James Nguyen Open Glossary | Exhibition Kit

ACCA  presents James Nguyen: Open Glossary as part of the Copyright Agency Partnerships series of new commissions supporting mid-career and established visual artists to develop and present a major new body of work.  

Open Glossary explores the politics of language, cultural exchange, activism and belonging. Artist James Nguyen has an ongoing commitment to collaborative models of making and expanded the solo commissioning focus of the exhibition. He did this by inviting artist and curator Tamsen Hopkinson (Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa, Ngāti Pāhauwera) advocate and researcher Budi Sudarto, artist, writer and curator Kate ten Buuren (Taungurung) and activist Chris Xu to collaborate on a series of new polyphonic (involving many voices) installations presented throughout ACCA’s galleries, as well as an evolving multilingual queer glossary available online through ACCA’s Digital Wing.

 Open Glossary explores the capacity of language to both bind and divide us. Alert to the liveness of lexicons, the exhibition emphasises the ways that words and syntax constantly evolve and transform, marking our connections to others across the specifics of time and place. Conversation is key to Nguyen’s approach, positioning his personal experience and perspective in dialogue with others – family, friends, Vietnamese diasporic communities* and LGBTIQA+* communities, the artworld.

Open Glossary brings together three distinct projects that poetically repurpose everyday materials to reflect on the intimate dimensions of daily life and their broader cultural and political ramifications. 

Artists: James Nguyen and his collaborators, Tamsen Hopkinson Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa, Ngāti Pāhauwera, Budi Sudarto, Kate ten Buuren (Taungurung) and Chris Xu. 

Curator: Shelley McSpedden

*diasporic –  relating to any group that has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland, either involuntarily or by migration
**LGBTIQA+ – An acronym used to describe the diverse words to label sexuality and gender. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer, Asexual, and more. For more information go here.

Download wall labels

Video interview with James Nguyen about Open Glossary

Link to digital Wing: Open Glossary

Open Glossary interviews


How to use this Kit

This exhibition kit has been written by ACCA Education to support learning alongside the ACCA exhibition Open Glossary: James Nguyen. Three key artists and artworks from the exhibition have been highlighted, with discussion questions to prompt student thinking. Primary and secondary activities are mapped to the Victorian and Australian Curricula and can be found in the For Teachers section. VCE students and teachers can view Support Material for further reading and teaching notes drawn from ACCA’s VCE Programs.

About the artists

James Nguyen 

James Nguyen was born in Bảo Lộc, Việt Nam in 1982,  he grew up in Western Eora/Sydney and currently lives and works in Naarm, Melbourne. Nguyen’s interdisciplinary practice examines strategies of decolonisation, while also interrogating the politics of family history, language, displacement and diaspora. 

Nguyen graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Pharmacy at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga. Trained in palliative and aged care pharmacy, he made a turn to art and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) at the National Art School.. Nguyen completed a Master of Fine Arts at Sydney College of Arts, University of Sydney in 2014 which then saw him complete a residency at Parramatta Artists Studios, travelling to Beijing as part of the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art Residency. In New York City he completed a Collaborative Fellowship at Union Docs, Centre for Contemporary Documentary Arts with the support of the Anne and Gordan Samstag Travelling Fellowship. Returning to Sydney in 2016, Nguyen began a Three-Year Residency at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists. In 2018 Nguyen joined the Gertrude Artists Studio Program and completed a PhD from the University of NSW in 2021.

Tamsen Hopkinson 

(Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa, Ngāti Pāhauwera) is an artist and curator from Aotearoa New Zealand based in Naarm, Melbourne. Her practice is an expression of Tino Rangatiratanga, Indigenous Sovereignty and considers ideas around education, language and translation, materiality and sound. She is interested in alternative exhibition models informed by collaboration, artist-run initiatives and community organisations. 

