TAASA Review Issues

What better way to dedicate much of this first TAASA Review for 2026 than to cover a range of Asian art exhibitions that members can visit and enjoy?

From the NGA, curators Carol Cains and Shaune Lakin write about their exhibition New Asian Art that draws on works from the national collection acquired over the last decade plus some private loans. It includes video, installation, photographs, textiles and paintings by over 20 artists working individually and in collectives across Asia.

A component of this exhibition that will appeal to many members interested in fashion and design is a group of four garments which represents Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake’s 1990s collaboration with four notable artists in his Pleats Please Guest Artist Series. This is the subject of a welcome second contribution from Carol Cains.

Canberra is also offering Hallyu! The Korean Wave, an exhibition created by the Victoria and Albert Museum, now in its final iteration at the National Museum of Australia following its world tour. As our reviewer Ann Proctor puts it, the whole of this popular exhibition is alive with the energy of Hallyu, the Korean wave of films, drama, music and beauty that has swept the world.

Soo-Min Shim explores the inspiration behind And Still I Rise, an exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW involving 20 culturally and generationally diverse women artists based in Australia working across a dazzling range of media from textiles, painting, metalwork, installation and video. A TAASA tour, guided by the exhibition’s curator Natalie Seiz, has been organised for Thursday 30 April.

At Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, Infinite Scroll / 荧屏沉溺 is a collaboration with 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art that brings together works from Chinese artists born in the late 1980s and 90s for whom, as Thea Baumann points out, digital culture is part of the very environment in which they matured. The exhibition, she writes, is both a reflection and critique of the internet’s pervasive role in shaping attention, perception and identity.

QAGOMA in Brisbane is offering The God of Small Things: Faith and Popular Culture which brings together art from across India and South-East Asia to consider how divine figures move between temple, home and the public sphere, and how popular culture has shaped — and been shaped by — religious iconography. As Abigail Bernal informs us, at the centre of the exhibition is a group of works by Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906), often described as India’s first modern artist, whose synthesis of Indian mythological subjects and European academic realism transformed the visual culture of his time.

This issue also draws attention to an extraordinary display at the National Library of Victoria. For the first time in an Australian public collection, the library holds an example of the world’s oldest securely dated mass-printed text, produced in medieval Japan: the Hyakumantō Darani, one of a million darani (prayers or charms: dharani in Sanskrit) printed at the order of the Empress Shōtoku on her ascension to the throne in 764 CE. Dr Anna Welch, Principal Collection Curator, explains its significance and how this text was acquired.

Of course this TAASA Review offers other articles on a range of topics. Marika Vicziany has been working on the Monash University Koli Research Project investigating the nature of Western Indian Koli culture and economy. We are pleased to be able to include her article based on new, unpublished work about the Saat Aasaraas (Seven Water Spirits) worshipped by the Kolis.

The contemporary work of Sydney-based painter Mei Zhao is covered by Luise Guest who discusses how this artist explores the rich, complex history of Chinese immigration to Australia. Zhao’s recent landscapes trace the now invisible former sites of Chinese market gardens around Manly Vale, Brookvale and Curl Curl in Sydney uncovered through her investigation of archival photographs, old maps, leasehold agreements and government documents.

Some members may have been lucky enough to catch a concert held on 6 September 2025 in the Utzon Room at the Sydney Opera House which brought together musicians, visual artists, performers, poets, composers, filmmakers and designers. Bruce Crossman (whose compositions featured in this performance) and Vincent Tay review this concert, describing it as ‘an innovative and challenging multi-artform event’ that drew inspiration from the concept of Qiyun as an energy that manifested itself in this visual /sonic creation.

Finally, an insightful review of Alison Carroll’s publication Soviet Socialist Realism and Art in the Asia-Pacific offered by Alex Burchmore. This connects with the June 2025 TAASA Review issue devoted to this topic, guest edited by Alison Carroll.