Correspondences

Ali Rahamad - Senses of Malaysia January 2012

2012-01-25T17:58:00.000+08:00

Wednesday

2012-01-17T11:40:00.002+08:00

There was a strange feeling of déjà vu watching her spillfrom that crumpled bed, stretch like a young cat, knock strands of long darkbrown hair from her tan shoulder, and smile.

I watched her stand, naked, her back to me - slim,curvaceous, her mane brushing that indent in her back, kissing her roundedcheeks. I glanced as she brushed, feeling each brushstroke, transfixed with herbeauty and my luck, understanding that fortune can, and did, smile that Wednesday.

In the mirror I caught her lustrous almond eyes, warmed by after-sexglow, radiant. The nakedness of her and the nakedness of me were in starkcontrast. She was svelte, hardly a cherry tree in the breeze and I mountainous,a whole landscape for her to explore. I loved the ease with which we fitted,the naturalness in the way we fell together - little spiderhunter kisses, thenmouthfuls of hornbill passion flesh, drawing us closer until we were arainforest.

My joss was good. She had done that – turned my life around,gathered me to her with passion and love, pulled me to her slight breasts andsaved me. Over morning beef noodle soup, dark brown coffee in that old tin cityshe blew rising steam, her cleavage rising, falling, catching my heart with herhonesty, and holding it in her forever.

It hadn’t been that long. Sparks had flown between us inthat country kitchen, igniting something deep inside, a karmic something boundup with the yin-yang, ebb-flow of the universe, swept us up together on wavesof passion, bonding our hearts, souls. I knew from the moment I met her that Iwould not end my days as a dying dog, front legs paralysed, howling for amerciful release, hot sun beating on my fur and my misdemeanours video loopeduntil I passed.

Scents of India

2012-01-12T08:51:00.000+08:00

There is radiant splendour and vibrant beauty to Indiawhich Rafiee Ghani captures well in his latest exhibition – Perfumed Gardens,at Galeri Chandan, Bukit Damansara, Kuala Lumpur.
Amidst russet forts, toweringminarets, eggshell blue skies and the vermillion of northern saris, there is thevivid perfumed romance of all that is rich and stunning about Rafiee’s India.

Though the title ‘Perfumed Gardens’ is perhaps bestknown from Sir Richard Francis Burton’s translation of the Arabic eroticmanual, it suits the vibrancy of Rafiee’s exhibition well. The wanderingvisitor to Galeri Chandan becomes ‘perfumed’ with colour exuding from canvasesand watercolour papers throughout Rafiee’s stunning display. Those rich, lively,visual, aromas permeate consciousness in an almost subliminal way, leaving thevisitor heady, intoxicated by their sheer beauty.

As you might expect - vermillion, cardinal, crimson,cerise – the colours of India, dance and swirl from Rafiee’s paintings, oftencounterbalanced by walls of blue, or simple Indian skies. Red in all its facetspresents as the bonding colour, uniting works throughout the well-spaced gallery.Galeri Chandan’s unique architecture only enhances the exhibition. The visitoris allowed a certain voyeurism when peeking through arches, around corners,down staircases – like the small children we all secretly are, excited at thenext find in the treasure trail of that Perfumed Garden.

And it is an excitement. The journey that GalerieChandan and Rafiee Ghani take us on is a journey of spills and trills, a secretjourney bound in symbolism, closeness and distance, a voyage of re-discovery,root finding and whole-making. India has that effect. Once sampled it is neverforgotten. Be it the bounce and brashness of Bollywood, or the dank misery ofMira Nair’s Salaam Bombay, India gets into the blood like an incurable virus,forges love/hate but it is never forgotten. Like Rafiee’s paintings, Indiaalways calls, sometimes we heed that call, sometimes we simply listen andreflect, surround ourselves with its hues and scents and recall the heat, the passion,and the perfumes which linger in oh so many gardens.

PerfumedGardens - an exhibition by Rafiee Ghani;at Galeri Chandan, Bukit Damansara, 9^thJanuary – 3^rd February 2012.