 Hopkinson has held curatorial positions across key contemporary art organisations in Naarm over the last decade including West Space, TCB Art Inc, un Projects, Footscray Community Arts and The Substation. She is the co-founder of STUDIO, an educational resource that aims to document and communicate across multiple art forms via online archives and IRL events, alongside Woody McDonald. Hopkinson currently works as a Teaching Associate at Monash University of Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) and is a board member of INPlace based in (Laughing Waters).

Kate ten Buuren 

Kate ten Buuren is a Taungurung curator, artist and writer working on Kulin Country. Ten Buuren’s cross-disciplinary practice investigates collective and collaborative ways of working, and her interest in contemporary visual art, film and oral traditions are grounded in self-determination, self-representation and the power of knowing one another.

Ten Buuren is the founder and active member of First Nations Arts Collective this mob who make space for young artists to connect and create on their own terms. this mob have curated exhibitions and produced programs at Arts House, Footscray Community Arts, West Space, Blak Dot Gallery, Melbourne Fringe Festival, YIRRAMBOI and more.

Ten Buuren currently works as Senior Curator at MAP Co, and has previously held curatorial positions at ACMI and the Koorie Heritage Trust. In 2022, she curated How I See It: Blak Art & Film at ACMI and co-curated Collective Movements at Monash University Museum of Art. 

Ten Buuren is an alumni of the Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership program at the National Gallery of Australia, and Footscray Community Art’s Emerging Cultural Leaders Program.

Key Artworks

James Nguyen and Budi Sudarto, White shirt installation 2023 (detail), installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Courtesy the artists Photograph: Andrew Curtis

James Nguyen and Budi Sudarto, White shirt installation 2023

donated and community sourced buttoned white shirts, five channel audio
240.0 x 2400.0 x 1328 cm

Courtesy the artist

White shirt installation 2023 is an installation made from hundreds of preloved, button-up shirts that have been donated through a public call-out. Evoking a sense of child-like wonder, this sprawling maze of shirts is a screen for a myriad of personal memories and associations; the childhood joy of running through clean washing, laborious days at school and work, dressing up for special events, business meetings and religious ceremonies, and landfill. For Nguyen, these garments evoke specific references to his family’s textile factory, the deregulation of the textiles and footwear industry in 1980s Australia, the Angel Ally corridors used to safeguard queer protests and activities, and the socio-political sculptures of Brazilian Neo-Concrete artist Lygia Pape* to name a few. 

Brought together on mass, the web of shirts suggests a relationship between individual lives and the collective.The white shirt has long held the promise of respectability and conformity**. Since the colonial era*** it has marked the spread of Western values and power across the globe but has also been adopted and integrated into non-Western cultural practices in idiosyncratic**** ways.

The installation has an important sound element and the shirts have been hung in a way that created an intimate enclosure for the recorded stories and experiences of a group of non-English speaking LGBTIQA+ migrants, living in Australia and spoken in their language. The overlapping voices and experiences detailed in a multitude of languages speak of the complex network of obstacles, barriers and pathways to belonging in their new homes and communities. White shirt installation celebrates the beauty and connections created through speaking in one’s own language, without the burden of translating and explaining in English.

Sound recordings from the installation can be heard here

 Inquiry question

  • What do you think of when you think of white shirts? Explain your answer. 
  • Why do you think the artist chose to hang so many white shirts?
  • How has your relationship with your culture impacted the clothing you wear today?
  • Create/Evaluate/Analyse If you had to create an installation using one primary material, what would you choose to work with and why and what form would it take?

*Neo-Concrete artist Lygia Pape – (7 April 1927 – 3 May 2004) was a Brazilian visual artist, sculptor, engraver, and filmmaker, who was a key figure in the Concrete movement and a later co-founder of the Neo-Concrete Movement in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s. She was an important artist in the expansion of contemporary art in Brazil and pushed geometric art to include aspects of interaction and to engage with ethical and political themes.

