The six artists showcased here were drawn from the recent ‘Wonderland’ exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei. These creative spirits embrace technology as a means of exploring a wonderland of creativity and curiosity.

The ‘Wonderland’ exhibition demonstrates the creative imagination of our place and our times – an imagination fuelled by the limitless opportunities of new media and new technologies and, most significantly for Australia – a new and almost youthful recognition of and real enthusiasm for our place in the world – that world being, of course. Asia.

It is these ideas that inspire our artists today: it is not the art of representation, nor is it necessarily the art of information, or even revelation – this is art of experience.

It is art that alerts and awakens our instincts and perceptions. We the viewer no longer sit passively in front of the work of art – we are virtual participants. These artists are embracing technology to explore new realms and horizons – sensing what we might see or feel beyond the façade of the real. It is art that titillates and incites our imaginations.

‘Wonderland’ is nonetheless very much an exhibition out of Australia – it is a clear demonstration of the moods and momentums that are engaging our creative spirits and, I have to say, it is in all its extraordinarily diverse ways, art that carries with it a rich sense of optimism. 

The instinct to create is, in any event, an optimistic one. While some of the works in ‘Wonderland’ have a very strong sense of place – echoes of the landscape, reflections on history – they nonetheless, I think, convey a new sense of universality – they speak in a global language of new techniques and technologies.

There is a sense of pace and change about the art of our times … it is art that reflects and informs us of our current status, but equally like the art of the past, it is a signpost for the future. The Wonderland exhibition was curated by Antoanetta Ivanova.

About Edmund Capon

About the artists