A Brand new chapter at the Gallery

Australian Dr Michael Brand, consulting director of the Aga Khan Museum currently under construction in Toronto and the former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, has been appointed director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Dr Brand earned his MA and PhD in Harvard University and BA, Honours, at the Australian National University. He will be the ninth director of the Gallery in its 120-year history and will assume his new role mid-year after finalising his consultancy with the Aga Khan Museum, which is currently constructing a $150 million building designed by the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki.

Media release

Indian modernism on display

To coincide with Mother India: Video plays by Nalini Malani, as well as keeping within the theme of Indian modernism, two early works by India’s 20th-century master, Jamini Roy, Three Woman and Gopini will be on display in the ground floor Asian gallery. These two paintings are characteristic of Roy's style, which is the use of bold, black contours to contain strong simplified forms, brightly coloured with the earth and vegetable colours he preferred, imbued with an honest vigour and barely contained by the pictorial format.

Born in Bengal, of a typical rural family, Roy graduated from the Government School of Art in Calcutta. He started his career by producing fashionably ‘modern’ pictures indistinguishable from the works of many other contemporary Bengali artists. But Roy was soon disillusioned to find that the examples he was being taught to exemplify were only very poor reproductions of their original European masterpieces. Particularly inspired by the dynamic art-form of Kalighat paintings, created in the nineteenth century by anonymous artists as souvenirs for pilgrims to the famous temple to the great goddess Kali, Roy started to experiment with elements from Indian folk art in 1917 and continued with endless dedication until his death 15 years later. Today Roy’s works are categorized as ‘National Art Treasures’. His work embraces the idea that ‘European’ and ‘Oriental’ art were never separate phenomena.

Dragon

Until 6 May 2012
Evolved from a prehistoric totemic animal, the dragon has become a symbol of China to the world. Chinese people everywhere take pride in considering themselves descendants of this mythical creature. Encompassing bronzes, porcelains, textiles, paintings and calligraphy, this exhibition examines the creature’s diverse meanings and manifestations in Chinese art, ritual and politics, while pieces from Japan and Chinese export ware demonstrate how the dragon has been adopted by cultures outside China. This exhibition showcases more than forty artworks that carry the dragon motif, either from the Gallery’s collection or on loan.

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Mother India: video plays by Nalini Malani

Until 20 May 2012
Mumbai-based artist Nalini Malani was born in 1946 in Karachi, now in Pakistan. This installation features several of her videos, with the focus on Mother India: transactions in the construction of pain 2005.

Realised on a scale that overwhelms the viewer, this emotive five-channel projection is 15 metres long. It explores Nalani’s core political themes, drawing on her family’s experience of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Looking at partition, and the riots in Gujarat in 2002, this important work was made in response to an essay by anthropologist Veena Das, titled Language and the body: transactions in the construction of pain. Das examines how widespread sexual violence against women at the time of partition was incorporated into a political narrative that reinforced the allegorical notion of the nation-state as a paternal figure.

Malani’s politically charged sequence of images addresses histories of gendered violence in India, which continue to the present day. While the work deals with specific historical circumstances, it is part of the artist’s broader project to confront politics and human suffering across culture and gender boundaries.

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Tours

Arts of Asia: Daily 12noon
Gallery highlights: in Cantonese, Tuesdays 11am
Gallery highlights: in Mandarin, Thursdays 11am
Gallery highlights: in Japanese, Fridays 11am
Gallery highlights: in Korean, Fridays 11am

Indian art lecture

Modernity, art and national identity in colonial India 1850–1922
Partha Mitter
Sunday 18 March 2012, 2pm
Centenary Auditorium, lower level 1

Scholar, professor and renowned art historian, Partha Mitter is emeritus professor of art history at University of Sussex, England, a member of Wolfson College, Oxford University, and past fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He is the author of Much Maligned Monsters: a history of European reactions to Indian art (Clarendon Press, 1977); Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922 (Cambridge University Press, 1994); and The Triumph of Modernism: Indian Artists and the Avant-garde 1922–1947 (University of Chicago Press, 2007).

In association with the exhibition Mother India: video plays by Nalini Malani

View lecture abstract

Arts of Asia lecture series: ‘Love’

Tuesdays 1pm

The uplifting, immersive and transformative experience of love is the topic for the 2012 Arts of Asia lecture series. The word love is applied to a multitude of relationships as the series, drawing on the expertise of academics, curators and critics will demonstrate. The aim is to offer fresh insights into the interpretation of love in the religious, literary and artistic worlds.