**Conformity – compliance with standards, rules, or laws.

***Colonial era – The age of modern colonialism began about 1500 – Western colonialism, a political-economic phenomenon where various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world. 

**** Idiosyncratic – having strange or unusual habits, ways of behaving, or feature

Tamsen Hopkinson and James Nguyen, HuiHụi 2023, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Courtesy the artists. Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Tamsen Hopkinson and James Nguyen, HuiHụi 2023

ash and binder on particle board, anti-fatigue mats, synthetic polymer paint on woven sedge mats
500.0 x 900.0 x 995.0 cm

Courtesy the artist

Conceived as a meeting space for negotiation and exchange, HuiHụi  2023 invites us to reflect on longstanding linguistic, cultural and spiritual connections across Indo-Pacific and Moana Polynesian communities.

HuiHụi is a manifestation of the shared term ‘Hui’, which is used in various forms across the Moana-Pacific region* to describe collective gatherings or negotiations. The Chinese character 會 (Huì), for example, represents  a longhouse where meetings and secret societies take place. In Hawaiian, Hui stands for a club, community partnership or extended family. The term has similar meanings in the artists’ own cultures, representing a meeting, congregation or conference in te reo Māori**, while for Vietnamese-Australians, Hụi is a covert collective loan-savings scheme for low-income families often used for major purchases, a family car, a house deposit, a small business loan. 

In HuiHụi viewers are invited into a darkened gallery space where they encounter a large ash painting on the ground of the gallery. They are asked to remove their shoes, gather around, contemplate and walk through the painting. Through this enveloping experience with the artwork the viewer is asked to consider the protocols and power of community and collective action, as well as the connected negotiations, obligations and tensions that they entail.

Adopting the formal language of painterly abstraction and hard edge minimalism***, along with the codes and practices of Western art institutions, including the use of anti-fatigue mats ordinarily used by gallery invigilators, the work wryly invites reflection on the kinds of communities and relationships that can be formed and sustained within the confines of contemporary art spaces.

Inquiry questions

  • Do you have any rituals or customs that you follow in your home? Examples could include  removing your shoes when you get home, celebrating birthdays, bedtime stories, sharing a meal at a specific time every week.
  • What are the communities that you belong to? This could be anything from your family to sports teams or book club.
  • Why do you think the artist asked visitors to remove their shoes when entering the room?
  • The ash painting in this artwork has a symbolic meaning, what do you think the ash is representing? 
  • Create/Evaluate/Analyse If you had to create a gathering space, what would include in the space to help facilitate the coming together of a community?  

*Moana-Pacific region – An area in the Pacific Ocean of 1000’s of islands including Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, Toeklau and Hawaii. These polynesian Islands share similarities between their language, cultural practices and traditional beliefs. Moana means ocean in Māori and Hawaiian.

** te reo Māori – the language of the Māori people of New Zealand. In 1987 Te reo Māori became the official language of New Zealand.

*** Hard edge minimalism – The term ‘hard-edge’ was coined by Californian critic Jules Langsner in 1959. He used it to describe the work of those abstract painters, particularly on the West Coast of America, who reacted to the more painterly or gestural forms of abstract expressionism by adopting a consciously impersonal approach to paint application. Their paintings were made up of monochromatic fields of clean-edged colour which reinforced the flatness of the picture surface.

Kate Ten Buuren and James Nguyen, Diorama, installation view 2023

mixed media
variable dimensions

Courtesy the artists

Key ideas and concepts: Participatory exhibitions, Sharing stories, Indigenous history, play and spatial transformation. 

This purpose-built art making space known as Lerty’s world is a vibrant, hands-on making-space and participatory installation for young people and the young at heart. Designed to invite participation and the crafting of participants own stories in relation to a range of pressing contemporary issues, including constitutional recognition for First Nations people, the Voice to Parliament and caring for Country. 

