VISUAL ARTS
Art Gallery of Western Australia
24th January 2016
Review by Gabriella Loo
Treasure Ships: Art in the Age of Spices is the first and most extensive historical exhibition of its kind in Australia. Presented by the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), it explores the cross-cultural and artistic exchange between Asia and Europe throughout the spice trade dating from the 15th to 19th century. Touching on the Portuguese acquisition of India, the Dutch infiltration of Indonesia, Japan’s first commercial engagements with the West, and the Makassan trade with Northern Australia, the exhibition showcases an array of invaluable artworks produced in the height of discovery and maritime exploration.
Curators James Bennett and Russell Kelty took over three years to completely assemble the more than 250 internationally-sourced rare artworks featured in Treasure Ships. The fruit of their labours is evident in the exhibition’s complex presentation of historical and religious craftsmanship, which encompasses textiles, ceramics, paintings, furniture, prints and engravings.
Eschewing uniformity, the rich multitude of the collection’s objects succeeds in capturing a vibrant and tumultuous cross-continental period in history. It also offers opportunities to compare works which must have at the time circulated in overlapping economies of trade, yet show different reactions to outside cultural forces. For instance,the work ‘Archery contest (Toshiya) at Sanjusangendo’ (1750) is a unique Japanese painting which combines traditional techniques with the European “invention” of perspective. In contrast, ‘Dutch Trading Ship in Japanese Waters’(1870), is a painting that reflects a nostalgic scene and suggests a yearning for Japan’s secluded past. These two paintings illustrate alternative attitudes towards Western encounters over time.
The exhibition does raise the grim thought that through exploitation and economic empire, the unique identities of Eastern art are commodified so as to be understood by Western society. Yet at the same time, the collection works to consolidate the fragmented cultural identity of Eastern art; emphasizing the progressive virtues of sharing aesthetic influences and craftsmanship.
In some ways, the collection would easily be at home in a museum. However,context of the art gallery reaffirms such historical and religious objects as pertinent artworks, and enables a unique understanding of them as products from a time when foreign worlds mingled, and the globalization truly began.
Treasure Ships lets Perth crowds step outside the hustle and bustle of Fringe and become immersed in an ages-old conversation between Eastern and Western art. Allow a couple of hours to at least graze the surface of this one – you’re in for a visual treat.
Treasure Ships: Art in The Age of Spices runs until the 31st of January 2016. Tickets available at the Art Gallery of Western Australia and on the Fringe World website.
