1 Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials © John Clark, 2013 Word count 37,315 words without endnotes 39,813 words including endnotes 129 pages [It is intended these materials be downloadabkle from a free website]. Asian Biennial Materials Appendix One: Some biennial reviews, including complete list of those by John Clark. 1 Appendix Two: Key Indicators for some Asian biennials. 44 Appendix Three: Funding of APT and Queensland Art Gallery. 54 Appendix Four: Report on the Database by Thomas Berghuis. 58 Appendix Five: Critics and curators active in introducing contemporary Chinese art outside China. 66 Appendix Six: Chinese artists exhibiting internationally at some larger collected exhibitions and at biennials and triennials. 68 Appendix Seven: Singapore National Education. 80 Appendix Eight: Asian Art at biennials and triennials: An Initial Bibliography. 84 Endnotes 124 2 Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials © John Clark, 2013 Appendix One: REVIEWS Contemporary Asian art at Biennales Reviews the 2005 Venice Biennale and Fukuoka Asian Triennale, the 2005 exhibition of the Sigg Collection, and the 2005 Yokohama and Guangzhou Triennales 1 Preamble If examination of Asian Biennials is to go beyond defining modernity in Asian art, we need to look at the circuits for the recognition and distribution of contemporary art in Asia. These involved two simultaneous phenomena.2 The first was the arrival of contemporary Asian artists on the international stage, chiefly at major cross-national exhibitions including the Venice and São Paolo Biennales. This may be conveniently dated to Japanese participation at Venice in the 1950s to be followed by the inclusion of three contemporary Chinese artists in the Magiciens de la terre exhibition in Paris in 1989.3 The new tendency was followed by the arrival of Chinese contemporary art at the Venice Biennale in 1993. This arrival and circulation intensified until 2005 when China opened its first, officially supported exhibition at Venice to be followed in the future by its own pavilion.4 By that time Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and indirectly India were regular participants at Venice in addition to Japan and Korea from earlier. The second phenomenon was the rise of the Biennial as an international exhibition form in Asia that included the participation of contemporary Asian artists. Actually, this started with the Biennale of Sydney in 1973 when seven out of thirty seven artists exhibited were Asian, but the major impetus came with establishment of biennials and triennials at Gwangju in Korea in 1995, Shanghai in 1996 and Guangzhou in China in 2002. The movement was widespread and simultaneous with the conversion of a series of Asian Art shows at Fukuoka from 1989 into the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale from 1999 (preceded by the Fukuoka Asian Art Show since 1989), and the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at 3 Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials © John Clark, 2013 Brisbane from the same year 1993. These exhibitions exposed many issues concerning the further definition of modernity in Asian art and its circulation internationally as contemporary art which I have looked at elsewhere.5 I intend in this appendix to give something of the experiential flavour of viewing Biennales by looking at the some exhibitions via some of my contemproary reviews. In order to preserve the flavour of a near-contemporary observation, in what follows I will usually keep to the present tense and the first person. Venice Biennale 20056 It has often been remarked by casual visitors to the Venice Biennale that Venice is not really an appropriate site for a contemporary art exhibition, [ill.A1] let alone for a Biennale because it is sited on a one island in a group of small islands where the city was mostly built before the 19th century, with no economic base other than tourism. Venice it is not a modern cosmopolitan city, but actually a small, regional centre with a very small population. It even has its own ancient buildings garlanded with propped-up sculptures, [ill. A2] and artistic pilgrimage sites.[ill. A3]7 Even in the tourist season in July most of the palazzi on the grand canal have no lights on at night. Venice thus presents itself to the visitor as isolated from the world. The event of the Biennale ill.A1 entrance 51st Venice Biennale 2005 ill.A2, Chiesa di Gesuiti, Venice, 1730 4 Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials © John Clark, 2013 ill.A3, Plaque marking Titian’s House, Venice, before 1526. (with its Archicture Biennale in alternate years and the Venice Film Festival) and the small performances which surround it have no local social base with which to interact, unlike Fukuoka, Istanbul, or Liverpool, amongst other biennial sites. Indeed, apart from the circuit of international art exhibitions and the fact that the opening of the Venice Biennale is held at almost the same time as the Basel Art Fair, only some six or so hours away by train, the