artVoices Vol 1. No 2.

artVoices Occasional Papers in Visual Arts Education NSW

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

visual arts artVoices is an independent publication of occasional papers to support visual arts education in NSW schools.

artVoices: Occasional Papers in Visual Arts Education NSW Vol. 1 No. 2, 2016 Published February 2016 Sydney Australia © Rah Kirsten (Editor) and contributing authors 2016 Enquiries and proposals for submissions to artVoices can be made to the Editor at r.kirsten@unsw.edu.au

Cover image

Product and event information included in artVoices is correct at the time of publication and is to be used at the reader’s discretion. The views expressed are not necessarily the views of the publisher.

Wei Hui Hsu, ‘Unfinished Journey’ (detail), 2014, installation in three rooms at MOCA, Taipei.

Photograph: Sueanne Matthews

2

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016


CONTENTS

4

Editorial

5

Contributors

6

Performance and the 20th Biennale of Sydney

by Alana Ambados

12

Negotiating the relational universe: Examining the conceptual framework in Taiwan

by Sueanne Matthews

3

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

Welcome to the second edition of artVoices.

year, and ways for teachers to consider how they might approach performance works with their students.

Artistically, 2016 is off to a cracking start. Major exhibitions over the summer at the Art Gallery of NSW – The Greats, and Museum of Contemporary Art – Grayson Perry: My Pretty Little Art Career, prompt thinking on a grand scale. A substantial collection of ‘Greats’; big, bold personalities; massive retrospective of ideas and practices. The National Visual Art Education Conference at the National Gallery of Australia last month, also provided a space for thinking about art education in modus maximus. The conference program featured keynote speakers whose veritable reputations preceded them in many ways. Their presentations provided, for me, a space for reflecting on the strengths of the NSW visual arts curriculum, and the ways that we make, talk about, interpret, understand and value art.

The second article features the work of S u e a n n e M a t t h e w s , H e a d Te a c h e r Administration, Karabar Distance Education Centre. Sueanne’s wonderful photographic representation of Wei Hui Hsu’s ‘Unfinished Journey’ features on the cover of this edition, and her paper outlines part of her own inspiring journey of a study tour she undertook in Taiwan as the recipient of the 2014 NSW P r e m i e r ’ s Te a c h e r S c h o l a r s h i p – Contemporary Asian Art. The themes in Sueanne’s article build those presented in the paper I wrote for the first edition of artVoices: ‘The new aesthetic? Considering the digital, relational and multimodal and the visual arts’. The interviews that Sueanne conducted with artists as part of her scholarship tour have prompted many of us who have followed her work, to contemplate the relational, and how when positioned as a domain of practice, it provides new ways to examine the Conceptual Framework.

2016 also marks the 20th anniversary of the Biennale of Sydney, and details of Artistic Director Stephanie Rosenthal’s vision conceived through a number of ‘embassies of thought’ for the 20th Biennale of Sydney: The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed are now available. In the midst of coordinating an plethora of education programs and resources, Public Program and Education Coordinator, Alana Ambados, has written a paper that traces some of the histories of performance art through previous Biennale exhibitions. Her paper includes tremendous insights to artists who will be featured in the 20th Biennale of Sydney this

I hope you enjoy the papers in this edition, and that they provide much inspiration for your own thinking and planning for the year, perhaps on a grander scale than you might imagine...

Rah Kirsten Editor

4

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

CONTRIBUTORS Alana Ambados Public Program and Education Coordinator, Biennale of Sydney Alana Ambados completed the Bachelor of Art Education at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales in 2013. She has teaching experience in a range of primary and high schools throughout Sydney and has previously worked in the public program and education departments of Kaldor Public Art Projects (Project #30 – Marina Abramović: In Residence; Project #27 – 13 Rooms), dLux Media Arts (scanlines) and Sculpture by the Sea (Bondi, 2012). She is passionate about contemporary art, particularly within the context of festivals, and engaging diverse audiences and communities through creative public and education programming for the visual arts.

Sueanne Matthews Head Teacher Administration, Karabar Distance Education Centre Sueanne Matthews has been working as a visual arts teacher in schools within the NSW Department of Education since 1986. Sueanne believes that visual arts education is critical to support the development of creativity and innovation. Sueanne is particularly interested in the links between literacy and learning and utilises a range of strategies in visual arts learning from Years 7-12 to enhance her students written responses and understanding of higher order concepts through the study of work by artists.

