The importance of stories from the Global South
And was Photo London's move to Olympia a success?
The importance of stories from the Global South
The V&A has opened a new exhibition, ‘Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific’ (ticketed, until 10th January, 2027). It’s an important new exhibition that tells stories from the Asia-Pacific region, and I wanted to draw attention to two works in the show and the stories within them.
The one on the left is by Pala Pothupitiye, who takes historical maps from Sri Lanka’s colonial period and adds to them. In this case, it’s a map depicting the Kalutara fort, which was built by the Portuguese, captured by the Dutch and then surrendered to the British. As a coastal fort, it had strategic advantages for trade between Asia and Europe, including tea. Sri Lanka was called Ceylon in the British colonial period, and Ceylon tea is still sold in most shops today.
It’s this colonial legacy that sowed the seeds for the horrific Sri Lankan civil war that was fought from 1983 to 2009. When tea plantations were run by British colonisers in Sri Lanka, there was a labour shortage, so they brought Tamil workers from India to work alongside native Sinhalese workers. These Tamil workers were taught English by US missionaries, and their language skills meant they were favoured by the British.
This tension continued to escalate and eventually led to the civil war after Sri Lanka had gained independence from Britain. Given that the war only ended 17 years ago, most people in Sri Lanka are still living with its legacy, and many will have lost loved ones during the war. It’s just one example of how the colonial era is still impacting lives today.
The second work (on the right), by John Siune, depicts a moment from the Bougainville Civil War in Papua New Guinea - a conflict I admit I hadn’t heard of before visiting this exhibition.
Bougainville is an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea and, until the end of the First World War, was colonised by Germany. It was only after the end of the First World War that it was assigned to Australian rule - as always with these decisions, the local population didn’t have much say in it.
Deposits of copper ore were discovered in the area, and an Australian mining company began extracting it, bringing in workers from other parts of Papua New Guinea. The locals were unhappy with the environmental destruction and the limited economic benefit they received from the mining.
This led to the war fought from 1988 to 1998, and Suine’s work depicts the Papua New Guinean defence forces, using helicopters supplied by the Australian Government, fighting the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, who, as we can see in the work, are vastly outgunned.
I’m regularly writing about the power of art to tell stories, and this exhibition is full of them, many of which won’t be known to Western audiences. It’s why exhibitions like this one are important, even if they don’t get the visitor numbers or the headlines of the blockbuster exhibitions with more recognisable artists’ names attached to them.
Was Photo London’s move to Olympia a success?
Photo London, London’s premier photography art fair, moved away from its usual venue of Somerset House to Olympia (14-17 May, now closed). It’s a gamble to move to a larger, less centrally located venue. But, did it pay off?
Below the paywall:
My thoughts on this year’s Photo London
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What were the key takeaways from this year’s Venice Biennale?
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Why do I love this pigeon?