Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014

Join us on March 12 To Celebrate the Publication of Asia Through Art and Anthropology
When SavanhdaryVongpoothorn, a Canberra-based artist of Lao heritage, will be In Conversation with co-editor Olivier Krischer, and Professor Howard Morphy.


About the Book:

How has Asia been imagined, represented and transferred both literally and visually across linguistic, geopolitical and cultural boundaries?

Asia Through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation Across Borders explores the shifting roles of those who produce, critique and translate creative forms and practices, for which distinctions of geography, ethnicity, tradition and modernity have become fluid. Drawing on accounts of modern and contemporary art, film, literature, fashion and performance, this book challenges established assumptions of the cultural products of Asia.

Special attention is given to the role of cultural translators, or 'long-distance cultural specialists'—including but not limited to visual artists—whose works bridge or traverse different worlds. Based on a significant conference held at the the Australian National University in 2010.

In addition to contributions from internationally renowned scholars of Asian art and culture, including art historian John Clark and anthropologist Clare Harris, Asia Through Art and Anthropology presents fresh voices in the field. Importantly, the book includes essays by three artists who share personal accounts of their experiences creating and showing artworks that negotiate diverse cultural contexts, including Savandhary Vongpoothorn, a Canberra-based artist of Lao heritage, who joins co-editor Olivier Krischer, as well as Professor Howard Morphy, in conversation, surrounding the development of her perforated paper works and her recent research to bridge Lao and Indian traditions or art and religion.

Speaker Profiles

Olivier Krischer is a postdoctoral fellow with the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University, researching the reception of Chinese contemporary art in Japan during the 1980-90s. He was formerly an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, where he previously completed a doctoral thesis on early twentieth-century Sino-Japanese art relations, in 2010. He was the managing editor of ArtAsiaPacific magazine in 2011-12, based in Hong Kong. In 2011 he also curated “After Effect”, at the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn is an artist based in Canberra. Since her first show in Sydney in 1992, she has participated in numerous exhibitions and artist residencies across Australia and internationally. Her works are part of important private and public collections, including the Queensland Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia. She holds a BA from the University of Western Sydney and an MA from the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts, both in visual arts. In 2013 she was invited to participate in an artist's retreat in Jaipur, India, organised by the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne. In 2006, Vongpoothorn was commissioned to create a major new work for “Zones of Contact”, the 15th Biennale of Sydney. She is currently studying the traditional technique of miniature painting, seeking to bridge boundaries between India and Laos, through cartographies and narrative traditions—such as the Lao retelling of the Ramayana Phra Lak Phra Lam, or Rama Jataka.

Howard Morphy is Professor of Anthropology and was formerly the director of the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University. Prior to returning to the Australian National University in 1997, he held the chair in Anthropology at University College London, and was a curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, for ten years. He is an anthropologist of art and visual anthropologist having co-edited two of the key source books in these fields: The Anthropology of Art: a Reader (2006, Blackwell, with Morgan Perkins) and Rethinking Visual Anthropology (1997, Yale University Press, with Marcus Banks). His extensive writings on Australian Aboriginal art include: Yolngu Art, Ancestral Connections (Chicago 1991), the general survey Aboriginal Art (Phaidon, 1998) and more recently Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-Cultural Categories (Berg, 2007). He has also produced a pioneering multimedia biography The Art of Narritjin Maymuru with Pip Deveson and Katie Hayne (ANU epress 2005). With Frances Morphy he helped prepare the Blue Mud Bay Native Title Claim which as a result of the 2008 High Court judgement recognised Indigenous ownership of the waters over the intertidal zone under the Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act.

The publication of the color plates of works by Phaptawan Suwannakudt and Savanhdary Vongpoothorn is funded by the Australian Artist's Grant, a National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) initiative, made possible through the generous sponsorship of Mrs. Janet Holmes Ä Court and the support of the Visual Arts Board, Australia Council for the Arts.


When: 6pm Wednesday March 12th, 2014

Where: Asia Bookroom, Unit 2, 1 - 3 Lawry Place, Macquarie. ACT

RSVP: By 11th of March, either by phoning 6251 5191 or Email Us

Admission by gold coin donation to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation

This is an event not to be missed, but, if you can't join us on the 12th of March and would like to buy a copy, let us know as it can easily be arranged.