5

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016


Adam Linder, 'Some Proximity', 2014, choreographic service duration variable. Courtesy the artist and Silberkuppe, Berlin.

6

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

PERFORMANCE AND THE 20th BIENNALE OF SYDNEY ALANA AMBADOS While it is impossible to claim a single history, tradition or definition of performance, we know one thing for certain – performance is about bodies. Performance manifests itself as a series of complex and often blurred relationships between the performer and audience: alone, with others, in time and in space. Our corporeality in this physical world has seen artists test physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological limits of their bodies and our capacity as an audience for interaction and associations with others in time and in this world.

anthropomorphised rock for the 14th Biennale in 2004 and Eglė Budvytytė’s Choreography for the Running Male for the 19th Biennale in 2014 saw a group of men jog a route through the city of Sydney performing socialised gestures, emotions and behaviours.

Stephanie Rosenthal, Artistic Director of the 20th Biennale of Sydney: The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed, continues this tradition by the inclusion of diverse performances in the 2016 exhibition. Her ongoing interest in exploring the relationship between visual art and performance will see the presentation of performance works reflect, analyse and challenge the conventions of the medium in order to transform, re-stage and reinvent performance in a contemporary art context.

We are urged to consider how performance for the 21st century is produced, viewed, promoted and valued.

Performance has been a constant presence in the Biennale of Sydney’s 42-year history – Marina Abramović and Ulay walked according to a set of instructions for the 3rd Biennale in 1979, Min Tanaka’s butoh company Mai-juku were the first contemporary Japanese performance group to appear in Australia for the 4th Biennale in 1982, Jimmie Durham challenged conventions of still life in art by crushing a car with an enormous

7

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

Brown Council, 'Mass Action', 2012, live performance, 90 hours. Courtesy the artists. Photograph: Pia van Gelder

Sydney-based artists Brown Council explore performance by deliberately blurring the distinctions between stage and gallery, high and low culture, ‘liveness’ and its trace. For the 20th Biennale, Brown Council will question how and why performance enters history by staging a series of discussions with invited guests.

Artists, writers, poets, collectives and academics reflect on history and specifically performance art history, with a focus on Australian and feminist contexts. Presented at 86 George Street, Redfern, the former Grantpirrie Gallery in Redfern, these discussions dissolve boundaries between artist and audience in order to critique the nature of collaboration, constructed history and authenticity.

Start at the beginning – performing performance

In thinking about the conventions of performance, brainstorming and identifying ideas about the body or ‘subject’ being performed and the parameters of the medium is a crucial first step in breaking down what students already know and where the gaps need to be filled. What is the role of the artist, performer or audience in this equation – where are these respective groups situated and to what extent do their roles overlap and interact?

Is the performance live and intended to be experienced in the moment, or are we quietly contemplating the memory and trace of that performance through photographs, videos and text?

8

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

of contemporary art, yet performance continues to experience resistance. At a concert, music is expected; at theatre, a play; but for some reason performance in contemporary art is sometimes seen as too conceptual, obscure or unpredictable.

Disciplines within the performing arts often work within the boundaries of established traditions and protocols expected for audience engagement. This has resulted in challenges for contemporary performance artists, who sometimes experience difficulty publicising, funding and even finding audiences for their works.

Back in time – reinterpreting and restaging

How is the intangible then collected and exhibited? As an ephemeral medium, documentation of performance is crucial to it entering the canon of art history, however in recent times artists and curators have chosen to re-stage performance in order to allow audiences the opportunity to experience artworks that were intended for live audiences.

While this is great in theory, the context and intended audience of the work is inevitably different in the restaging, and necessitates some forms of reinterpretation, adaptation and distance from the original; historic material is often used as stimulus for such reinventions for contemporary times.

At the Embassy of Translation (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia), Adam Linder presents Some Proximity as part of his larger body of work ‘Choreographic Services’, in which an art writer and two dancers are hired on an hourly wage to transform critical reflections about the museum context into choreographic form. Here the artist physically enacts the choreographic and performance process in real time, responding to texts, architecture and people in front of a live audience. Artist, performer and audience become aware of their roles and with this format, Linder emphasises the importance, necessity and value of choreography’s role in performance. By putting these services ‘to work’ and by being ‘on display’ the institutional and economic aspects and challenges of performance are made known.

