Denken doet wonderen’, Het Parool, 25 July March–April Mooij, T., ‘De poëzie van een lome schilpad’, De Filmkrant, May Müller, K.B., ‘Treffsicher wie ein Pfeil’,Die Tageszeitung, 27 December Roelandt, E., ‘Rokende baby’s en “ravened” jongeren’, De Morgen, 30 March Roelandt, E., ‘Zuiver observeren, gekleurd interpreteren’, Financieel- Sierksma, P., ‘Wim Beeren en het trage geluid van opspattend water’, Economische Tijd, February Trouw, 6 August Velde, P. van de, ‘Fiona Tan verlangt niet meer naar heimwee’, De Smallenburg, S., ‘Fiona Tan vat herinneringen in video’, Telegraaf, 31 January NRC Handelsblad, 16 September
2002 1997 Belley, A., ‘International Triennial of Contemporary Art, Yokohama Bloemkolk, J., ‘Op zoek naar de familie Tan’, Het Parool, 25 July 2001’, Para-Para supplement, no. 6, Parachute, no. 106 Krikke, H., ‘Cultuur is een gevangenis in een paleis – Fiona Tan worstelt Carels, E., ‘Photographer unknown’, A Prior, no. 8, September met haar Chinese wortels’, Contrast, no. 31, 9 October Carrayrou, S., ‘Fiona Tan: des images qui respirent’, Art Press, no. 280, June Lammers, F., ‘Een huwelijk van culturen’, Trouw, 23 July Jonkers, G., ‘Op zoek naar de wrijving in elk werk afzonderlijk’, Linssen, D., ‘Interessante tijden’, NRC Handelsblad, 25 July De Volkskrant, 7 August Linthorst, G., ‘Indrukwekkend portret van Chinese familie’, ‘Menschen des 21. Jahrhunderts’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 31 December De Volkskrant, 26 July Phillips, C., ‘Crosscurrents in Yokohama’, Art in America, January Schwartz, I., ‘Time stretcher laat lijf golven’, De Volkskrant, 9 April Reitsma, E., ‘De minidrama’s van Fiona Tan’, Vrij Nederland, 31 August Van Hal, M., ‘Time based art’, Wave, January Wiarda, A., ‘Seeing, observing, thinking’, A Prior, no. 8, September 1996 2001 Beerekamp, H., ‘De Brug’, NRC Handelsblad, 6 December Ardenne, P., ‘Fiona Tan’, Art Press, no. 269, June De Vries, M., ‘De dans van wellustig levend plasma’, Het Parool, Bers, M., ‘Berlin Biennale: affect, not effect’,Tema Celeste, no. 86, 13 December summer, 2001 Kampmann, M., ‘Malen am Computer’, Westfälischer Anzeiger, 22 May Breerette, G., ‘Le journal intime de Fiona Tan, vidéaste’, Le Monde, 15 April ‘Medienkunst aus die Niederlanden’, Kunst Kurier, March Durez, A., ‘Fiona Tan, Usage de la disparition’, Centre National de la Photographie Le Journal, no. 15 1995 Gioni, M., ‘Speaking in tongues, views from a distance’, Flash Art, no. 221, Huigen, R., ‘Plakjes mens – Atlas of the interior van Fiona Tan’, November–December BLVD, November Hartog Jager, H. den, ‘Vergaarbak vol jonge kunstenaars’, Lamoree, J., ‘Landje pik in het Siberie van Amsterdam’, Het Parool, 8 March NRC Handelsblad, 11 July Smallenburg, S., ‘Beyond the Bridge’, HTV de IJsberg, December Höller, C., ‘Video als Ausnamhemedium’, Texte zur Kunst, June Van Visser, N., ‘Nadenken over plakjes moordenaar’, Het Parool, 17 March
92 Contributors Dr Gene Sherman Juliana Engberg
Dr Gene Sherman is Chair and Executive Director of Sherman Juliana Engberg is Artistic Director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art Foundation. She has a specialised knowledge Contemporary Art. Recently she was the curator of the highly acclaimed of art, literary theory and French and English literature and spent Visual Arts Programme for the Edinburgh International Festival 2009, seventeen years teaching, researching and lecturing at secondary and for which she received the coveted Herald Angel Award. Her exhibition tertiary levels. As Director of Sherman Galleries (1986–2007) she ‘The Dwelling’ also received The Age Critics Award for the Melbourne initiated, negotiated and organised twelve to seventeen exhibitions International Arts Festival 2009. She has been curator of numerous annually, as well as regional and national touring exhibitions major exhibitions, including ‘Signs of Life: Melbourne International within Australia, and international touring exhibitions through the Biennial 1999’; the Visual Arts Programmes for the Melbourne Asia-Pacific region. Gene and Brian Sherman sponsored a Master International Arts Festival 2001–06; the Visual Arts Programme for the of Fine Arts Administration student at the College of Fine Arts, The Adelaide Festival 1998; and The Spike Island Invitational 2000. University of New South Wales (1997–2007), a studio at Bundanon and a contemporary Australian art-research room at the Schaeffer Fine Arts Library, The University of Sydney. Dr Sherman is on the Board of the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, the Venice Biennale Commissioner’s Council, the Art & Australia Advisory Board, and the Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange. In 2003 the French Government honoured Dr Sherman with the award of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her contribution to culture. In 2008 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from The University of Sydney.
