Abstraction as cultural practice
By Ian Tee

This article is a preview of the content that will be published in Check-In 2022. If you would like to support the making of this publication, you can make a contribution here.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn. Photograph by Brenton McGeachie.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn is a Lao-Australian artist best known for her intricate and highly textured paintings. Born in Champasak, Laos, in 1971, she and her family fled the country and arrived in Australia when Vongpoothorn was eight years old. Her work evinces these cross-cultural influences as she combines an interest in historical art movements with pattern and language elements drawn from cultures throughout the world.

In 2019, Vongpoothorn’s first survey exhibition ‘All That Arises’ was staged at the Australian National University’s Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra. Her works are included in important public collections such as the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and the National Gallery Singapore, amongst others.

In this interview, we talk about a few milestones in her life: her time in art school, motherhood, and the aforementioned retrospective show. Vongpoothorn also reflects her relationship with Buddhist scripture and recent trajectories in her work.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, ‘Light Kasina’, 1995, fibre washes and acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120cm.

A signature characteristic in your work is its perforated surface: thousands of tiny holes made by burning through canvas or paper. How did you first end up with this technique? Has its significance evolved over time?

From 1990 to 1993, I learnt a valuable lesson at art school: anything can be art! My teachers emphasised learning how to look at objects with care, and thus I came to have a deeper appreciation of them. Two years after I had graduated with this sensibility and the encouragement the teachers had given us to “play around”, I set out to create works on canvas and paper for my debut solo exhibition at King St Gallery in Sydney in 1995.

Canvas and paper are not just two-dimensional surfaces but three-dimensional objects. I remember it clearly: the first time I stared at and felt the beautiful piece of rag paper often used for printmaking. There was an etching needle nearby. I picked up this needle and I began to slowly make small evenly spaced holes down the length of the paper, creating a long vertical line. I repeated this process, line after line, from left to right until I had covered the entire piece of paper with hundreds of holes. My excitement grew during this process. Due to the perforations, the flat surface of the paper metamorphosed to a wave-like object. I did not stop there. With this amazing new surface, I began to paint on the back of the paper. The paint then started to seep through the holes and stained the front. As an emerging artist, this was incredibly exciting. I felt I had discovered something entirely unique!

I did not stop with the rag paper. I dipped the same etching needle in paint and pushed the needle of paint from the back of the canvas through to the front, staining the front of the canvas. Nowadays, I use a soldering iron to burn through the back of the canvases as the perforations made provide much more scope for experimentation.

Your paintings synthesise a myriad of cultural references such as textiles from Laos and Southeast Asia, diagrammatic and textual representations of Buddhist concepts, as well as Australian Aboriginal painting. How do you negotiate between the rich, specific symbolism embedded in these forms and the “flattening” effect of abstraction?

My abstraction is a cultural practice, and it is not flattening. It is not just embedded in Western Modernism. I particularly find monks chanting incredibly abstract and transcending.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, ‘Damming the Naga’, 2016, acrylic on perforated canvas, 180 x 300cm. Image courtesy Martin Browne Contemporary Sydney. Photograph by Brenton McGeachie.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, ‘Fire Sutra II’, 2021, bamboo strips, gesso and acrylic on perforated canvas, 230 x 180cm. Image courtesy Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney. Photograph by Brenton McGeachie.

Dwelling on the topic of form and composition, could you talk about the process behind making a painting? In particular, I am curious to know how much of it is pre-planned. While some works have an organic all-over composition, others demand a level of precision due to their symmetry or complex pattern, such as ‘Fire Sutra II’ (2021).

There are many levels of engagement when I am painting, and each painting has a particular approach that feels very different from previous paintings.

My works are all pre-planned, but only at the starting point. It always ends up different to what I had imagined it would look like. This is when the magic starts to happen, when the work dictates the direction I should take. This approach is sometimes precarious. To use an analogy, it is like climbing the steps of Angkor Wat, where the steps are steep and narrow and it feels like you could slip and fall backward anytime. But sometimes, a painting such as ‘Fire Sutra II’ feels like it is on a smooth trajectory. I work on it until I am left with the feeling that there is nothing more to be done, and the work is declared finished!

