KVT – Revved up about Rivers

Artist Vernon Ah Kee, an outspoken artist dealing in indigenous discrimination issues, firmly believes that art has to ask questions otherwise there is no function for it. If art is only good looking it has little purpose. All the art in Riverscapes would certainly fit in with his premise. Sometimes their questions are brashly stated, often subtly hinted at. Even those that propose they only proffer observations are quietly loaded. Some works at first glimpse, are really good looking, attractive, even beautiful…but they too probe. Go and investigate the foul fragrances of the Marinka River bottled like expensive perfume, the melting ice in photographs of Ton Le Sap, or the painted boats along the Irrawaddy.

Vietnamese photographer, Nguyen The Son, states that his beautifully presented installation of quoc ngu script reliefs and photos of a ravaged Red River will ‘provoke each and every one of us to question and challenge’. I wish I had as much faith in the power of art in the modern world! Though if the title of his work ‘Mountains Connected to Mountains, Rivers connected to Rivers’ is from the 1966 Vietnamese song by Do Nhuan, then the work could certainly be provocative in a few quarters. One line from that song …we have a bath in the same river flow… reads very sadly and ironically in these two thousand and teen years when we look at depleted and irreparable Red River water flow levels.