By Soo-Min Shim — 7 June, 2019
This is the third instalment of Running Dog’s feature series responding to individual works in The National 2019: New Australian Art—on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art, and curated by Isobel Parker Philip (AGNSW), Daniel Mudie Cunningham (Carriageworks), Clothilde Bullen and Anna Davis (MCA). After…
By Soo-Min Shim — 16 November, 2018
Walking into the last two hours of Daniel Kok and Miho Shimizu’s five-hour performance of xhe, I am overwhelmed by the kaleidoscopic playground of polychrome fabrics, foam block shapes, iridescent blankets, and printed cardboard cutouts. There are chairs arranged around the perimeters, but mostly these are empty. Instead, groups of people are gathered around a…
By Soo-Min Shim — 8 August, 2018
Author’s note: CW—racism, assault, rape This month, I walked into the University of Sydney and was greeted by angry black scrawls of graffiti on the bus stops: ‘No More G**ks’. I immediately recoiled from a caricature of an Asian face with slanted eyes. A ‘Stop the Asian Invasion’ tag was found on three different…
By Soo-Min Shim — 30 May, 2018
In one of the opening scenes of Billy Wilder’s archetypal film, Double Indemnity (1944), the protagonist Walter Neff walks around an unassuming living room typical of the late 1930s. He strolls nonchalantly past an armchair and two everyday lamps, but an ominous feeling still pervades the scene. A long shot frames Walter, causing the shadows…
By Soo-Min Shim — 23 March, 2018
‘I’m always aware that I was born here the moment I open my mouth’, writes Jason Phu in his latest installation The fruit was sweeter then. The fish were more plentiful. (2018). Showing at Alaska Projects and commissioned by ANTIDOTE, the installation is framed as the sister show to a larger exhibition entitled The Trace (on…