This participatory collaborative installation invites the viewer into a deeper experience with the artworks and themes in the space through the act of making and sharing. The nature of collaboration requires an active process of listening, responding and connecting with others which is an inherent part of the artist’s practice. The immersive space incorporates posters, animal hats and dioramas made from cardboard, paper, collage and other upcycled mixed media materials. The artists invite viewers to add to the unfolding stories in this purpose-built space. Participants can choose to wear one of the colourful animal hats while reading about Lerty in a zine titled Lerty’s Song.

The zine, Lerty’s Song written by Kate ten Buuren and illustrated by both ten Burren and Nguyen shares the story of Lerty the possum in her efforts to find her own voice and listen to Country. The story offers readers and participants a guide, giving context to the room and anchoring the visitors in their own journey of self expression and deeper understanding for Country. Gallery visitors are invited to take a zine and add pictures and words to make it their own story. 

The growing 3D cardboard diorama which grows throughout the exhibition on the walls, and across the floor invites viewers to add their own elements to represent Lerty’s world and Country responding to the questions:

When did you last feel heard? How did it make you feel?
How do you listen to Country?
How do you know that Country listens to you?

The wide variety of animal hats are symbolic of both the Chinese and Vietnamese Zodiac, ranging from a dragon to a tiger and ant. Nguyen and ten Buuren invite viewers to wear the hats while in the gallery evoking a sense of playfulness with their friends and family.

 Inquiry questions

  • What stories about Country have been shared with you? – examples might be Dreaming stories or personal reflections or memories from family members. e?
  • Why might Australian artists be interested in exploring ideas related to voice at this time? As of writing, we are two weeks out from The Voice referendum where Australians will have their say in a referendum about whether to change the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. See ACCA’s statement here.
  • Share a story with a classmate describing your own experience listening to County. What is similar and different about the stories you’ve shared.

For Teachers

Primary activities

Inspired by the artwork by Kate ten Buuren and James Nguyen, Diorama 2023, this activity invites students to create their own Lerty’s world with cardboard and textas responding to the questions below. 

When did you last feel heard? How did it make you feel?
How do you listen to Country?
How do you know that Country listens to you?

Working in pairs create your own 3D diorama which can be part of a whole collaborative classroom diorama representing Lerty’s world and Country. Thinking about the landscape of your world, you may like to tape or pin your artworks to the wall or allow them to carry across tables, chairs and on to the floor.


Materials
Cardboard
Scissors
Textas or crayons
Collage materials, including plain papers or images from books or magazines
Tape


Extension
What would an alternative future look like for Lerty. This artwork creates an opportunity to discuss other topics connected to Australia’s colonial history such as sovereignty* and treaty**. What do you think these terms mean and how could you incorporate them into your Diorama of Lerty’s world?

*Sovereignty – a political concept that refers to dominant power or supreme authority. In a monarchy, supreme power resides in the “sovereign”, or king. In modern democracies, sovereign power rests with the people and is exercised through representative bodies such as Parliament.

**Treaty – is an international agreement concluded in written form between two or more sovereign powers/states and is governed by international law.

If there was a treaty with the Australian Government between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people it would set the foundation for a shared future. It would allow all parties to come together and negotiate a new way of working and set the foundation for a positive co-existence.

Australian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Years F-6

Explore ideas and artworks from different cultures and times, including artwork by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, to use as inspiration for their own representations (ACAVAM106) (ACAVAM110) (ACAVAM114)

Use materials, techniques and processes to explore visual conventions when making artworks (ACAVAM107) (ACAVAM111) (ACAVAM115)

Create and display artworks to communicate ideas to an audience (ACAVAM108) (ACAVAM112) (ACAVAM116)

Victorian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Levels F-6

Explore and Express Ideas (VCAVAE013)(VCAVAE017) (VCAVAE021) (VCAVAE025) (VCAVAE029)
Visual Arts Practices (VCAVAV018) (VCAVAV022) (VCAVAV026) (VCAVAV030)
Present and Perform  (VCAVAP019) (VCAVAP023)(VCAVAP027)
Respond and Interpret (VCAVAR020) (VCAVAR024) (VCAVAR028) (VCAVAR032)

Curriculum Interpretation

This activity is devised in response to the exhibition Open Glossary, featuring five artists who have collaborated on four installations which span textiles, sound, projection, painting and sculpture. Students explore the intricate relationship between shared histories, culture and storytelling. They will create a cardboard diorama based on techniques used by the artists whilst building students’ awareness of art and technical skills.

