Category Archives: asia-pacific

Oceania: From Melbourne to Papeete

asia pacific, asia-pacific, collections, Equity, essays, photographers, photography, Visual Arts, , ,

Revisiting  a 2019 entry to an exhibition catalogue

This piece was a difficult piece to write. The requirement was to survey 19th century photography across the Pacific in a few hundred words. Many hours were spent reducing the entry and making decisions on what to leave out — reluctantly!   If I ever find the time I may revisit this and make it a much longer piece with all the extras inserted back in. Wishful thinking maybe? Here’s the original piece.

George Silk

asia-pacific, essays, photographers, photography, , , ,

The iconic 1942 New Guinea photograph

I have uploaded a piece on the iconic George Silk 1942 photograph of the Papuan carrier Raphael Oimbari assisting Private George Whittington. I have also included research “After The Photograph” using a selection of memorial sculptures that have been influenced by the Silk photograph.   Click here for the online essays.

Hélène Hoppenot

asia-pacific, Equity, essays, photographers, photography, Visual Arts, women, , ,

Following my research, collection acquisitions and exhibition on Southeast Asian photography while at the National Gallery of Australia, in 2014 I wrote a piece about Hélène Hoppenot and 1930s women modernist photographers in Southeast Asia. Till now this essay has been unpublished. It is now online — click here — more or less unchanged from the 2014 version with a few notes and links added.

 

camera chic

asia-pacific, collections, essays, photography, Visual Arts, , ,

East West Chic

In 2017  The Asia Art Society of Australia (TAASA) hosted a seminar of East West Chic.
I presented a talk on Camera Chic based on a collection we had put together – with fun pictures from  Asian studio portraiture. The collection highlighted the fusion of East and West evident in dress, accessories, and studio backdrops. Click here for more

Make sure you see the link to the powerpoint slides with loads of photographs to enjoy.

Walter Woodbury

asia-pacific, essays, photo-exhibitions, photographers, photography, , , , ,

Entrepreneur, Inventor: Woodbury in Indonesia

I have uploaded a small essay I wrote in 2014 about Walter Woodbury in Indonesia. This essay was linked to the exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia — Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s-1940s. Click here for my essay online.

There’s also another small essay online that relates to a photograph — the one above — titled Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano c.1858 . Click here for that essay.

————————   

For the list of my essays (being updated) click here

 

Curatorland

asia-pacific, collections, essays, photo-exhibitions, photography, , , , , , 
Writing in the Rain, FX Harsono - Still from colour video 2011  Collection National Gallery of Australia

Following my leaving the National Gallery in September 2014, I was asked by the editor of the Journal of the Asian Arts Society Australia to write about my last decade at the gallery — the decade that saw the establishment of a survey collection of Asia-Pacific photography spanning from South Asia to the west coast of the Americas.

The new collection was largely based around major collections acquired from several major private collections of Asia-Pacific photography including one of some 5000 colonial-era Indonesian photographs.

Here’s that story — click here

————————

For the list of my other essays (being updated) click here

 

National Gallery Singapore

asia pacific, asia-pacific, essays, photography, publications, Visual Arts, , , , ,
CHARTING THOUGHTS: ESSAYS ON ART IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

A new research book has been published by the National Gallery of Singapore. It contains essays on Southeast Asian art by 25 scholars.

I was given the honour by the NGS of being one the contributing scholars.

The book is available from the NGS shop and through their website — click here.

Continue reading National Gallery Singapore →

The curatorial crypt

asia-pacific, photography

Steve McCurry — Sharbat Gula

743ceafe-66bb-4f83-a4ae-ebf4bf9c9480-1360x2040A sad story indeed about the woman in the famous Steve McCurry/National Geographic photograph. The original photograph was a 1984 cover for National Geographic.

There’s a 2015 report that Sharbat Gula, the subject of the original photograph, is in trouble because she remains a refugee from Afghanistan, but was carrying a Pakistan identify card.

Please click on the image to the right for the link to the story.