For the 20th Biennale, Lee Mingwei will transform Picasso’s iconic 1937 mural Guernica at the Embassy of Disappearance (Carriageworks), translating the original as a floor installation in sand. Audiences can experience Guernica in Sand from a viewing platform until midway through the exhibition when Lee Mingwei and his assistants will sweep the sand – not only to erase the history and symbolism of Guernica, but also in an act of creation arising from this process of destruction, where a new abstract work is produced. The ways in which we construct and memorise history are explored in the transformation of this malleable material, reminding us of the impermanence of objects, histories and our lives to some degree– perhaps there’s something hopeful in that.

Blurred boundaries – bodies and objects

The artworld typically positions artworks as objects, while performance on the other hand uses time and the moving body as temporal events. The recent proliferation of performance works prompt us to consider questions such

In the moment – improvisation and choreography

Restaging performance highlights its importance and necessity as a legitimate form

9

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016


Lee Mingwei, 'Guernica in Sand', 2006 and 2015, mixed-media interactive installation, sand, wooden island, lighting, 1300 x 643 cm. Courtesy of JUT Museum Pre-Opening Office, Taipei. Photograph: Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Lee Mingwei, 'Guernica in Sand', 2006 and 2015, mixed-media interactive installation, sand, wooden island, lighting, 1300 x 643 cm. Courtesy of JUT Museum Pre-Opening Office, Taipei. Photograph: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei

10

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

as: what is left for the art object? what is the value of an art object? and how are art objects positioned in relation to performance?

Objects can also feature in spaces occupied by the physical body as a way of facilitating and shaping the performance event. Objects can choreograph the movement of audience members in space and across time, making the viewer an integral component to the realisation of the work.

relationships of the medium in contemporary visual arts.

RESOURCES 20th Biennale of Sydney Education Kits Performance Art, Tate Marina Abramović Education Kit, Kaldor Public Art Projects

The work of acclaimed dancer and choreographer William Forsythe simultaneously questions and reinvents the parameters of dance. Forsythe will present his work Nowhere and everywhere at the same time at the Embassy of the Real (Cockatoo Island) – a low-lying constellation of small, suspended, hanging pendulums, swaying gently and slowly – with the audience invited to move in and around this gravitated field.

Visitors will take their cue from the choreographic objects that will coordinate an improvised path and set of movements, as the viewer becomes acutely aware of their body in space, unconsciously and rhythmically dancing as a performer in the work.

Performance Art and Cultural Amnesia, Das Platforms

The 20th Biennale of Sydney: The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed is open from 18 March – 5 June 2016 at Cockatoo Island, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace, Mortuary Station and Carriageworks. Additionally, artist projects and public programs are presented around the city, with performance works by such artists as Justene Williams with Sydney Chamber Opera, Mette Edvardsen, Neha Choksi, Boris Charmatz and boychild.

Summary

Artworks such as these, featuring in the 20th Biennale can be investigated in the classroom to consider performance at its most fundamental level and how it is represented in the artworld. Investigations could include what it means to collect and re-stage performance; how performance is viewed and valued; and how objects can facilitate performance and audience engagement. Analysing performance and its plethora of manifestations in this manner will serve to inspire and challenge students to understand the impact, context and

To cite this article: Ambados, A. (2016). Performance and the 20th Biennale of Sydney. In R. Kirsten (Ed.) artVoices: Occasional Papers in Visual Arts Education NSW. 1 (2) 6-11. Sydney, Australia.

Retrieved from https://issuu.com/artvoices

11

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

NEGOTIATING THE RELATIONAL UNIVERSE Examining the conceptual framework in Taiwan

SUEANNE MATTHEWS Sueanne Matthews was the 2014 recipient of the NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarship – Contemporary Asian Art, sponsored by the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and the Nelson Meers Foundation. Sueanne focused her study on contemporary artists in Taiwan.

What took me to Taiwan was my own experience with the agencies of the artworld in January 2014, while I was traveling throughout Malaysia and Singapore. During my time in Singapore I attended Art Stage Singapore – a major art fair with a focus on contemporary Asian art. Held in the Marina Bay Sands Convention and Exhibition centre, the 2014 iteration of Art Stage Singapore represented 158 galleries from around the world, and, for the first time featured curated Art Platforms from countries including Australia and Taiwan.