The exhibition navigates a range of themes and material collisions that convey the intersections and connections between storytelling, art, culture, materiality and history.

By undertaking these activities, students:

  • Experiment with sculptural form and scale and how they can tell a story with their creation.
  • Select and experiment with new approaches to composition and technical execution whilst honing close-looking skills.
  • Consider James Nguyen and Kate ten Buurens’ practice and ideas as inspiration for their own art making.
  • Consider how STEM ideas and principles are embedded in the art making processes by understanding how sculptures stand up.

Secondary activities

Create a collaborative textile installation

Inspired by James Nguyen’s White Shirt 2023 this activity invites students to create their own collaborative installation using textiles or upcycled clothing. 

Working in a group or with your whole class, consider if there are any materials or clothing which have personal or symbolic meaning for the group.

In collaborative practice it is important to hear everyone’s ideas yet it is also equally valuable to be flexible and consider what is best for the group and the strongest idea rather than the individual. 

When selecting your materials you may choose to group items by type, like James Nguyen’s White shirts or group by colour, material or size. Once you have the materials you can then think about the form your sculpture/installation will take. Will you construct a form or scaffolding to display your textiles or will they be hung or draped on the floor? All of these decisions will be guided by the reason you have chosen a specific material and the message you are communicating with the artwork. 

Consider how you would join parts of the fabric together, will you hand stitch, machine stitch, staple or even tie together. You will also need to consider the site you will be presenting your work, will it be a small room, outside on the oval or wrapped around a building or table.  

A large part of this activity is developing skills with listening, sharing your ideas, being flexible and working together to problem solve an artwork.

Australian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Years 7-10

Experiment with visual arts conventions and techniques (ACAVAM118(ACAVAM125)
Develop planning skills for art-making by exploring techniques and processes used by different artists  (ACAVAM120(ACAVAM127)
Practise techniques and processes to enhance representation of ideas in their art-making (ACAVAM121) ​​ (ACAVAM128)

Victorian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Levels 7-10

Experiment with visual arts conventions and techniques (ACAVAM118(ACAVAM125)
Develop planning skills for art-making by exploring techniques and processes used by different artists  (ACAVAM120(ACAVAM127)
Practise techniques and processes to enhance representation of ideas in their art-making (ACAVAM121) ​​ (ACAVAM128)

Curriculum Interpretation

This activity is devised in response to the exhibition Open Glossary, featuring five artists who have collaborated on four installations which span textiles, sound, projection, painting and sculpture. Students explore the intricate relationship between shared histories, culture and storytelling. They will create a collaborative textile installation based on techniques used by the artists whilst building students’ awareness of art and technical skills.

The exhibition navigates a range of themes and material collisions that convey the intersections and connections between storytelling, art, culture, materiality and history.

By undertaking these activities, students:

  • Consider material textures and installation within visual arts.
  • ​​Explore how textiles and upcycled clothing can be used to express identity and personal experience.
  • Select and experiment with new approaches to collaboration and artmaking.
  • Consider James Nguyen’s practice and ideas as inspiration for their own art making.
  • Consider how STEM ideas and principles are embedded in the art making processes through the use of scaffolding as architecture for constructing art installations.

Contact ACCA

This education resource has been produced by ACCA Education to provide information and classroom support material for education visits to the exhibition Open Glossary. The reproduction and communication of this resource is permitted for educational purposes only.