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oPENING OF THE 'aBUNDANT aUSTRALIA' eXHIBITION

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Hijjas Kasturi was invited as a special guest to open the 'Abundant Australia' exhibition at Balai Seni Lukis Negara on 19 April 2010.

'Abundant Australia' showcases highlights from the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale of 2008. At the opening, following speeches by Pn Zanita Anuar of Balai Seni Lukis Negara, Mr Boon Che Wah, head of Pertubuhan Arkitek Malaysia, and Mr Craig Chittick, Acting High Commissioner of the Australian High Commission, Hijjas delivered his opening speech praising the creative concepts evident in 'Abundant Australia'.

Maryam Gusheh, curator of the exhibition, conducted a guided tour of the exhibition following the opening. 'Abundant Australia' will be on view at Balai Seni Lukis Negara until 16 May; admission is free.

Opening Speech by Hijjas Kasturi

I am honoured to be invited today to open this exhibition, as it relates to many of my personal and professional interests.   

Architecture and the visual arts are closely connected, and it is gratifying to see this exhibition of architectural ideas staged at our National Gallery. I have been trying to strengthen the relationship between the arts and architecture throughout my professional life, from the first years at Mara Institute of Technology, where we combined the schools of Art and Architecture so that students from both disciplines would be aware of what their peers were doing and thinking, to reinforce the imaginative process. More recently I started a residency for artists and other creative people to give them opportunities to develop their practices away from the usual distractions.   

The many diverse designs in this exhibition have come from over one hundred Australian architectural practices, and were presented at the eleventh Venice Biennale in 2008.  They demonstrate the wealth of creative ideas to be generated by combining art and architecture. 

All artists and architects must deal with concepts, the initial ideas that make a work unique and later enable the user or viewer to experience some new and inspiring insight.  Concepts are the most vital part of any architectural or fine arts practice, they are the ideas that drive a project and provide the rationale for decision making as a design develops;  they come from deep within the imagination and some of them eventually develop into a physical form. 

This exhibition shows that process, but as it might occur after the building has been completed, by extrapolating some aspect of the completed structure in another direction.   

These models provide a glimpse of Australian architecture to new audiences, and as well to people like myself who have had a long and close association with Australia, but because of physical distance, have missed a lot of what has happened there over recent years.   

One objective of the exhibition was to demonstrate that Australian cities are unique; they are not mere replicas of some international style, but are the result of rethinking global trends in respect to a particular place and time.  Each of these models reflects the projects of a practice, capturing, to quote the catalogue, "the particularities of each practice, the attitudes to architecture and representation, and the conceptual priorities… testifying to the vigour and productive energy that characterize contemporary architectural production in Australia."   

The models demonstrate the process of re-thinking architecture and the built environment.  Rather than showing us the final built structure as the sort of model we are familiar with, these models draw from built works, and are developed from abstracted architectural fragments, focusing on a conceptual departure that might convey a spatial quality, or study just one architectural element.

Australia has gone a long way to spearhead new ideas and concepts in the creative arts and architecture, but architecture is normally seen as an object rather than a process.  When thinking about Australian architecture, most people would visualize the Sydney Opera House against the backdrop of the harbour, the city and the bridge.  This is perhaps the most widely recognized image of Australia, but since the opera house was designed over half a century ago, architecture has evolved, and so has the process of design.    

I was in Australia in the 50s and 60s, when there was a huge interest by veterans of the Second World War in the new ideas from Europe and America.  New possibilities broke with the long sustained reverence for English traditions and lead to a resurgence of the creative arts in all directions.  

The post war boom required new designs for industry, the media and television, giving the expression of the arts a huge boost… architecture and fine art began to break away from the inhibitions of the colonial era and to seek their own identity and concerns. 

I went to Australia to study architecture in 1958, and was very influenced by the then new architects such as Roy Grounds, Robyn Boyd and Harry Seidler, and of course the Opera House in Sydney opened the public to the debate about modernism and identity.   

New policies encouraged migration to Australia, and cultural diversity enabled new creativity and expression in the arts. Expanding possibilities provided by art and architecture schools enabled the development of an extraordinary range of talent.  The ideas we see today could not have been conceived at an earlier time, but they are based on that long and sustained evolution of creative thinking in the visual arts. 

Abundant Australia shows what can be achieved by freeing the imagination, and allowing the creative mind to wander in all directions to explore all sorts of possibilities.  The process of thinking, developing, discarding and starting again, is essential. 

Sometimes it can be intimidating to introduce new concepts when it hasn’t been done before, but this exhibition shows that this is how designers actually play around with a problem, and then take it one step further, beyond construction and into an art form.     

To be daring and embrace the unorthodox is a little unusual in the Malaysian context, especially as our clients tend to be conservative.  We need as well a culture of appreciation, an educated public willing to explore and understand what creative designers and artists produce, so that the public at large can value the importance of design and art.  Professional skills and public appreciation would go hand in hand to generate a self sustaining process of creativity. 

I am very impressed by this exhibition and hope that the Malaysian public will enjoy it too, and that policy makers will see the advantages of encouraging creative thinking and design.  Without this, a country can't compete.  Australia has developed its art and architecture industries over the decades to world class levels, and now they compete in any arena, a commendable achievement for a relatively small country. 

I would like to express my personal thanks to Asialink amongst the many sponsors.  Asialink supports creative practice amongst artists and intellectuals in Australia and Asia, strengthening our common needs and objectives.  It is perhaps timely for Malaysia to develop a similar programme to enable young Malaysians to travel to Australia and Asian nations to immerse themselves in different architecture, arts or performance.  Such exposure would greatly enrich their own practices at home. 

Concepts and ideas are the keys to success in the modern world.  Abundant Australia is a showcase of their importance;

I congratulate the organizers, the curators and the designers, without whom our lives would be very much the poorer. 

Thank you.

Last updated 21 April 2010.

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