My next question looks back to your time as a young artist after graduating in the 1990s. How did you navigate aspects of professional practice, such as the art market and commercial galleries? Were there individuals or formative experiences that aided this journey?

At art school, I never knew what it meant to be an artist, even less how to be a professional artist. I was fortunate to meet painter Roy Jackson (1944-2013) who became both a friend and mentor. He helped me to navigate between being an artist and showing my work in the context of a commercial gallery. When Robert and Randi Linneger of King Street Gallery in Sydney offered me my first solo show, I had no choice but to put my complete trust in their dealings of my work in the art market. The trust had opened up a positive attitude towards the art market. Although I am no longer with King Street Gallery, the same trust still applies to my current galleries: Niagara Gallery, Melbourne and Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney. It is a luxury not to have to worry about the business side of art and only focus on making the art in the studio.

In 2001, you moved to Singapore with your partner Ashley Carruthers and lived in the city for two and a half years. What was your sense of the Singapore art scene like then? Do you recall any striking anecdotes?

We moved to Singapore for that period of time because Ashley had a postdoctoral position at National University of Singapore (NUS). I think the Singapore art scene has come a long way since we lived there. In the early 2000s, the only exciting art happening for me was at the Substation, then helmed by Lee Weng Choy and Lucy Davis. Davis was also the Editor of Focas: Forum, a journal on contemporary art and society. The Substation was a space that bordered on being dissident where artists could be free to experiment and showcase their work. I remember one of the expatriate performance artists was expelled from the culturally restricted city-state because he was openly gay.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, ‘Broken Sutra (Naga Paths)’ (detail), 2019.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, ‘Rama was a Migrant (II)’, 2016, pigment and ink on woven mulberry paper, 78 x 240cm.

The notion of a broken sutra is pivotal in guiding your work. Could you elaborate on this idea? How does it inform your research and experimentation?

In 2013, I started using text written in Lao-Pali from the Fire Sutra. The notion of a broken sutra came about when I began thinking about the Buddha’s words during major events that happened to me and my family in 2019.

The eyes are burning, forms are burning…

The ears are burning, sounds are burning…

The nose is burning, odours are burning…

The tongue is burning, flavours are burning…

The body is burning, tangibles are burning…

The mind is burning, ideas are burning…

We were caught in the frightening bushfires along the south coast of New South Wales (NSW). Soon after we recovered from this, my father passed away in January 2020. After that, Covid and lockdowns arrived. In processing these traumas and reflecting upon them today, we cannot read the Buddhist teaching of the Fire Sutra without it bringing to mind the apocalyptic, fiery reckoning that Gaia seems bent on visiting us around the world, not least in Australia. My iteration of the Fire Sutra is not intact but “broken". This is perhaps hinting at the jumbled, fragmented and partial nature of the access we have to the Buddha’s words, or the fraught task of reassembling them in the strange time and place we find ourselves in.

With these thoughts, I began experimenting with calligraphic writing of the Fire Sutra in Lao-Pali onto rice paper scrolls, before cutting them into strips and then weaving the strips together to form a “placemat”. The woven and broken script became the pattern for which I made stencils. These stencils formed the bases for my paintings.

“My iteration of the Fire Sutra is not intact but “broken”. This is perhaps hinting at the jumbled, fragmented and partial nature of the access we have to the Buddha’s words, or the fraught task of reassembling them in the strange time and place we find ourselves in.”

Savanhdary in the studio. Photograph by Chaitanya Sambrani.

How has motherhood affected you, as an individual and as an artist?

As a first-time breast-feeding mum, the experience was all-consuming for at least the first two years for each baby. I love my babies and motherhood fundamentally changed me, both as an individual and as an artist. It is one of those moments where life can never go back to what it once was, nor do I want it to go back to what it once was.

It has not been easy for the past fourteen years, but one thing is certain: I can now manage my time a lot more efficiently, even when there is never enough time in the day to do my work. These days, my life is spent juggling time between family and time in the studio. Those rare times when I can travel with friends and catch up on art exhibitions are thoroughly enjoyable. It is even more amazing when we can travel as a family for my studio residencies.

In 2019, you had your first survey exhibition ‘All that Arises’. How did it feel to see 25 years’ worth of artistic practice laid out? What were your personal reflections from the experience of preparing the show and its accompanying monograph?