It's A Jungle in There - Esquire Magazine December 2011

2011-12-12T12:40:00.000+08:00

2011-11-16T08:25:00.001+08:00

Dusun - Batik

2011-09-26T06:51:00.000+08:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

I wanna Change – written for 100,000 Poets for Change 2011

2011-09-15T09:26:00.000+08:00

Man, I wanna change

Change my underpants

Change my socks

Change my t-shirt - if it don’t rock

Change my address

Change my mind too

Man, I wanna change

Change my girlfriend is she ain’t black

Change her into brown

And change her right back

Can’t change her white

Cause that ain’t right

Too light and she’s too up-tight

But man, I wanna change

Man, I wanna change

Change my habits

Change karma

Change my cool – like a Deli Llama

Change into a good man

Don’t know if I can

But man, I wanna change

Man, I wanna change

Change into yellow

Cause that would be mellow

Say hello

And change this government

You can see what I meant

Change like in Libya

Change like in Egypt

Change like in Tunisia

Is ya

Getting the message

Because I want change

Change with my poetry

Change the reality

Change it right now

Change not just anyhow

Change with the Peace Train

Change with Samad Said

Change the ISA

Change all the way

Man, I wanna change

Change it with you

Hold my hand and we’ll do it too

Change in small ways

Change what we can

Change the boy into a man

Change that frown into an erection

Change it all at the next election

Change it good and change it right

Turn from night

Into day

Stand up and say

I want this change

Selangor Times 26th August 2011

2011-08-26T10:43:00.002+08:00

Northern Writers September 3rd 2011

2011-08-26T08:28:00.000+08:00

Yellow

2011-07-17T10:49:00.001+08:00

Watchmen 'button' as seen in the film

Recently I wasmusing under the brightness of the hot noon sun and typing with one hand, withthe other I reached for my iced maize drink. The drink’s yellow colourmomentarily dazzled me, caught as it was by shafts of sun tripping over myneighbour’s coconut trees. The brightness of the colour yellow brought to mindall kinds of yellow things - from the maize making the drink that particulartint to the spice - turmeric and its indelible stain.

In a goldenreverie, I recalled days listening to Donovan Leech’s most endearing song -Mellow Yellow and, many years later - that droning song about the same colour,from the band - Coldplay.

Quickly Irecalled that there were hippy filled submarines of yellow (by The Beatles andHeinz Edlemann) in the 1960s, dastardly and dangerous yellow fevers and oneparticular yellow window inserted in his museum, by Sir John Sloane, giving aMediterranean tint to his collection of artefacts in Lincoln Inn Fields,London.

The sun-filledsaffron thought persisted – a yellow sun brings that Kryptonian - Superman hissuper powers. Royal yellow is the colour of kings, and queens for that matter.Yellow metal is associated with gold, and certain orders of monks wear yellow –reflecting dropping leaves and ephemeral life. Yellow is allied to Texas roses,it became the ink colour for America’s cartoon Yellow Kid and those extremelyhelpful telephone pages of a lemon hue.

Yellow is not,normally, the colour of revolution, so why - I asked myself, were members ofMalaysia’s police force arresting people in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor forwearing the colour of quince and primrose.

True we had beenthrough this before – in Perak, in Ipoh to be more precise, but then it was thecolour black.

Black was caught up in some power tussle between the officiallyelected state government and those wishing to oust them – the ousters won.Sympathisers of the ousted officials wore black in mourning for democracy andheld a candlelight vigil. Holding lit candles and wearing black T-shirts becamebanned in Perak, for a while. Now yellow was banned, outlawed like some distantcousin to Lincoln Green and Robin of Loxley.

Despite thelocal telecoms company – Digi adopting a rather curious, and rotund, yellow‘man’ as their mascot, and yellow appertaining to Malaysia’s royalty, thewearing of T-shirts of a yellow hue, with or without the additional text – Bersih (clean) became suddenly illegalin Malaysia - for a short period of time.

‘Do we have totake down our curtains then’ I asked my wife innocently, ‘should we attempt tohide the Alamanda flowers, and what about our cat Tyger – technically moreginger than yellow, but in the sunlight....’ A ‘we are not amused’ face turnedto me, said nothing vocally but a whole lot non-verbally – ‘I’ll start puttingthe curtains back up then, shall I’ I said.

It was all clearly a misunderstanding. Amisunderstanding that brought a host of blue wearing policemen and relatedprotectors of government, wearing red, onto the streets of Kuala Lumpurshooting grey teargas and blue chemical-laced water canon at people gatheringand wearing shirts of a yellow hue.

