Published weekly 2014 – 2020 and monthly 2022 onwards, Tuesday in the Tropics are short illustrated reports on what Tony Godfrey saw in South-east Asia and its art world. All, or nearly all, Tuesday in the Tropics will eventually be placed on this website – with an index. See No. 1 for why I write them.

29th January 2019

 

Dear friends and colleagues

Some thoughts about biennales, in particular those in South-east Asia.

I am closing all my books and putting them to one side whilst I write this: I am trying to get down to basics. As I said last week, I want to ask what the...

22nd January 2019

Dear friends and colleagues

We return to Bangkok! How curious that a two-day trip takes four weeks to discuss and write up! It reminds me of Joyce’s Ulysses which recounts eighteen hours in a day but is pretty impossible to read in under a fortnight. This letter may not be of such literary value however.

To resume: we have done the wats,...

15th January 2019

Dear friends and colleagues

So, on my second day in Bangkok I planned to – filled with enthusiasm – get up well before seven and be at those wats where art was being shown as soon as they opened and then see art till the late evening.

What are wats? Buddhist temples or pagodas. Three wats and five other art-sites were on or near...

8th January 2019

Dear friends and colleagues

Before Christmas I went, as you know, to the first Bangkok Biennale, curated by Apinan Poshyananda. Advance publicity suggested the theme of the exhibition was “happiness”. How nice I thought, a biennale that for once had a simple theme that we could understand, but that raised interesting and important questions: how do we assess happiness? How do we achieve...

1st January 2019

SEMIOTICS OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE, PART 3

Dear friends and colleagues

I went to Bangkok last month to see the first Bangkok Biennale. After, as I sat down in the plane that would return me to Manila, the piped music began with the tune of In the bleak mid-winter ...

4th December 2018

Dear Friends and Colleagues

I have just got back from Shanghai. Among other things I saw exhibitions by Nalini Malani at Arario Gallery, Louise Bourgeois at the Long Museum and the Shanghai Biennale. What do all those exhibitions have in common?

Censorship.

Apparently, Malani was...

6th November 2018

 

On being socially relevant, on being indigenous

Dear friends and colleagues

I have been in the UK and Europe for almost all of October. The outstanding exhibition I saw was the big Brueghel show in Vienna – I had not realised just how phenomenal his drawings were. But he is...

16th October 2018

Dear friends and colleagues

Eheu, I have fallen in the way of being late.

I don’t like making generalisations about race or nationality,

Which is, of course, a cue for me to do so.

What always impresses me in Manila is that...

15th March 2016

Dear friends and colleagues

Maybe friendship is a sufficient reason.

I was asked if I would curate an exhibition in Jogjakarta of two Malaysian artists (Jailani Abu Hassan (Jai) and Zakii Anwar) and two Indonesian artists (Agus Suwage and Jumaldi Alfi.) They are all people I like and artists I respect, so of course I said “yes”. But it...

8th March 2016

Dear friends and colleagues

My father as well as being a clergyman was a serious historian. Having come from a very disadvantaged background he was very proud of having published books on medieval history and of being elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. One day he showed me something he had just read and then showed me something he had published earlier. The author had clearly...