Gallery Information Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation The National Art School
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) was established The National Art School (NAS) is situated in Darlinghurst, a in April 2008 as a not-for-profit organisation to champion research, lively hub of art and culture in Sydney, and is the oldest, and one education and exhibitions of significant and innovative contemporary of the most prestigious, visual arts institutions in Australia. The art from Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. School’s values are informed by the ongoing debate about the place SCAF works closely with artists in commissioning new work and of art in contemporary society and the basic premise that drawing developing exhibitions that energise and respond to the gallery’s is fundamental to an understanding of visual language. The NAS four-part complex comprising a large exhibition area, mini ‘out-site’ Gallery was opened in 2006 and features an annual exhibition space, versatile theatre annexe and outdoor sculpture court. Extensive programme reflecting the vitality and complexity of the visual arts projects are developed through partnerships with public art institutions within a local and international context. The NAS Gallery encourages at a regional, state and national level while broad public engagement appreciation and critical perspectives of art and its role in society with contemporary art is fostered through publishing and forum through direct engagement with artists and original works of art. programmes. In addition, Sherman Visual Arts Residency (SVAR), Research, publications, public programmes and exhibitions featuring located directly across the road from the gallery, offers a supportive multi-discipline group and solo projects by Australian and international environment and accommodation for visiting artists, filmmakers, artists support the School’s philosophy of being profoundly aware of architects, writers, curators and scholars. the past while recognising and engaging with the present. The experience of developing Sherman Galleries (1986–2007) as a respected commercial and educational enterprise within the international art world underpins the Foundation at both a conceptual and practical level. Dr Gene Sherman, SCAF Chairman and Executive Director, has drawn on her extensive international networks to establish the Foundation, and initiates and guides its activities in collaboration with an advisory board of respected peers: Andrew Cameron, Doug Hall AM, John Kaldor AM, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Dr Claire Roberts and Michael Whitworth.
95 Acknowledgements Fiona Tan: Coming Home 19 March – 12 June 2010
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation thanks the artist, Fiona Tan, for Disorient A Lapse of Memory her commitment to this project, and Juliana Engberg for her thoughtful Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation National Art School Gallery and elucidatory essay. 16–20 Goodhope Street Forbes Street Paddington NSW 2021 Darlinghurst NSW 2010 We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Mondriaan www.sherman-scaf.org.au www.nas.edu.au Foundation, Amsterdam.
Thank you to Johnnie Walker, A.R.T., Tokyo, for his commitment Published by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and advice. 16–20 Goodhope Street Chairman, Executive Director Dr Gene Sherman Paddington NSW 2021 Associate Director Amanda Henry Sincere thanks to the following individuals for their assistance and support: ABN 25 122 280 200 General Manager – Artistic and Educational Programmes Caroline Baum Dolla S. Merrillees Katie Dyer, Curator/Gallery Manager, National Art School Gallery © 2010 Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, authors and artists. Programmes Coordinator, Executive Assistant to Gene Sherman Steve Gooding Laura Brandon Jane Hamlyn and Charlotte Schepke, Frith Street Gallery, London This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose Communications and Events Coordinator Aaron de Souza Michael Lynch CBE, AM of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Installation A Team Marley Dawson, Christopher Hanrahan, Laura Murray Cree Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without Michael Moran Akky van Ogtrop written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. Ivo van Stiphout Advisory Board Andrew Cameron, Doug Hall AM, Margaret Throsby National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry John Kaldor AM, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Title: Fiona Tan: Coming Home / Sherman Contemporary Dr Claire Roberts, Michael Whitworth Art Foundation National and International Art Adviser Anna Waldmann ISBN: 9780957738270 (pbk.) Subjects: Tan, Fiona–Exhibitions Editor Fiona Egan Other Authors/Contributors: Design Mark Gowing and Vanessa Pitsikas Tan, Fiona Engberg, Juliana Printed in Australia by Southern Colour Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Dewey Number: 778.5074 Page 84: Photograph of Fiona Tan by Per Kristiansen, Stockholm Page 93: Photograph of SCAF by Paul Green, Sydney; Photograph of NAS Gallery by Damian Dillon, Sydney All works and images courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London
This project has been generously supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation providing a platform for innovative visual artists primarily from Asia, Australia and the Pacific Rim. All donations over $2 are tax deductible and will support our exhibition, educational, public and artist-in-residence programmes.