Breaking down borders with inspiration and a smile

The Sixth Asia-Pacific Triennial speaks a language everyone can understand, writes Gabriella Coslovich.

'Martin, have you seen this? Go there, it's hot! "

These words, spoken by a woman to her male friend, not be heard in the vicinity of Kings Cross and Newton, but on the field much more civilized Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art at the opening of one of the world's largest exhibition dedicated to contemporary art of Asia Pacific.

As for the reactions go, a director of the gallery could not wish for more. It responded to a job that in many ways, sums up the essence of the Sixth Asia-Pacific Triennial, beating Tracey Moffatt, playful digital video ill seven minute.

Despite the title, it goes very far from a sterile academic exploration of the cultural and racial difference. Moffatt goes for the jugular in a montage of movie kitsch, frantic and hilarious that represent the critical moments of contact between racial, cultural and sexually diverse.

Tentative flirtations of Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr in The King and I to Samantha from Sex and the City ogling a black man deliciously Buffing quick pastiche reinforces fear, fascination and repressed desire that the meeting with "other" causes.

No prizes for guessing the meaning. But that final burst of stars is also a symbol of hope, redemption, of the Union.

The director of the Queensland Art Gallery, Tony Ellwood, says: "There is this ongoing story of treachery and fetishizing conclusion and [the other], and Tracey is, of course, there were nice touches mischievous in the extreme, and it appears that each group of tourists who take the right path at a time when one in particular. "

Moffatt piece was commissioned for the review, the gallery on the sixth and most ambitious. Ellwood has expanded to reach the series, which first displayed the contemporary art of Iran, North Korea, Tibet, Turkey and the countries of the Mekong region, including Myanmar and Cambodia.

The inclusion of these countries into a political liability, as North Korea and Iran is not simply because of the novelty or to attract attention, Ellwood says, but maintains and expands the triennial order to humanize the countries and cultures in our region, providing an alternative view of the cultures that are often presented as a threat. Also for the first time, the exhibition covers the whole of the Gallery of Modern Art, and some galleries in the adjacent Queensland Art Gallery, featuring over 313 works of 160 artists from 25 countries.