ESSAYS

ART and AsiaPacific

An Australian Introduction

Leon Paroissien

Although today Australia sees itself as a multicultural society, from British colonization until World War II its history was one of a small population of dispossessed Aboriginal people and of a predominantly Anglo-Irish people in 'exile'. Following World War II immigrants were actively sought (and their travel often subsidized), primarily from the northern hemisphere countries ranging across Britain and continental Europe to Greece and Turkey. In Australia these new arrivals formed an overlay on the English-speaking society. Although the gold rushes of the 1850s had created Chinese communities in cities and towns across Australia, and Maori and Pakeha New Zealanders had a presence, the first two centuries of European settlement saw little acknowledgement that Australia was located in a geographic region abounding in rich traditional and contemporary cultures. Even the ancient culture of the first Australians the Australian Aborigines - was relegated to anthropology and ethnography, with the notion of living 'art' considered as an imported Western phenomenon.

Recent immigration from many Asian, and to some extent Pacific, countries has changed Australian society even more. The absorbing of so many ethnic groups is not, of course, without its tensions. There are great problems with simplistic notions of a multicultural society, so often promoted for pragmatic political reasons. Such a polyglot concept, for example, tends to disenfranchise Aboriginal people, especially compared with the bicultural policies of New Zealand that acknowledge the Maori presence prior to European settlement. And while diverse cuisines are greatly enjoyed by Australians from all ethnic backgrounds, appreciation of the visual and performing arts of the countries from which our immigrants have come tends to be limited to government-funded ethnic festivals that focus on traditional dance and music, displays of ethnic difference that convey a sense that these cultures are of another time and another place.

While Australia has integrated its immigrants to a degree where they are increasingly represented in government and in the professions (and the names of our artists attest to their diverse origins), our theatres, concert halls, cinemas, art museums and writing continue predominantly to recount cultural stories as though Australia were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, looking towards Western Europe and the east coast of the United States. As an English-speaking country, Australia will always be attuned to the cultures of other English-speaking countries, and as English is such a widely spoken and widely translated language, Australians indeed have considerable access to information and ideas across a spectrum of different cultures.

During the last decade, Australian critics and historians have drawn on their very remoteness from international modernism to make significant contributions to debates about regionalism and the complexity of dialogues between 'centres' and many 'peripheries'. Moreover, artists have come to welcome the opportunity to show in Seoul, Hong Kong or Auckland as much as they would in many European or American cities.

An apparent contradiction in the Australian situation lies in the fact that the contribution to the post-modernist debate about regionalism and polyform identities is conducted essentially in English – the language in which even influential French philosophy has been read and discussed here. Only the polylingual Aboriginal people and recent immigrants provide striking exceptions in our generally monolingual society. The vastness of the Australian continent, and the absence of borders to neighbouring countries where different languages are spoken, determine that fluency in a language other than native English is driven by academic, professional or commercial initiatives rather than by movement between different cultures as a pattern of life. Australians have been great travellers since the 1970s, when relatively cheap airfares replaced expensive and long sea voyages. But even though one trip abroad might include one or two countries in Asia and several in Europe, such brief visits are unlikely to foster a significant command of any one foreign language, let alone profound appreciation of any one foreign culture. In this situation, the mobility across many cultures provided by the English language, and access to travel itself, are both advantages and obstacles to a deeper understanding of any one culture.

Neither the presence in Australia of foreign cultural agencies (as welcome as they might be), nor political imperatives on the part of Australian government funding agencies, will significantly change the pace at which Australians develop closer and more meaningful cultural ties with countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Notions of ‘Orientalism', which form an integral part of Western culture, are a mixed blessing in this process.

While concepts of the 'exotic other' have generated large attendances at exhibitions of Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Cambodian antiquities in Australian cities, art museums and commercial galleries, exhibition organizers struggle to convey a sense that countries in Asia have evolving and dynamic contemporary visual cultures.

But change is evident and this change is exponential in its growth. The first and second Biennale of Sydney exhibitions, in 1973 and 1976, included artists from Japan, Korea and New Zealand. The founder of the Biennale, Franco Belgiorno-Nettis, although not involved in the curatorial selection of artists, promoted from the outset a special focus on artists from the Asia-Pacific region. Themes in successive Biennale exhibitions did not always develop this focus; nevertheless the practice of international exhibitions looking to our nearest neighbours gradually became well established. With international projects such as ARX in Perth and the forthcoming Asian Triennial in Brisbane a special focus on the art and artists of this region has developed. Meanwhile, Australian artists are increasingly included in group and single artist exhibitions in other countries in the region. Most importantly for meaningful exchanges, an increasing variety of residencies is available throughout the region to enable artists to work and exhibit in cultural contexts other than their own.

ART and AsiaPacific is the culmination of discussions I have had over many years with Sam Ure-Smith, founding Publisher of ART and Australia. From the outset it was his vision that ART and Australia would bring to its Australian readers an awareness that neighbouring countries in this region had long-established and flourishing artistic traditions. Far from wanting Australian writers to report on 'curiosities from abroad' in the tradition of colonizing journeys of oriental connoisseurship, we talked about ways in which, reciprocal dialogues could be established, giving our neighbouring colleagues the opportunity to address Australian readers concerning issues in visual arts from their own vantage points.

During recent years, Australia's trade and cultural contacts within the Asia-Pacific region have grown (ART and Australia has since 1980 been printed at different times in Japan and Korea) and the mobility that goes with this closer relationship has at last made possible the idea of a publication based on contemporary regional issues. Most important in this realization was the contribution of Guest Editor, Alison Carroll, who has sustained an outstanding commitment to artistic exchanges in this region over many years. Working with Editor Dinah Dysart and Publisher Janet Gough, Alison Carroll has drawn together for this first issue contributions from people who are distinguished in their field in five separate countries.

When one tells the story of one culture within another, whether this be in exhibition or publication format, one must consider not only the framework in which the story is told and the knowledge and skill of the teller, but also the potential reception of the audience. In the present publication all writers are to some degree familiar with the Australian context and their contributions should be of great interest to other readers throughout this region.

Throughout the world one can see an extraordinary duality of global communication, which gives every community access to certain cultural practices, and of a revival of persistent local cultural traditions. The latter has its dark side, as with the freedom to revert to traditional languages and political autonomy, long-standing national grievances surface, causing much devastation of communities and destruction of priceless cultural heritage. However it is also part of the reassertion of many diverse cultures and identities that once flourished in a less internationally uniform world.

Our desire to describe geographic regions in simple terms (such as 'Latin America', 'Europe' or 'Asia-Pacific'), as though their cultures were homogeneous, may be driven by trade, political or defence purposes, but it also must be seen as masking more complex realities. If those of us committed to celebrating the diverse aspirations of human traditions and forms that run through all cultures were also to promote the rich diversity of cultures within each land mass, we would make a small contribution not only to increased tolerance of difference, but also to the active appreciation of the diversity of cultures spreading far beyond acknowledged Western 'centres'.

Leon Paroissien is Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Senior Editorial Adviser to ART and Australia.