Australian Artists At The Bangkok Art Biennale

On view now until 23 February 2023 the Bangkok Art Biennale presents international contemporary art practices which speak to the theme ‘chaos:calm’. The Biennale explains their concept and provocation as uniting ‘artists whose works reflect turbulence, trauma and angst remind us of fragility of life at the time of pandemic, climate change, environment detriment, politics and clashes in ideologies.’

Australian artists to see at the Bangkok Art Biennale include the APY Art Centre Collective which for this iteration will include Sylia Kanytjupai Ken, Iluwanti Ken, Zaachariaha Fielding, Nyunmiti Burton, Rhoda Tjitayi, Matjangka Norris, Yaritji Young, Robert Fielding, the Iwantja Arts Men’s Collaborative of Alec Baker, Kunmanara (Peter) Mungkuri, and Eric Barneyand. And, in a solo-presentation, Ben Quilty.

Image: Robert Fielding with Ngurkantananma – Recognise, 2021, for Ngura Pulka. Photo by Meg Hansen, courtesy of the artist and Mimili Maku Arts

The APY Art Centre Collective is presenting The Ngura Pulka project, a body of 25 works that have been created over the last three years. For this showcase you can view 9 new works at the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Centre in which the senior artists celebrate their Country and the powerful Tjukurpa (the Dreaming, or creation time of ancient ancestors) that lies within. There will be another presentation of the Ngura Pulka project in Europe, 2023.

Sylvia Ken and her painting for Ngura Pulka. Photo by Andy Francis, courtesy of the APY Art Centre Collective and Tjala Arts.
Image: Iluwanti Ken and her painting for Ngura Pulka. Photo by Andy Francis, courtesy of the APY Art Centre Collective and Tjala Arts.

Quilty is sharing his painting ‘The Alien, Cook’s Death, After Zoffany’, 2022, also at the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Centre. The work is inspired by Johann Zoffany’s painting The Death of Captain James Cook, 1795. Quilty’s composition is said to raise ‘questions of authority, narrative power, the legacy of colonisation and white man’s attitude towards difference.’

Image: Ben Quilty, ‘The Alien, Cook’s Death, After Zoffany’, 2022, oil on linen, 202.0 x 625.0 cm

The apparent ‘Rorschach’ aesthetic which is familiar to us as a psychological tool, as the Art Gallery of South Australia has noted, ‘attempts ‘to force the viewer to “see” or recognise themselves in history in order to reassess our colonial past’.

Adding more intrigue is the choice to swap out Cook’s face on either side of the composition. On the left there is an image of Christ derived from Rubens’ painting ‘The Entombment’ and the artist’s father is visible on the right, with a long Pinocchio-like nose. Zoffany’s work was referenced in 2016 by another leading artist Daniel Boyd who seemed to present Cook as an antihero.