Rudy Tseng, Curator of Taiwan Platform, Art Stage Singapore stated at the time: “Taiwan is known for its advancement in technology, which many artists are relying on. The complex colonial background of Taiwan has influenced artists drastically and becomes the major inspiration for their works” (Art Stage Singapore: Made in Taiwan, 2014 ¶ 2).

Like Australia, Taiwan is an island with a colonial past. How this culture, geography and history are interrogated through the works of contemporary artists and interpreted by

12

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

Sueanne Matthews with Dr Gene Sherman at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

curators was the focus of my study for the NSW Premier ’s Teacher Scholarship – Contemporary Asian Art, undertaken in January 2015.

a significant event in Taiwanese democratic history with the 585-hour student occupation of the Legislative Yuan chamber, protesting an attempt to pass a unilateral Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement without the clauseby-clause review procedure established in 2013. The students left the legislative chamber on 10 April at 6:00pm following long negotiations and significant response from the international community.

The artists I interviewed were a mix of midcareer and emerging artists whose trajectory, as mapped through journals and articles, was considered to be on the rise. Each artist had experiences outside the world of Taiwan that influenced their practice, their relationship to culture and the response to the geography of Taiwan.

Glenn Smith, an independent Taipei-based journalist noted “The Sunflower kids are firmly rooted in the present, with an eye toward the future. They signal the arrival of a new generation of political thinkers who no longer comfortably fit under the tired political labels of KMT or DPP, and foreign observers will need to incorporate them into their calculus of Taiwan politics” (Smith, 2014).

During the interviews I conducted on my study tour, the Sunflower Movement was inevitably

Taiwanese artists are keenly aware of the tenuous position Taiwan has with China. In speaking with artists during my study tour, the Sunflower Movement of 2014 emerged as an important turning point in political and cultural confidence in Taiwan.

The Sunflower Movement began with the events of 18 March – 10 April 2014. It marked

13

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

Wei Hui Hsu, ‘Unfinished Journey’ (details), 2014, installation in three rooms at MOCA, Taipei.

Photographs: Sueanne Matthews

14

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

mentioned by many of the artists. As one interviewee stated, “We are not China, we are Taiwan. We are not Chinese, we are Taiwanese.” (personal communication, 2015).

Toyota SUV in pink Chinese brocade material, photographing it in snowy streets of the American mid-west, a cultural juxtaposition reflecting her own dislocation.

Other themes that emerged from the works and artist interviews, include those relating to: • culture • community • domestic dwellings • geography.

Unfinished Journey was Wei Hui Hsu’s solo exhibition at MOCA Taipei. This three-room installation speaks volumes about the universal expectation that women will partner and bear children. Unfinished Journey explores the tension of family expectation and the need for the artist to further develop conceptually. The use of unusual materials such as chunks of broken asphalt, specifically commissioned clock hands and cosmetic facial masks are combined in the installation and performance events of this solo show. Family, community, culture are all key factors in WeiHui Hsu’s practice. Wei-Hui Hsu recently installed a new solo exhibition at Taitung Art Museum, Unknown Depths, featuring two thousand white T-shirts installed in waves and lit to simulate the ocean.

These themes were distilled and enhanced as a consequence of each artist’s experience of overseas residencies, with the act of living away from Taiwan heightening the intensity of personal experience, connection to culture, community, domestic dwelling and geography.

Each of these components also find an intersection through the agencies represented in the Conceptual Framework, providing a number of ways to understand the work of contemporary artists in Taiwan.

Gao Yuan – Tattoos, Babies and the Madonna

The Artists Wei-Hui Hsu – An Unfinished Journey

The art of Wei-Hui Hsu is intertwined with her identity as a Taiwanese woman. Wei-Hui Hsu has completed two overseas residencies overseas in the United States of America.

Whilst studying in Savannah, Georgia, she developed the alter ego Guerrilla Girls, hundreds of small, powerful figures, installed throughout the gallery space and the public spaces, such as toilets and foyers. The plurality of these talismans represented her determination as a young Taiwanese woman to stand up to the threat of crime in Georgia.

