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10Story
| Posing Questions: Being & image in Europe & Asia |  |
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Acknowledgements |
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Part of an international project co-led by British and Japanese curators, this exhibition was conceived and developed within ASEMUS, the Asia-Europe Museums network.
The organisers wish to thank ASEF, the Asia-Europe Foundation, for generously sponsoring the project throughout; the British Museum for logistical support; Bespoke Imaging for printing and mounting; and SOAS / Brunei Gallery for hosting and installing the exhibition.
Others who have helped the exhibition on its way – too many to list here - are thanked personally at VCM, the (online) Virtual Collection of Masterpieces, which hosts this exhibition along with essays and additional information. The project’s pioneer presentation, Self and Other: Portraits from Asia and Europe, which toured Japan in 2008-9, is also available at the same website. Further displays, each with its own distinctive approach to portraiture, are planned for Stockholm, Kuala Lumpur and Manila.
Requests to borrow this exhibition for display elsewhere should be addressed to Brian Durrans (nernier@gmail.com).
As shown in the Brunei Gallery at SOAS, the exhibition has turned out somewhat different from draft versions earlier discussed among the organising team in London and elsewhere.
Besides the core funding from ASEF, the prospect of further sponsorship seemed bleak in suddenly more difficult conditions; we wanted to complement rather than simply vary the pioneer travelling exhibition in Japan, Self & Other: Portraits from Asia & Europe; and also to avoid being caught in the backwash of other recent ‘East-West’ survey exhibitions in London, such as Encounters at the Victoria & Albert Museum or Orientalism at Tate Britain.
Alongside such renewed interest in historical and contemporary ‘flows’ of ideas and practices between Asia and Europe, portraiture itself, both in specific contexts and more generally, was beginning to attract serious attention from anthropologists and art historians interested in embodiment, objectification and what might be called ideologies of modernism. With few exceptions, this debate was strikingly Eurocentric and, at the same time, academic enquiry and public appreciation remained as far apart in respect of portraiture as in any other field.
It was in discussing and thinking about these circumstances that the exhibition gradually took shape. We wanted to look at what portraits record and what they are assumed to record. Since our budget ruled out ambitious loans it was decided to make a virtue of having practically no loans at all. This means the show consists almost entirely of photographs, though exceptionally good ones; so it should be straightforward to tour it elsewhere after its initial run. It was also easier than most exhibitions to recreate in parallel online.
From when it was seeking focus through to its final form, many people have helped the exhibition in all sorts of ways, major and minor, with ideas, cautions, criticism, practical help, encouragement, and the calming of nerves. The list, though long, is hardly complete; but everyone on it, and those inadvertently omitted, deserve the warmest thanks – and (usual caveat) none of the blame for any oversights, errors or eccentricities in the exhibition itself. |
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