How did contemporary art move from its avant-garde and experimental origins to the realm of the spectacular, becoming "global" and installing the mobile independent curator as the foremost figure of the artworld? In this provocative book, noted art historian John Clark tells this story from an Asian perspective, showing how the rise of biennials, triennials and other such formats in Asia since the 1990s were an important vehicle for this transition. He analyses biennials in Australia, China, Japan and Singapore to understand how state imperatives interact with forces of globalization and the ambitions of biennial curators to present regional developments and define global trends. He shows us how such efforts are often embedded in surprisingly restricted networks of artists and curators, who while imagining themselves as embodying resistance to the forces of globalisation are often themselves materialising those forces. As the neoliberal order shifts, and the excitement of the "global" in contemporary art recedes, Clark's historical reading of key developments in the 20th century history of art in Asia is an invaluable resource.
