Nikhil Chopra
Takashi Kuribayashi
Intimate Publics
Born Kolkata 1974; lives and works in Mumbai Yog Raj Chitrakar visits Lal Chowk 2007 Digital video 12:50 minutes Courtesy of the artist Photo: Sujan Chitrakar
Born Nagasaki 1968; lives and works in Kanagawa Nepal Yatai Trip 2011 Mixed media. Filmed by Rai Shizuno 26:48 minutes Courtesy of the artist
Curated by Utopia @ Asialink in association with Melbourne Festival and Fehily Contemporary.
Daniel Crooks
Born Singapore 1973; lives and works in Singapore All Lines Flow Out 2011 Single channel HD video 21:43 minutes Edition 1/3 + AP Singapore Art Museum Collection
Born Hastings, New Zealand 1973; lives and works in Melbourne Static No.17 (algorithm P) 2011 HD digital video, 16:9, 1080p24, Stereo 4:33 minutes Courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney / Melbourne
Larissa Hjorth Born London 1971; lives and works in Melbourne CU 2009 Mobile phone stills from video 5:53 minutes Courtesy of the artist
Masaru Iwai Born Kyoto 1975; lives and works in Tokyo Old Japanese House – Introduction / Flag Cleaning 2010 Full HD video with sound 4:30 minutes / 1:36 minutes Courtesy of the artist
Amar Kanwar Born New Delhi 1964; lives and works in New Delhi A Love Story 2010 Video, colour, sound. Camera: Dilip Varma. Editing: Sameera Jain 5:37 minutes Commissioned by the Independent Cinema Office and LUX, England Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris / New York
Image (top): Takashi Kuribayashi Nepal Yatai Trip 2011 (still) Courtesy of the artist
Image (bottom): Larissa Hjorth From Micronarrative series 2005-2011 (still) Courtesy of the artist
Charles Lim
Minouk Lim Born Daejeon 1968; lives and works in Seoul S.O.S. – Adoptive Dissensus 2009 Single channel HD video with sound 17:00 minutes (excerpt from 46:13 minutes) Courtesy of the artist
Tran Luong Born Vietnam 1960; lives and works in Vietnam Red Scarf / Welts 2010 Single channel HD video 2:51 minutes Unique edition Singapore Art Museum Collection Photo: Jean-Louis Morisot
Jewyo Rhii Born Seoul 1971; lives and works in Seoul and New York Lie on the Han River 2003-2006 Single channel HD video with sound 9:58 minutes Courtesy of the artist
Artists: Nikhil Chopra, Daniel Crooks, Larissa Hjorth, Masaru Iwai, Amar Kanwar, Takashi Kuribayashi, Charles Lim, Minouk Lim, Tran Luong and Jewyo Rhii. Curatorium: Yusaku Imamura (Tokyo Wonder Site), Sunjung Kim (Co-Artistic Director Gwangju Biennale 2012), Natalie King (Asialink), Deeksha Nath (curator/writer, New Delhi), Tan Boon Hui (Singapore Art Museum). 13 October to 5 November 2011 Fehily Contemporary 3a Glasshouse Road Collingwood VIC 3066 Australia T: +61 3 9017 0860 www.fehilycontemporary.com.au First published 2011 Adrian Karnowski Design Edition of 1000 Technical assistant: Will McCallum © 2011 the author, Asialink and artists. ISBN 978 0 7340 4743 4 Asialink 4th Floor Sidney Myer Asia Centre The University of Melbourne Parkville VIC 3010 Australia T: +61 3 8344 4800 F: +61 3 9347 1768 www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au
intimate publ
intimate publics
intimate publ
intimate publics When Korean artist Minouk Lim was preparing for her elegiac nighttime performance on a ferry along the Han River in Seoul, she asked herself three questions: What should I do to live in your life? What should I do to make our relationships work? Or how should we come across and fall apart? These questions of empathy and connectivity inform the Utopia enterprise and associated exhibition, Intimate Publics. An inclusive and itinerant platform for engagement, Utopia is a network of cities that converse and collaborate including Melbourne, Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul and New Delhi.
Utopia as Cultural Insurgency
Intimate Publics
After extensive regional consultation (New Delhi, Singapore, Hong Kong...), Utopia has evolved to become an agile and peripatetic model that infiltrates existing activities such as biennales, art fairs and conferences. Utopia operates as an incubator for cross-cultural ideas, thinking and working methodologies. This nomadic model of encounter is evolving and flexible, responsive and generative. Utopia aspires to stimulate a collaborative and consultative working method connecting diverse geo-political regions and communities. Given the proliferation of biennales, Utopia seeks to be an alternative model of encounter between communities, cities and geographies that is founded on collegiality and reciprocity. Utopia is a propositional and elastic structure that develops affinities with existing systems.
As social, geo-social and mobile media render the intimate public and the public intimate, what is the impact on art practice and politics? Curated by Utopia, Intimate Publics is an exhibition of video works that delve into the revelatory world of intimacy within public spaces, probing the effect that the ever-present social media has on our public expression of emotion. Each Utopia collaborator proposes two single-channel video works for inclusion in a program of moving images. We invited contributions at the intersection of art and connectivity within the public sphere. In an era of rapid information access, how can we find meaningful and enduring ways to relate? With the saturation of social media, notions of trust, surveillance and intimacy are changing dramatically. In this milieu whereby the aesthetics of everyday life is increasingly shaped by the technocultural, Intimate Publics uncovers an array of approaches to these dilemmas from emotive gestures, political performances and poignant encounters. Natalie King, Director of Utopia @ Asialink
Image (left): Tran Luong Red Scarf / Welts 2010 (still) Singapore Art Museum Collection Photo: Jean-Louis Morisot
Image (above): Amar Kanwar A Love Story 2010 (still) Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris / New York
Image (above): Daniel Crooks Static No.17 (algorithm P) 2011 (still) Courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney / Melbourne
Image (top): Jewyo Rhii Love seat 2005 Digital photo Courtesy of the artist
Image (middle): Minouk Lim S.O.S. - Adoptive Dissensus 2009 (still) Courtesy of the artist
Image (bottom): Charles Lim All Lines Flow Out 2011 (still) Singapore Art Museum Collection
Image (above): Nikhil Chopra Yog Raj Chitrakar visits Lal Chowk 2007 (still) Courtesy of the artist Photo: Sujan Chitrakar
Image (front cover): Masaru Iwai Old Japanese House – Introduction / Flag Cleaning 2010 (still) Courtesy of the artist