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 parallel realities
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Revolution in Blackburn. Blackburn is hardly the most scenic place in the country. And yet this Victorian post-industrial working-class town has become the locus for a very interesting project. Japan’s Fukuoka Museum Of Asian Art has lent a large selection from their 3rd Asian Art Triennale to the Lancashire hot (s)pot for a truly boundary-pushing exhibition.The show is split among several sites across the city, including the town’s Visitor Centre, the wonderfully archaic Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery, and a rundown old Halifax building in a grim shopping centre. It’s something completely unexpected. But the environment’s contrast to the Asian pop art, video installations and digital photography is what makes the show work so well. The artwork is truly varied with 50 artists from 21 countries around Asia, from Thailand to Korea, to Malaysia. Many of the artists are drawing on and responding to their own cultures in the work they produce – insane Bollywood pop paintings by Abdus Salam or Cambodian Ly Daravuth’s installation of photos of teenage Khmer Rouge collaborators.  Cloud Department 2 by Wah Nu and Existence of Instinct IV (detail) by Shibu Natesan. There’s a lot of humour here too: Chi Peng’s wall-long photograph of people reacting to a passing streaker, Chang Yoong Chia’s hilarious black-and-white images of a man embroidering around a Malay city, and Cao Fei’s mesmerising film of Chinese teens dressed as superheroes watching TV and wandering around urban streets. Although there are paintings, most of the work here grapples with more “modern” media. Nothing feels very traditional. The techniques and work not only rival contemporary western art, they often have more impact. There are also real innovations, notably Japan’s Ito Ryusuke’s tiny installations of moving mechanical miniature environments, filmed on cameras and projected to look like real human-scale spaces. It’s like glimpsing the way films were created in the 30s.  Untitled by Phyoe Kyi and Utama 1 (detail) by Ho Tzu Nyen. Amazingly, all the venues have people wandering around looking at the art - many of whom you’d normally be hard pushed to get into galleries. The work also integrates other cultures into British life in a very positive and educative way. It’s definitely worth a visit.
Francesca Gavin
Parallel Realities: Asian Art Now is at various venues in Blackburn until 09 April 06.
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comment by toadso
Feb 10, 2006
What a massive scoop for Blackburn! This is ace. Go and see the shows NOW! I went last Sat and I'll be there again more than once. Tell everyone...I am doing. Well done Blackburn! Good write up Francesca...spot-on. Al
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