rt113 – editorial
Huang Yong Ping, Ressort 2012, aluminium, stainless steel. Purchased 2012 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation, Queensland Art Gallery Collection
© the artist, photo Mark Sherwood
Huang Yong Ping, Ressort 2012, aluminium, stainless steel. Purchased 2012 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation, Queensland Art Gallery Collection
In the Chinese Year of the Snake, the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial, (showing until April 14), is thrilling gallery goers from around Australia and beyond with the plenitude, vividness and political acuity of its art drawn from the region [p8]. The exhibition aptly features an aluminium and stainless steel skeleton of a huge writhing snake, [Ressort (2012) by Huang Yong Ping] hovering above the Queensland Art Gallery’s Water Mall, perhaps poised to strike. The Chinese Zodiac Black Water Snake, however, is said to be enigmatic, intuitive, introspective, refined and collected. Perhaps a combination of the primordial strength intimated by Ressort and these more subdued virtues might make a perfect combination in an artistic temperament of a kind we’d all like to have in 2013. APT7 tells us that Huang Yong Ping’s snake “metaphorically links sky and water.”
Water makes some notable appearances in RT113: delight in the richness of its character and anxiety over its future is acknowledged creatively in Arts House’s Gauge and in ISEA 2012 in drought-oppressed Albuquerque. Ulay, former partner of Marina Abramovic, is so concerned about this element that, given we are mostly composed of it, he now introduces himself as Water. We also celebrate Tura New Music’s 25 years and the legacy of the recently departed Albie Thoms, whose career fluidly traversed directing in theatre and television, producing ABC TV’s GTK, making documentaries and, above all, creating and encouraging the making of experimental films and videos.
RealTime issue #113 Feb-March 2013 pg. 1
