Third Text Forum Part 2 on the Artist and Empire: (En)countering Colonial Legacies

Speakers:
Professor Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, University Birmingham
Professor Janis Jefferies, Goldsmiths, University of London
Dr Venka Purushothaman, Vice-President (Academic) & Provost, LASALLE
Low Sze Wee, Curator, National Gallery
Melinda Susanto, Curator, National Gallery

Third Text Forum Part 2 on the Artist and Empire: (En)countering Colonial Legacies
The critical stance of artists to imperial legacies may have become the subject of contemporary practises and debates in the past decades, but are we any closer to grasping the issues at stake? Racism, violence, marginalisation and exclusion are still very much present in how empire is represented, thought and talked about. The National Gallery Singapore’s current revision of the Tate’s Artist and Empire exhibition (2015) is the basis for further debate of contemporary artistic responses to colonial history in the former British dominions. In deciding to hold the Artist and Empire exhibition in Singapore in 2016, the National Gallery Singapore was drawn to the show’s potential resonance with its audiences, given Singapore’s history as a former British colony. This panel discussion and Third Text publication follows Part 1 on the Tate Britain iteration of the exhibition. The focus is on artist’s voices and curatorial strategies of address and design, historical revisions of national narratives of empire and different institutional perspectives and critique in the global and local context of Singapore. Differing radically from the Tate in its framing of the historical through the lens of contemporary art, the Singapore iteration of Artist and Empire provides an exhibition history through which to reflect on the larger issues in Asian, British, and settler colonial art histories. Third Text is a journal that represents contemporary artists and critics voices on global contemporary art and culture such as the attempt to define the relationship of artist to empire. Introduced by Third Text editor, Professor Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, LASALLE College of the Arts will host a series of responses to this exhibition in its local and international contexts.