This theme has been extended in other works such as Far away from home - Errant Alien Girl – a series of installations where she dressed a

Taiwanese born photographer Gao Yuan has recently returned to the country of her birth after living in New York for many years. The culture of Taiwan however, has never left her practice whether it be the tattooed portraits of Chinese gangsters, the nude photography of Chinese tattooed women or her portraits of Chinese dissident artist Ai WeiWei. Shortly after our meeting in Taipei, Gao Yuan was off to Florence to open an exhibition of her 2008-2009 photographic series Twelve Moons, a series depicting twelve Chinese mothers, their twelve children, and the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. In this series she endeavoured to imbue contemporary Taiwanese art with the same gravitas and

15

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

meaning as Renaissance portraits of Madonna and Child. The children are embellished with the Chinese lunar symbol of their mother’s birth year, the small tattoos an incongruous addition to the fleshy rolls of the naked babies.

In more recent work, Gao Yuan has moved away from the photographic medium, with performance and painting becoming her areas of interest.

money, have a good life, but they don’t see that we are all accomplices in the same crime, which is taking this city to the future down an obscure path (M. Wu, personal communication, 2015).

At the time of our meeting Mali Wu had just completed a project in Kaohsiung at the Pier 2 Arts Precinct – a once industrialised precinct by the port. The former shipping warehouse buildings are now being transformed into an arts hub, including exhibition spaces, artist studios and residences, shops, restaurants, cafes and bars, as well as an outdoor sculpture park, which is being actively embraced and used by the local community.

Mali Wu – Community, stories and changing behaviour

Mali Wu is a diminutive but powerfully engaging artist. Her practice falls outside the boundaries of the gallery walls, focusing on the environment, community, education and collaboration. Her core question as an artist is ‘How does a person comfortably exist with an environment?’ (M. Wu, personal communication, 2015).

Goang-Ming Yuan – An Uncanny Tomorrow – Drones, Dwellings and Disobedience

Goang-Ming Yuan studied at the Institute of Media Arts in Frankfurt and received a Diploma in Media Arts from the Staatlich Hochschule fur Gestaltung, Karlsruhe, Germany, during which time he developed work based on the writings of Martin Heidegger.

Mali Wu returned to Taiwan from Germany in 1986, and found that Taiwan was re-inventing itself after a period of martial law. In this context, she began using art as a means to facilitate conversations about issues such as women’s rights, environmental degradation and pollution.

Mali Wu has subsequently focused her work on community groups – addressing issues of climate change, rising sea levels, environmental pollution, and cultural loss of knowledge. Wu stated to me in interview:

Much of Goang-Ming Yuan’s work is framed around concepts of family, community, and culture, in and near his home in New Taipei City. At our time of meeting, the artist had just completed a major exhibition at Tina Keng Gallery, titled Uncanny Tomorrow.

On the one hand I criticise the government, on the other hand I wish to stimulate artists and architects to reflect on what they are doing.

When artists take government cases, are they aware what they are involved in? Artists might think that they make wonderful art, earn

Two new works however, Dwelling (2014) and The 561st Hour of Occupation (2014), could not be more different to the artist’s body of work. Dwelling (2014) is the result of two years of careful experimentation with model making, aquariums and explosives. Making a reflective

16

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

Goang-ming Yuan, ‘Dwelling’, 2014, Single channel video 2 still. Photograph: Sueanne Matthews

17

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

statement about commodification of ubiquitous IKEA furnishings, Dwelling (2014), is a video loop in which a seemingly perfect living room explodes and then reassembles. The work simultaneously expresses ideas about anxiety and contentment with family life, marriage and domestic spaces.

Tape Music is a performance with many iterations. Participants sit in circles and pass an embroidered tape between them, uttering the sounds of the words embroidered on the tape. Graphic notations are hung on the wall at IT Park – the artist’s delicate renderings of sound, colour and shape that are translated to embroidered tape, with intervals between characters of length dictated by the artist.

Every decision is carefully considered by the artist, up until the point of performance, when the outcome is left to participant interpretation.

Lin Chiwei debuted new work on 20 June 2015 in London as part of the Musarc Festival -– Tape music. Score for Musarc (2015).

The other work, The 561st Hour of Occupation (2014), was made in response to an invitation from students to document the student occupation of the legislative Yuan in March and April 2014. It is through his lens as artist that Goang-Ming Yuan captured one hour of the occupation, erasing and reinserting student’s into footage of the chamber. Scored with a slowed soundtrack of the Taiwanese National Anthem, this work poses questions about Taiwan’s political status.

