NEW PLYMOUTH.- Tầm Tã—Soaked in the Long Rain is the first international survey exhibition of Vietnamese contemporary artist Trần Lương, and the foremost presentation of the artist’s work in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Spanning painting, installation, performance, community engagement and institution-making, the exhibition makes clear how this artist who, over his life time, has played a significant role in supporting critical contemporary art in Vietnam—a context with little public infrastructure for artmaking and display, and continued limits on artistic expression.

From his early career as a painter in the 1980s, the exhibition traces Trần’s shift towards performance and conceptual art, following the opening up of Vietnam’s economy to global trade, as well as his subsequent efforts to work collaboratively with communities. Throughout, Lương has worked actively to build spaces for experimentation, education and sharing, and to enhance exchange between Vietnam and the wider Southeast Asian region.

By offering insight into the artist’s multifaceted life and practice; shaped by the political and social transitions in Vietnam, the exhibition conveys the many roles this artist and art can continue to play—as activist, curator, facilitator, archivist and mentor.

Tầm Tã—Soaked in the Long Rain is curated by Biljana Ciric and co-organised by Art Jameel, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre and The Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Open window: Trịnh Ngân Hạnh, Thịt Phơi phố
Screening alongside Tầm Tã in the Gallery’s Open Window

Trịnh Ngân Hạnh’s Thịt Phơi phố documents the artist as she cycles through Hanoi’s streets with a slab of pork belly strapped to her back. Developed as an outcome of Green, Red & Yellow Recontextualized (Xanh Đỏ & Vàng Tái Xuất), a year-long learning programme for artists organised by APD, Hanoi (an initiative founded by Trần Lương, Đỗ Hoài Nam and Nguyễn Đức Thành in 2020) over 2024, the work’s presentation extends the offering of Tầm Tã. The screening is an opportunity to engage with an emerging artistic voice, and locates Trần Lương as both an archivist of a generation of artists and intellectuals who preceded him, and enabler and mentor of developing practitioners.

Infrastructures for Collective Imagining: A day-long gathering
February 1, 2025, 10am–5pm

Developed by Balamohan Shingade and Simon Gennard as an offering alongside Tầm Tã—Soaked in the long rain, this one-day event explores artist-led infrastructures and strategies for social change.

The invitation is open to artists and activists, curators and cultural workers, teachers and students, poets and policy makers—anyone who aspires to build a future beyond neoliberal forms of production, transaction and consumption.

Featuring contributions from Sue Bradford, Bea Gladding and Spoor Books, the event considers approaches to art, publishing and education that aim to co-create infrastructures that reimagine the public sphere and create openings for meaningful connection and exchange. Among the guiding questions are: how can artistic and curatorial strategies respond to silencing; what sorts of communicative and cognitive gaps does arts practice help us overcome; and how can knowledge be generated and shared differently.