Critical Studies 5 - Mok

Race You There

I feel like there is some underlying tie with Tze Ming Mok, in the fact that we're both Asian. Politically and Ethnically. Some tie that to you, obviously a reader from Elam- a school where the majority is white, does not connect with. In a half truth, we have started in the same position, to grow up in Auckland in a central primary school but somewhere along the line I stopped politically calling myself Asian, even though Ethnically I am.

I distinctly recall a conversation reminiscing about primary school, that "Back then being friends with an Asian kid was cool" - that being said looking back at old class photos we only made up 1/10th of the class compared to my high school photos that there was almost 1/2 of us. Following the trend, "Being apart of something is cool", we, Asians, WE were the something cool- the minority that soon became an equal (in numbers), and now that we're no longer the minority it seems we have become less cool. And at the same time, less associated with the heritage. ..some of us anyway.

In some part, I think with the overflow of New Zealand art within schools and within galleries- this has defined art in this corner of the world. This new lavish growing of postmodern..Or almost post-postmodern art from the states is the new thing. "International Look" as Tracey Moffat describes it, is the new eye candy for me and I’m sure others alike.. But at some point someone is going to have to get over the giant oversized pictures on the wall from the latest and greatest Gregory Crewdson/Jeff Wall, and maybe make way for the later up comers, Stephen Shore and his latest (Uncommon Places) of 'mini' prints (Interview: http://www.theartnewspaper.tv/content.php?vid=544) or Lachapelle's cardboard cutouts- as what's in, will no longer be in for much longer. We must make way for the new us. The us that has yet to be defined, and I’m sure by time it is we'll only be looking back on it.


Dir. Unknown. Stephen Shore - Uncommon Places. Stephen Shore, Jean Wainwright. The Art Newspaper, 2009.

Tze Ming Mok, "Race You There", Landfall 208, Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2004, pp. 18-26.