Museum Collars Keating For A Shirt To Match Our Ties
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday November 14, 2001
It was lampooned by cartoonists, ridiculed by political opponents, savaged by the fashion industry.
But Paul Keating's most famous shirt is now the prize display in a new exhibition stressing the cultural ties between Australia and South-East Asia.
For a politician with a celebrated taste for European fine tailoring, it is ironic that the former prime minister will be forever associated with an outfit that made him look like a hick tourist from a Chevy Chase movie.
But according to Powerhouse Museum curator Christina Sumner, ``that shirt" is a powerful symbolic statement of the geographical and cultural ties which bind us to the rest of the region.
Keating and 16 fellow APEC leaders including the former United States president Bill Clinton were presented with the batik shirts by former Indonesian president Soeharto in Jakarta in 1994. The shirts, each incorporating a motif from the wearer's country, were designed by Iwan Tirta, a leading Javanese batik artist.
Mr Keating agreed to lend the shirt to the museum after being told that Trade Winds: Arts of South East Asia was intended, in Ms Sumner's words, ``to promote understanding and recognise our geographical position as part of Asia".
``To me the shirt is a very potent symbol of Australia's relationship, and the recognition of our relationship, with South-East, and specifically with Indonesia," she said.
``Paul Keating was a champion of Australia's place in Asia, and through what he did we came to realise that we weren't an outpost of empire.
``It's easy to display beautiful objects from other cultures and marvel at their intricacies.
``But now we are recognising that these `other cultures' are our neighbours. It's important for us to appreciate the complexities which have brought them to a point where they are related to us."
The exhibition, which opens tomorrow, features 90 pieces of textiles, jewellery, metalwork, ceramics, leatherwork, musical instruments and basketry most from the museum's own collection.
The title is meant to convey twin themes: continuity and change. It explores how each of the separate countries in the region was influenced artistically by its neighbours, and by ships importing ideas from India and China, Arabia and Europe.
The Keating shirt, she said, demonstrates this admirably. ``What was special about these particular shirts was the amount of research which went in to them. Paul Keating's one has the Australian coat of arms incorporated into it. This is very typical of the way symbols from other cultures [are] incorporated into Javanese art."
The exhibition has other works which will be equally controversial, given the current debate about asylum seekers. Four were made by refugees being detained in refugee camps. One is a story cloth made by Laotian Hmong refugees in a Thai camp. The others are models: a fishing boat made by a Vietnamese refugee in a Malaysian camp, and two bullock carts made by Cambodian refugees in Thai camps.
The model of the fishing boat has a particular echo now. ``It's of the type used by Vietnamese refugees who came to Australia ... an extremely vexed issue at the moment."
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald