Orientalism/Australianess

Orientalism Austrialianess 1

Orientalism Austrialianess

Foon Ling Kong 's essay questions the suggestion that the relationship between Australia and Asia was one defined by tension within Australian settler culture , which elaborates that changes had developed between those settler Australians for whom geography was dominant , who wanted to become Australiasians (Chiu , 2005 :9 , part of the Asia-Pacific hemisphere , and those for whom history , and their British identity dominated all else . Thus how Australians defined themselves determined their view of Asia . It is precisely these two conditions ?geography and history ?that continue

to impact Australia 's relations with the Asian region . Australia is somewhat caught between the geographic and economic imperative of a regionalized contemporary period and the historical legacy of a post-colonial `Western ' past . If Australia 's identity and self-image are to change , they must therefore do so in a way that locates Australia in the Asia-Pacific hemisphere . Foong Ling Kong also questioned whether traveling alone really allowed one to know another culture . But perhaps more troubling was the appropriation of Asian influences through European or American art . For me , it can be further explained through the attraction of Australian artists to Asian art . One such example was the Australian artist Brett Whiteley who discovered Japanese ink painting and began to sign his name with a red seal when he was in New York . Indeed this model of exchange , which in reality is a series of sometimes unrelated influences , was reflected in most of the exhibitions in the first half of the nineties . Most notable amongst these is Out of Asia (Ang , 2000 :24

Out of Asia ' was staged at the Heide Art Gallery in Melbourne in 1990 , before going to Sydney and Canberra . The exhibition was curated by Alison Carroll and featured ten contemporary artists including Micky Allan , Tony Clark , Matthys Gerber , Pat Hoffie , Tim Johnson , Geoff Lowe Fiona MacDonald , Susan Norrie , Robert Owen , and Gareth Sansom

Orientalism Austrialianess 2

Carroll 's curatorial rationale attempted to explain how Asia ' had been addressed in the work of Australian artists . She identified two main artistic approaches : the first , artists who had been thinking about `Asia ' for many years , and the second , artists who confirm the notion of an exoticised "other " By focusing on the notion of the exotic other ' in the context of Asia , Out of Asia ' reinvested in the conventional binary division of East and West . Although this has been the conventional approach toward Asia from a Euro-American perspective it is not necessarily an efficient for Australia 's relations with Asia (Ang , 2000 :47

The art work in Out of Asia ' represented an ambivalence toward Asia in varying degrees . Carroll distinguished between artists who adopt Asian influences through the European tradition of chinoiserie and japonisme and those who depicted their own experiences of Asia . However one significant factor that prevented Out of Asia ' from making a strong argument for Asia 's effect on Australian contemporary art was the exclusion of the Asian diaspora . Artists such as John Young and Lindy...