The Region: Dialogues on the Power and Precarity of Artist Self-Organisation in the Asia-Pacific

About the Partners

Enjoy Contemporary Art Space is a leading non-profit arts organisation based in Aotearoa New Zealand, dedicated to developing contemporary art practice, and the audience and discussions around contemporary art. We achieve this through our exhibition programme, events, publishing, artist residencies and other activities. Established in 2000, Enjoy is located in central Pōneke Wellington, with a rich history as an artist-run space. Enjoy creates opportunities for learning and exchange around contemporary art in Aotearoa, and to advocate for its role in our society. Our artistic programme prioritises artists, writers and curators who are early-career or interested in growing experimental practices in a supportive and challenging environment. Governed by a board of trustees, our organisation strives to honor Te Tiriti o Waitangi through its strategic leadership and approach to arts participation. We deliver our mission and vision with the investment of our primary funders Creative New Zealand Arts Council Toi Aotearoa, with additional support from Wellington City Council, community funding and fundraising initiatives.

Para Site is Hong Kong’s leading contemporary art centre and one of the oldest and most active independent art institutions in Asia. It produces exhibitions, publications, and discursive and educational projects aimed at forging a critical understanding of local and international phenomena in art and society. Founded in early 1996 as an artist-run space, Para Site was Hong Kong’s first exhibition-making institution of contemporary art and a crucial self-organised structure within the city’s civil society. Throughout the years, Para Site has grown into a contemporary art centre, engaged in a wide array of activities and collaborations with other art institutions, museums, and academic structures in both Hong Kong and the international landscape. In early 2015, Para Site moved to greatly increased premises in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. Para Site celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2021.

Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre located in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh(Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations of the Coast Salish people. We support a multidisciplinary program that provides opportunities to artists working across music, media art, visual art, performance, and literature to create and present work. Through commissions, exhibitions, performances, concerts, publishing, residencies, and workshops, Western Front promotes public exchange at a local, national, and international level. We also preserve and provide access to an ever-growing audio-visual archive that documents the organisation’s history of artistic programming and production.

West Space works locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, across artforms and sites, to expand the possibilities of exhibition-making. Over our three-decade history, we have evolved as a distinct organisation that combines an artist-centric ethos with the supportive infrastructure of a contemporary art institution.

CAST Contemporary Art and Social Transformation is a research group based in the School of Art at RMIT University. CAST produces art research that critically engages with environmental, social and public spheres with a particular interest in how artistic practices intersect with issues of equity, access and democracy. CAST is a hub for critical thinking, collaboration and the exchange of ideas, knowledge dissemination, practice-led artistic research and socially-engaged art practice. CAST engages on local and international levels by collaborating with practitioners, communities, industry, and government partners