The Capitals Project: Works On Paper From Seoul

Friday 29 June – Saturday 28 July 2007

ART INTERCHANGE

A Cultural Response From Sydney To Seoul and Back Again

The Capitals Project is a collaborative project established by the Printmaking Departments of the National Art School, Sydney, and Hong-Ik University, Seoul. The exhibition represents the third stage of this ongoing exchange, which began in 2004 between these two major institutions. The partnership stimulates an important cultural dialogue between eminent and emerging artists from these two cities.

The Capitals Project builds on the success of two previous collaborative enterprises Interchange 1 and Interchange 2 initiated by Simon Cooper, Head of the National Art School’s Printmaking Department, and Professor Song Dae Sup, Head of Printmaking Department, Hong-Ik University. The Interchange project is the direct result of artists working in two distant locations, seeking to establish a dialogue that extends beyond their own cultural boundaries and serves to reinforce the communicative capacity of the shared language of printmaking.

Printmaking’s capacity to generate multiple images represents an enduring power to disseminate ideas and images to a broad and diverse audience which is so specific to this medium. Within this area of the visual arts, printmaking also has the capacity to embrace a diversity of media and techniques that utilises traditional methods and the latest technology, from etchings, lithographs, silkscreens, to web-based projects.

This third collaborative project involves 70 participating artists (staff, students and alumni) from each institution who will produce a print based art work in response to photographic images of the capital city that is the geographical home to each respective institution. The images selected range from tourist kitsch to historical documentation. The source images are supplied by the participating artists in each city and represent an act of self-portraiture that is offered for re-consideration by their counterparts.

70 artists from Sydney will produce artworks in response to 70 images of Seoul which will be exhibited in Seoul / 70 artists from Seoul will produce artworks in response to 70 images o Sydney.

The Capitals Project provides a forum for cross-cultural dialogue within the more specific context of the visual arts and seeks to identify a convergent contemporary vision and understanding in the Asia Pacific region that draws upon two significantly different visual arts heritages.

In a contemporary sense printmaking represents a language in a state of continual development where many of the time honoured crafts of a cultural tradition are preserved not simply for their historical curiosity but rather for their inherent ability to continually reflect and address the concerns of a contemporary community.

THE CAPITALS PROJECT is an important international event at the National Art School Gallery and will open to the public on Friday 29 June and run until Saturday 28 July 2007.
Public Programs

Artist Floor Talk 7 July, 2pm
Christopher Hanrahan and Nigel Milsom’s conversation around painting, drawing, sculpture and video continues in this forum providing audiences with the opportunity to discuss aspects of the exhibition with the artists.

Exhibition Talk, 21 July, 2pm
Organised in connection with The Capitals exhibition on view in Gallery One, Rachel Kent, Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, will consider the various modes of contemporary portraiture that are articulated in these two exhibitions.