Soe Yu Nwe, Feminine Wound, 2015. Porcelain, glaze and oxides, luster 167 x 182 x 20 cm (detail)

Public programs weekend: Our Grandfather Road

The (gendered) body and place in contemporary Southeast Asian art

Our Grandfather Road presents the work of seventeen artists—sixteen women and one transmasc person—from a private collection of Southeast Asian art. The exhibition offers an opportunity for Australian audiences to interact with some of the most socially-engaged and topical art produced by contemporary artists both emerging and established from the region. Public programs will run across this weekend.

Our Grandfather Road—The (gendered) body & place in contemporary Southeast Asian art

Against monolithic narratives of womanhood, nationhood, regionalism; emphasising body & environment.

Saturday 24 September 2022, 1 – 2pm

Sam Lo: Artist’s talk (20-30 min)

Sam Lo (aka SKL0) is a Singapore-based visual artist whose work revolves around social commentaries fuelled by daily observations of their surroundings and research into the socio-political climate. Their intrigue with the concept of culture and bold execution in some of their earliest forays into street art saw them dubbed the “Sticker Lady”, a nickname lovingly given by the city in reference to the saga that was birthed from their work in the streets. Since then, the artist’s work – whether installations, large scale murals or digital designs – has been centred on understanding the world around us and how our actions are interdependent on each other.

Followed by: A conversation with Sam Lo hosted by Aiden Magro: street art and urban identity in contemporary Singapore (20-30 min)

Aiden Magro is a recent graduate of the University of Sydney and recipient of the University Medal. His research considers queer performance as an art form which walks a tightrope between complicity and radical politics. In his honours dissertation, now published in the journal Southeast of Now, he focused on queer Singaporean performance artist Loo ZIhan’s Cane (2012) which was a re-enactment of Josef Ng’s Brother Cane (1994). He is currently a tutor at the University of Sydney.

RSVP link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/16albermarle-artists-talk-sam-lo-tickets-419348080397

Sunday 25 September 2022

Exhibition walk-through with Wulan Dirgantoro and curator Jennifer Yang: 11 – 11:30am

Wulan Dirgantoro is a Lecturer in Art History and Curatorship at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests are gender and feminism, and trauma and memory in Indonesian modern and contemporary art. Her publications include Feminisms and Indonesian Contemporary Art: Defining Experiences and ‘Aesthetics of Silence: Exploring Trauma in Indonesian Painting 1970-1980’ in Ambitious Alignment: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art.

RSVP link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/exhibition-walk-through-with-wulan-dirgantoro-and-curator-jennifer-yang-tickets-419349685197

Panel discussion: New directions in feminist research and curatorial practice: 2 – 4pm

Collector introduction by John Cruthers (10 minutes)
Curator’s talk by Jennifer Yang (15 minutes)
Panel discussion (40 minutes)

16albermarle Project Space is excited to invite four Asian art specialists with experience working in feminist theory and methodology to a panel discussion. Moderated by curator Jennifer Yang, the panel addresses the slipperiness of the concept of a “contemporary Asian women’s art” and the challenges which surround building feminist curatorial and research strategies around it. How is feminist theory translated and transformed as it travels across contexts? What transnational connections and affiliations may be drawn? And what can feminist practice look like, beyond the question of inclusion/exclusion?

Panellists:

 Dr Wulan Dirgantoro is a Lecturer in Art History and Curatorship at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests are gender and feminism, and trauma and memory in Indonesian modern and contemporary art. Her publications include Feminisms and Indonesian Contemporary Art: Defining Experiences and ‘Aesthetics of Silence: Exploring Trauma in Indonesian Painting 1970-1980’ in Ambitious Alignment: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art.

Dr Yvonne Low is an art historian and lecturer in Asian Art at the University of Sydney. She researches on modern and contemporary southeast Asian art, with an interest in Chinese diaspora culture and transnationalism, feminisms in contemporary art, women’s history and digital methods. Yvonne has published widely – over 40 books, peer-reviewed journals and exhibition catalogues, including a children’s book on Indonesian Art. As part of the editorial committee to Southeast of Now, the first journal dedicated to the modern and contemporary art of southeast Asia, Yvonne is committed to advancing scholarship in the region and making the knowledge as widely accessible as possible.

Dr Elly Kent is the editor of New Mandala and Deputy Director of the Australian National University Indonesia Institute. She has worked as a researcher, writer, translator, artist, teacher and intercultural professional over 20 years in academia and the arts in Indonesia and Australia. Elly is the author of Artists and the People: Ideologies of Indonesian Art (2022) NUS Press, and co-editor (with Virginia Hooker and Caroline Turner) of Living Art: Indonesian Artists Engage Politics, Society and History (2022) ANU Press. In 2023 she will join University of New South Wales as a Lecturer in Indonesian Studies.

Dr Luise Guest is an independent art writer and researcher with a focus on contemporary Chinese art. Since 2010 her writing about Chinese art has been published in multiple Australian and international journals and her first book, Half the Sky: Conversations with Women Artists in China, was published in 2016 by Piper Press. Guest is currently a sessional academic, teaching in the Masters of Curating and Cultural Leadership at UNSW, and continuing her freelance writing and lecturing about women artists in Asia.

Moderated by Jennifer Yang
Jennifer Yang completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) majoring in Art History at the University of Sydney in 2022. Her research centres on East and Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art, and she was awarded the University Medal for her dissertation on the contemporary Chinese-Indonesian artist Tintin Wulia.

RSVP link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/panel-discussion-new-directions-in-feminist-research-and-curation-tickets-419325242087

Exhibition curated by Jennifer Yang.

The exhibition runs from 20 August to 15 October 2022 at 16albermarle Project Space, open Thursday – Sunday, 11am – 5pm, or by appointment.

16 Albermarle Street

Newtown NSW 2042

Australia

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