Page 72-73 - Annual Review 2009

Reveal
73
Reveal
72 Contemporary Asian art
Ah Xian
‘Metaphysica’ series 2007
A stunning group of 36 bronze busts were
shown as part of ‘Three Decades: The
Contemporary Chinese Collection’. With
exceptional support from Tim Fairfax, AM, six
of these works were acquired for the Gallery’s
Collection.
Wang Qingsong
China Red 2008–09
This installation was commissioned specifically
for ‘The China Project’ and has since been
generously gifted to the Gallery’s Collection.
China Red comments on the abundance
of consumer merchandise and commercial
imagery that has flooded the Chinese market
over the past two decades. The work is based
on an earlier photographic work by Wang,
Competition, which showed a team of
people plastering billboard posters onto an
enormous wall. (Installation view, p.50.)
Selected acquisitions —
Asian and Pacific Art
The Queensland Art Gallery has been collecting,
interpreting and exhibiting contemporary art
from Asia and the Pacific for two decades.
Its Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary
Art exhibition series, which began in 1993,
continues to be an important catalyst for
the collection’s development. This year the
Gallery’s internationally significant holdings
of contemporary Chinese work were brought
together for the first time in ‘Three Decades:
The Contemporary Chinese Collection’, one of
three exhibitions which comprised ‘The China
Project’. Several significant new works have
entered the collection following this landmark
exhibition.
Important acquisitions and commissions have
also been made as a result of the development
and research towards ‘The 6th Asia Pacific
Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT6). The APT
series has often commissioned and premiered
spectacular large-scale installations, and this
continued in APT6.
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
Lightning for Neda 2009
This new work represents Farmanfarmaian’s
most ambitious work to date. Commissioned
for the Gallery’s Collection and shown for the
first time in APT6, Lightning for Neda draws on
the Islamic use of geometry to structure and
develop complex architectural ornamentation.
The work comprises six large panels of intricate
mirror mosaic, each containing more than 4000
shimmering mirror shards. (Installation view,
pp.70–71.)
YNG (Yoshitomo Nara + graf)
Y.N.G.M.S. (Y.N.G.’s Mobile Studio) 2009
Yoshitomo Nara, one of Japan’s best known
contemporary artists, regularly collaborates
with Osaka-based design firm graf, under
the acronym YNG, to construct playful and
whimsical interactive environments, extending his
fascination with the experience of childhood, and
how specific spaces affect one’s viewing of art.
YNG’s collaborations have been produced all
over the world; each installation features Nara’s
works within a structure or ‘hut’ created by graf,
which reflects the architecture of its location, be it
Yogyakarta, Seoul, Malaga or Brisbane. The work
for APT6 was commissioned for the Queensland
Art Gallery with assistance from Tomio Koyama
Gallery, Tokyo.
Installation view of works from Ah Xian’s ‘Metaphysica’ series 2007 in Gallery
1, QAG / Six busts from this suite were purchased in 2009 with funds from Tim
Fairfax, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Installation view of Y.N.G’s Y.N.G.M.S. (Y.N.G.’s Mobile Studio) 2009 in the
Long Gallery, GoMA / The work was purchased in 2009 with funds from the
Bequest of Grace Davies and Nell Davies through the Queensland Art Gallery
Foundation.