http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/theotherapt

online launch – December 1, 2009

‘the other APT‘, a multi-art form exhibition produced to coincide with and respond to the Queensland Art Gallerys Asia Pacific Triennial, with a similar focus – of art within the Asia-Pacific region. However, in the interest of protocol, best practice and inclusiveness, artworks were sought locally, within Australia, to highlight the fact that we have an interesting hybrid mix of artists, right here, right now, and are also in dialogue with the first people of Australia.

Presented by cyberTribe which has a decade of history in online curating, the other APT for 2009 is only featured as an online exhibition allowing access for far-reaching audiences internationally. Curator Jenny Fraser says of the exhibition “The primary curatorial premise of the other APT is to show artworks from Indigenous Australian Artists, and also show meaningful works from other Artists that may constitute them as a friend in culture and good visitor to this country, in meaningful dialogue and otherwise. In other words, Aboriginals actively engaging with each other, and those from other cultural backgrounds – Torres Strait Islander, Australian South Sea Islander, Maori, Samoan, Fijian, Tongan, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino and others, providing a true survey and commenting on individual and shared experience. Naturally some of these works are collaborations – existing works, and also works produced especially for the other APT, but all really important discourse, culturally and historically.

the other APT from 2006 was also selected for inclusion in the 2008 Biennale of Sydney. As part of the Biennale, Revolutions – Forms That Turn, Artistic Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev selected digital artworks and texts to be featured in its Online Venue. The exhibition as a whole and the Online Venue particularly, focussed on the different ways artists have ‘revolutionised’ contemporary art. It explored the impulse to revolt, rotating, turning upside down, shifting points of view, revolving, mirroring and reversing as formal devices, as well as chart their broader aesthetic, psychological, psychoanalytical, radical and political perspectives.

“Being acknowledged in the Biennale of Sydney has again brought great importance to the relevance of online galleries as an exhibition venue”, said artist/curator Jenny Fraser.

the other APT from 2006 also toured to the Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Noumea, New Caledonia in 2008 which was a great success.

Critique from 2006:

“We all try to mediate the spaces in-between these binaries and I cannot help but imagine the Other APT in these terms. Mediating the social and cultural imaginaries of Indigeneity, it plots a landscape where tradition and disenfranchisement overlap and contradict each other and these inconsistencies intersect the exhibition’s themes of place, legend, identity, politics and mutual respect.”

Kylie Gaffney

The Other APT: An Exhibition of Other Perspectives

One of the nagging criticisms of Brisbane’s hugely successful Asia Pacific Triennale has been their handling of ‘the Aboriginal problem’ and finding a space for the Asian and Pacific within us; those local Australian societies of Asian and Pacific heritage who have had a long and deep relationship with our national identity; though often folded/secreted within. Finding a credible comfortable conceptual space and opportunity for local participation rather than artist heroes from major economic giants of the region has lingered as a quandary of what has otherwise been a major achievement.

Djon Mundine OAM – Indigenous Curator, Contemporary Art, Campbelltown Art Centre.

APT: Aboriginal People Try – ‘The other APT’

Artlink Magazine, March 2007

For more information please visit:

http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/theotherapt

http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org

from artist / curator Jenny Fraser

http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/jennyfraser