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Friday, October 3rd, 2003
THAI PROJECT
“Last month I attended the “Overseas International Workshop” In Bangkok Thailand. The project brought together 4 Thai artists with 4 overseas artists with the intention of creating bonds between artists of diverse cultures but overlapping visions/work practises. as with many AOE’s it was as much about dialogue, kinship and shared experience as it was about discrete objects and their display.
| This project was not strictly speaking an “artist organised event”, as it was funded by Silpakorn University, but in the absence of a central curatorial direction it did turn into one! Interesting to see how issues which would in the traditionally structured art event be resolved by the curator were resolved by the artists. My project was a collaborative work with renown Thai artist Kamol Phaosavardi, we spent 2 weeks excavating roots around trees in the garden and then used the clay to remodel root networks in the gallery space. To take a look at the work, go to:
www.richardthomas.com.au/roots.htm Kamol and I were fortunate to have the very capable presence of New York based curator Karen Lim, who initially invited me to the show and became a defacto co-ordinator. We also had 3 wonderful assistants who dedicated themselves to the project for the duration. As has been my experience in previous AOE’s such as Construction in Process (I co-ordinated ‘Construction in Process (The Bridge)’ in 1998 and Cambio Constante, the artists in this project quickly formed empathy and repoire -a sense of being a small provisional community. |
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To attend projects such as this periodically reaffirms our strength and creativity as artists. The sense that we are part of a global brother and sisterhood is the great gift of such events, and allows us to return home renewed and refreshed and able to continue despite the mundanity and possibly isolation of our daily lives.