Biennale would have little meaning in itself. Its significance appears more clearly to depend on a cycle of competitive positions between states where works artists and curators may be inserted into an international circuit of display and influence. This year Venice, next year São Paolo, every five years Documenta, with all the host of smaller events located in between. Indeed it is fascinating how many traces of other Biennales are to be found at Venice itself. In 2005, for example, I deliberately avoided going to the opening days but was pulled up short as I stepped over the threshold onto the street side of the Brazilian pavilion’.8 [ill. A4]9 I almost stepped on a brochure for the forthcoming 2006 Biennale of Sydney which was lying on the ground. The Korean pavilion contained promotional material for the 2006 Gwangju Biennale and Busan Biennale, [ill. A5] and the Japanese pavilion actually featured a poster advertising the 2005 Yokohama Triennale which would open a bare three months later. [ill. A6] 5 Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials © John Clark, 2013 ill. A4, Biennale of Sydney 2006 flyer, seen at Venice 2005 ill. A5, Flyer for Busan Biennale 2006 found in Korean pavilion, Venice Biennale 2005 ill. A6, Yokohama Triennale [September 2006] posters at Japan Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2005 The repetitive ‘again-ness’ of the Biennale circuit thus produces an imaginary or virtual quality for seeing any works at this physical site. I have had the same sensation elsewhere about formally different and supposedly conceptually discriminated works by Miyajima Tatsuo, in Brisbane and Gwangju [A7] and Sydney. ‘Again-ness’ is further sanctioned by the many works in the thematic or curated exhibitions which I have seen or heard of before the Biennale. In a world of extensive printed art media, let alone web communication, this feeling can no longer be restricted to specialists with peculiar access to information or travel opportunities. Artists suchas the Korean Choi Jeong Hwa have claimed to me that every Biennale is different and every work different, but he also indicated he had worked over time with both Nanjô Fumio and Apinan Poshyananda at Lyon, Liverpool and other international exhibitions.10 He did not feel 6 Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials © John Clark, 2013 he was functioning as the local producer for a multinational corporation, and anyway he met different people and went to different countries, opportunities he would not otherwise have had but for Biennale invitations. In another case, Jun Nguyen- Hatsushiba has done his underwater video pieces in various international sites, but when one sees them together, [ill.39/195 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba-Nguyen] as I did in 2004 at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, I was left with the ill. A7, Miyajima Tatsuo work at Gwangju Biennale, 2004 ill. A8, Nguyen-Hatsushiba Jun, 2001, video of rickshaw drivers overwhelming sense that these works were essentially a thematising of the same technique and conceptual problem even if they all had ostensibly different subjects.11 Whatever the artist’s intentions were, and despite the complexities of the works’ execution, only the relation to a repeated or conventionalized notion of significance could allow for their repetitiousness, and this was presumably a notion of a signature style which the artist wanted to maintain but which was reinforced through mediation by a curator, or group of curators.12 The Venice Biennale presents itself to the viewer as essentially three types of exhibitions: One: the national pavilions and one curated thematic pavilion in the Giardini plus often another and separately curated retrospective exhibition in the Museo Correr in Piazza San Marco. Japan and Korea have permanent Pavilions in the Giardini. It was believed they would be joined there by China in 2007, whose 2003 participation was cancelled because of the SARS epidemic .China had its own dedicated area at the end of the Arsenale in 2005 and 2007 as of which time the prospect of a permanent pavilion in the Giardini had receded for space reasons. [ill. A9] Two: one or several thematic exhibitions in the Arsenale, usually organized by sub-curators and whose funding appears to be secured largely by them; [ill. A10] 7 Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials © John Clark, 2013 Three: other small exhibitions dotted around the city, some times of national states, sometimes of sub-state regional arts organizations, sometimes of private collectors, sometimes of a commercial gallery. [ill. A11] ill. A9, Top left: Italian Pavilion 2005, top right: British Pavilion 1909, Venice, 2003, bottom: Plan of Italian National Art Exposition 1887 ill. A10, Arsenale Yan Peiming in Zones of Urgency, 2003 ill. A11, Sun-Mei Tse work in Luxemburg Pavilion at Venice, 2003. The functions of contemporary Asian art in these various sites and types of exhibition may be briefly characterized for the exhibiting country: 1.