Huangti Lin – continuing conversation as practice

Huangti Lin invited me to the Paint House studio in Tainan, explaining that it was once a studio artist run space that has evolved to a platform for artists to meet and discuss, and contemplate the question, ‘What is Art?’ Huangti Lin developed the idea during a residency in the United States (2014).

We climbed the stairs to the rooftop platform – a literal and conceptual platform for discussion – before Huangti Lin led me to the One Room Project, a space for artists to stay overnight and be involved in dialogues that contribute to a ‘comprehensive eco-system’ of ideas rather than the ‘quantifiable business exchange in official exhibitions’ (Lin, 2015, personal communication).

Drones are an emerging technology for the video artist and were used extensively in the work Landscape of Energy (2014), which juxtaposes Taiwan’s nuclear power industry with a school built adjacent to the power plant on Orchid Island. Once again, in this work the artist questions the stability of everyday lives in Taiwan. Landscape of Energy is currently a key work of the Biennale de Lyon curated by Ralph Rugoff.

Lin Chiwei – linguistics, sound and collaboration

As a sound artist Lin Chiwei straddles spaces between the visual arts and the performing arts. However, upon meeting Lin Chiwei at his solo exhibition, Tape Music 2004-2013 at IT Park, Taipei’s oldest artist run space, it is very clear that the artist uses visual language to develop and communicate the concepts of community and linguistics evident in the performance works Tape Music.

In addition to this aspect of his practice Huangti Lin has painting, drawing, photography and sculptural practice, stemming from experiences during mandatory military service in the Air-force. Aircraft, space ships, guns and missiles are reimagined in a range of media, questioning privacy and safety of citizens, and ongoing aerial surveillance of the islands geography. Examples of his large-

18

artVoices

Vol 1, No. 2, 2016

scale wooden sculptures are currently on show in Tainan Arts Village, Seeing for Wood exhibition.

scene in Taiwan. The transcripts, descriptions and photographs of my study tour can be found on my website.

Negotiating the relational universe in Taiwan

Currently, I am exploring the many threads and lines of inquiry from my study tour as I develop visual arts case studies. I am planning to return to Taiwan in March-April 2016, to continue my research and gather more firsthand accounts from these artists to further inform the case studies I develop.

In addition to interviewing artists I also interviewed curators, educators and gallery directors. These interviews as well as the exhibitions and projects I visited, form another line of inquiry in my study about responses to environment and climate change. This investigation was underpinned by the theme of t h e 2 0 1 4 Ta i p e i B i e n n i a l , T h e G r e a t Acceleration, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud. A tribute to the co-activity amongst humans and animals, plants and objects, which highlighted an exploration of the geological epoch ‘The Anthropocene’ through contemporary art.

Bourriaud explains as an introduction to the Biennial:

REFERENCES Artsy, (2014). Art Stage Singapore: Made in Taiwan. Retrieved 29 January 2016 from https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorialdead-at-87-thornton-dial-was-not-just-a-giantof-outsider-art-but-a-towering-figure-of-arthistory Bourriaud, N. (2014) The Great Acceleration.

In Taipei Biennial Catalogue 2014. Retrieved 29 January 2016 from http:// w w w . t f a m . m u s e u m / F i l e / Exhibition%5CMain%5C511%5C20140924181 90785745.pdf

The concept of the Anthropocene also points to a paradox: The more powerful and real the collective impact of a species is, the less contemporary individuals feel capable of influencing their surrounding reality... We are witnessing the collapse of the ‘human scale’...

(Bourriaud, 2014).

Smith, G. (2014). Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement. Retrieved 21 January, 2015 from http://fpif.org/taiwans-sunflower-movement/

Summary

To cite this article:

Taiwan is a small island with a complex history, an uneasy relationship with China, a determined future and a fascinating contemporary arts practice. What I discovered is a country where contemporary art is valued and responsive to culture and geography.

Matthews, S. (2016). Negotiating the relational universe: Examining the conceptual framework in Taiwan. In R. Kirsten (Ed.) artVoices: Occasional Papers in Visual Arts Education NSW. 1 (2) 12-20. Sydney, Australia. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/artvoices

An important component of my participation in the NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarship program was the collection of authentic firsthand knowledge about the contemporary art

19

artVoices: Occasional Papers in Visual Arts Education NSW Vol. 1 No. 2, 2016

Published February 2016, Sydney, Australia © Rah Kirsten (Editor) and contributing authors 2016