Dr Stefano Carboni, director, Art Gallery of Western Australia, not only launched the series, he also gave an insightful introduction to famous Persian love stories and fitted them within the art historical development of Persian painting from the Ilkhanid to the Safavid period (14th–17th centuries) on 6 March. The audience was treated to a visual feast of miniature paintings including among the highest achievements of Persian book illustration of encounters between lovers made immortal by the most famous painters of their time.

Term 1 of the series focuses on the Near East, South and Southeast Asia. Topics include love stories expressed in Persian painting, homoeroticism in the arts of Indonesia and types of love in Balinese painting.

More info and book online

Symposium

SAVE THE DATE

Rinpa style: Japanese art and design
Saturday 23 June 2012, 10am–4.30pm

Mark your calendar for a symposium to launch Kamisaka Sekka: dawn of modern Japanese design. The exhibition of about one hundred paintings, ceramics, lacquer, textiles, woodblock prints and drawings focuses on the multi-faceted oeuvre of Kamisaka Sekka (1866–1942), one of the leading Japanese artists, designers and art instructors of the first half of the 20th century. The brilliant colours and powerful designs of his paintings and woodblock-printed books have led him to be considered one of the masters – or even the last master – of the longstanding Japanese decorative tradition, Rinpa. Works by representative Rinpa masters of the early 17th to 18th century will provide the stylistic and thematic background for the understanding of Sekka’s artistic development. The major lender to the exhibition is the Hosomi Museum, Kyoto. This is the first time that such a comprehensive display of the exemplary Japanese sense for design is shown in Australia. Confirmed speakers for the symposium include Dr John Szostak of the University of Hawaii and Professor Tadashi Kobayashi of Gakushuin University, Tokyo.

Exhibition talk

Mother India: video plays by Nalini Malani

Wednesday 28 March, 5.30pm
Asian Gallery, ground floor
Macushla Robinson, curatorial assistant
Bodies in pain: the video plays of Nalini Malani
The contemporary Indian artist Nalini Malani confronts histories of violence in post-partition India. Through close reading of her video works, Macushla Robinson will explore her response to historical violence in India, and investigate how her representation of such brutality negotiates this difficult history.

Collection Talk

Wednesday 4 April, 5.30pm
Asian Gallery, lower level 1
Dr Lim Chye Hong, coordinator of Asian programs
[Re]viewing the sexual transformation of Avalokiteśvara to Guan Yin
For the Chinese, it is generally accepted that a good portrait is one that captures the subject's spirit rather than his/her physical features. This talk centres on the portrait-sculpture of the 12th-13th century Guan Yin, the female version of the male bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. The deity's transformation from male to female, as Dr Lim Chye Hong will argue, is as much a process of the sinicisation of Buddhism as it was moved from India to China as it is about transmitting the bodhisattva's spirit of compassion.

In association with the exhibition Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2012

Private viewing for VisAsia members

VisAsia members recently enjoyed a private viewing of the video work Mother India by contemporary artist Nalini Malani, and exhibition talks by head curator of Asian art, Jackie Menzies, and curatorial assistant, Macushla Robinson. The VisAsia members program for later in the year features the official opening and a private viewing with introduction by curator of Japanese art, Dr Khanh Trinh, of Kamisaka Sekka: dawn of modern Japanese design.

VisAsia, the Australian Institute of Asian Culture and Visual Arts, was established in 1999 in recognition of Australia’s growing involvement with the cultures of Asia. Managed by a board of directors, it includes both the VisAsia Council and individual VisAsia membership. VisAsia’s mission is to promote the appreciation of Asian visual arts and culture through exhibitions, events and education. As a VisAsia member, you are not only supporting Asian visual arts, education and culture at the Gallery, you will also be invited to view some of Australia's best private and public Asian collections. Membership includes complimentary issues of the TAASA Review: the Journal of the Asian Arts Society of Australia.

More information on VisAsia

Chinese collection Children’s Trail

Have fun exploring Chinese art in the collection and make some art of your own with the Chinese collection children’s trail. This trail, designed to engage young children aged 6 to 12, combines looking and interpreting, drawing and writing activities to enable children to explore key themes and ideas while in front of the artworks, including mighty guardian Wei To and the impressive Han dynasty watchtower. Ideas for activities at home or in the classroom are also provided to extend children’s experience beyond the Gallery and to encourage and develop a love of art. Pick up a trail at the Information Desk on the Ground level or download your own from the Gallery’s website.