Art and the Republic at APT 9

WfaAR is visiting the 9th edition of the Asia Pacific Triennial at QAGOMA in Brisbane. Three works stood out.The first two were by Australian artist Vincent Namatjira, born Alice Springs, lives and works South Australia. He has sprung to prominence since his first public exhibition in 2011 and is now held in many Australian and international collections. He will be exhibiting at Art Basel Hong Kong later this month. Many of his works feature Captain Cook and the British Royal Family especially the Queen. A clever sequence of mirrors at varying heights and dress-ups transformed the viewer. In one of them, we found ourselves with a familiar grey curly wig, a sparkling golden coronet, bright orange lipstick, long white gloves and a couple of yapping bejewelled corgis jumping at our feet – unmistakably our Head of State herself. But the face was ours. We could only burst out laughing, it looked so ridiculous as our everyday garb was dolled up with bling to make us a queen. Doesn’t take much. In a more serious work, slightly contorted portraits of seven recent Prime Ministers and our seven richest citizens, all smiling, were intersected with portraits of seven unknown Indigenous people. They looked both calmer and wiser but eminently at home in such a context – why not? Meanwhile Meiro Koizumi’s “Rite for a Dream. Today my empire sings” 2016 is a video of a performance enacting the Hantenren anti-emperor rally, a controversial republic demonstration held annually in Tokyo on 15 August, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender at the end of the Pacific war in 1945. This showed the significant antagonism, both noisy and violent, of conservative forces in Japan towards the small number of protesters. More information on anti-monarchy protests in Japan is available here: https://throwoutyourbooks.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/emperor-akihito-abdication-anti-emperor-protest-movement-japan/ or find out more about Vincent Namatjira, including visuals of his work, on the link below.

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