Most of the works chosen for my survey exhibition were pieces I had not seen in nearly 20 years. Once they were finished, they were exhibited, then sold, and I never saw them again. When the truck pulled into the gallery and unloaded the crate, they brought out a painting that was done in 1996. I have done hundreds of paintings since then and seeing a remnant of the early days was both confronting and quite amazing. It is a long journey which I am still on. I do not think I could ever retire from my art; I get the feeling I will be painting till I am 90!

There was also a floaty sense of peace and calm, having it all laid out before me. Never once did I think I should hold onto any of my works, and I am happy for them to be out there. In a way it relates to motherhood, these material things I have created that I let go to live a life of their own. It was difficult to choose the pieces I wanted to exhibit while also reflecting the curator’s concept for the show. We got there in the end though.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, ‘Legs on Seeds’ (detail), 1992-2021, modified from original work.

Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, ‘Legs on Seeds’, 1992-2021, (Detail, glow in the dark).

Recently, you recreated ‘Legs on Seeds’ (1992/2020) a floor-based installation from your student days for the exhibition ‘Space YZ’ (2021) curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, at Campbelltown Arts Centre, New South Wales, Australia. For the new iteration, you have also modified it by spraying the “legs” a bright fluorescent orange and giving each “buggie” a glowing line. I am curious why you accepted the challenge of recreating the piece despite “dreading it”? How did these modifications speak to a new context or trajectory in your practice?

When I accepted the challenge to recreate an ephemeral and impermanent installation which was first made for my graduation exhibition in 1992, it was a tribute to my teachers and to show the valuable lessons they had taught me. I went to art school without any preconceived ideas of what art was. I was lucky to be learning not just about art, but also of the world around me. I remember one of the electives was called Investigative Studies, and the aim was for students to be project-driven. We could decide on our own materials and creative process, drawing from any discipline outside art: from science, literature, philosophy, history and culture. We were given so much freedom to think and feel. Till today, I believe that being supported in this way is the reason why I was able to create the work ‘Legs on Seeds’. The time spent at art school formed the foundation for how I approach my art practice.

I was dreading recreating this work because on top of everything else that I had to do, I needed to make at least 1000 Buggies. It meant that I would have to glue thousands of “wiry styles” that protrude from the banksia flower into the cavities of the casuarina pods. This led to a kind of metamorphosis, where the seed pods became bodies and the styles became legs. It did not make much sense to me to recreate something made 28 years ago, so I modified the work. In retrospect, it was such an interesting process of modification. It makes me wonder if all my work is in a state of work-in-progress, even if there are elements in the work that are finished… Indeed, this is probably something the art market does not want to hear.

“It makes me wonder if all my work is in a state of work-in-progress, even if there are elements in the work that are finished… Indeed, this is probably something the art market does not want to hear.”

Are there upcoming projects you are looking forward to?

I would love to share my upcoming project. I am planning to make a major kinetic sculptural installation consisting of approximately 400 wall-mounted stainless-steel discs arranged in a grid of approximately 180cm by 500cm. The discs will be patterned with laser cut-out fragments of the Fire Sutra written in Lao-Pali script, a motif from the Theravada Buddhist Canon often used in my previous work. Powered by programmed stepper motors, the 15cm-diameter steel discs will slowly and meditatively rotate in the same direction, perhaps evoking Tibetan prayer wheels. They will also be lit from behind by LED lights installed on acrylic boards that form the backing of each disc.

The concept for this project draws inspiration from Latin American Kinetic Art from the 1950s and 1960s, particularly works by female artists Lygia Clark and Martha Boto. I see this as a continuation of my exploration of the “major” tradition of Euro-American modernism from the “minor” perspective of a Lao diasporic artist in Australia. It is also a chance to develop an ongoing “South-South” dialogue around spiritual and artistic traditions that has led me to collaborate with artists, poets and artisans from India, Vietnam and Japan.

I am currently commissioned to work on a mural on a three-storey building in Campbelltown central business district, Sydney. I am using the same fragments of the Fire Sutra mentioned above. This will be my first Public Art project.

Believe it or not, having a deadline for an exhibition gives me the energy to start work every morning.

This article is a preview of the content that will be published in Check-In 2022. If you would like to support the making of this publication, you can make a contribution here.