Said protectorsof government accosted many people, practically ripping their yellow T-shirtsfrom their backs, while other people, wearing yellow, were beaten and, once onthe ground, kicked – and all because they were wearing the wrong colourT-shirt, a colour officially outlawed by Malaysia’s Home Minister.

It was not as ifthese yellow people were creating erotic material, such as Audrey Beardsley’sinfamous Yellow Book of Victorian England, nor were they swinging through thestreets apropos some yellow costume clad blind superhero (aka Daredevil), butwalking orderly towards a stadium where they hoped to hold a rally in favour offair and clean elections.

The blue claddefenders of the status quo (and I resist the analogy with Pepperland’s BlueMeanies) took exception to the hosts of yellow T-shirt wearers and waged aone-sided war upon the undefended and unarmed gatherers. Brutalised and beaten,yellow quickly became stained with red, like some contemporary Malaysianmimicking of Alan Moore’s Watchmen comic book logo - replete with the blooddroplet.

Some days later,T-shirts washed and only a faint stain of red remaining, sanity has, gladly,returned to the streets of Kuala Lumpur. The teargas, but not the tears havewafted away, irritant-laced water has sunk, as have hearts, into Kuala Lumpur’sdrainage system –and only the bitter taste of blue against yellow remains.

It was with asmile then, that I recognised a great deal of irony in the images comingthrough the internet of the Malaysia’s Prime Minister, red faced in hisaudience with Queen Elizabeth II, in England. Regally and royally she greetedthe promoter of blue, with a stunning ensemble entirely decked out in the mostalluring shade of - yellow.

My copies arrived today - 16 Degrees with Eric Hausman

2011-07-13T16:25:00.000+08:00

http://soundcloud.com/search?q[fulltext]=malim+nawar+morning

Dusun the Surrealist Issue

2011-07-12T18:02:00.001+08:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

dogcatbird - found in the latest issue of Asiatic

2011-07-04T20:10:00.000+08:00

A dog, cat and a bird sat on a pier jutting
out into the clear blue ocean waters.
At times they would argue about who
the pier belonged to, at other times they
were content to partake of
the scraps of food laying on the pier.

One argument involved who had come
to the pier first. The cat, always standing a little proud,
boasted that it had come
before either of the others, and that
really the pier belonged to it. The other
two only remained on the pier due to
the cat’s own good graces.

Often times the dog would bark and
the bird would squawk, that this was not so.
“I and my ancestors were here first” the
dog would say
“No mine were” the bird would interject.
“But, with respect, you both are wrong,
for this has been mine and my ancestor’s
home long before either of you came to
know of it” the cat would say, sometimes
purring its words, sometimes growling
them deep in its throat.

The argument raged on and off until such
a time that the dog fell silent, curled up
and permitted the cat and bird to
verbally wrestle on.

Over time the bird too fell silent,
realising that there was no point in
arguing. All three remained on the pier
watching other animals climb on and off
the pier, still the original three remained.

The cat, now unable to remain silent,
since the dog and bird refused to argue –
argued by itself. Often times it would
scream at the fish in the sea, the planks
of wood on the pier, the rope holding
the pier together.

Long into the humid night the cat would
continue its argument while the dog slept
and the bird watched, curious at the cat’s
need for argument.

One day, when all three had eaten well
of the produce on the pier, the cat too
fell silent. It looked into the far distance,
gazing out to sea, imagining it was alone.
The silent dog and the watchful bird
looked at the cat, then at each other,
shrugged, then looked on.
http://asiatic.iium.edu.my/index.htm
Gradually the cat turned, looked at its
companions, and smiled a weak smile in
the realisation that the pier was only the
pier when all three were on it.
The cat sat, curled its tail around itself,
content to be amongst friends.

Malim Nawar Morning - extended

2011-06-12T16:34:00.000+08:00

malim nawar morning

surreal hummingbird morning
garden papaya drips dew
kingfishers flash blue against candyfloss sky

judy collins sings of chelsea
warming chill of my jeep cabin
softening hard pangolin killing road
taking me back to the three cat stooges in my compound

warming sun brings bougainvillea bright
golden helliconia
jasmine
and that mangy
mangled one-eyed thief into my kitchen
stealing fish

brighter
hotter morning
sky cleared to pale blue
sun pounding grass to yellow
bleaching paintwork
sending cobras slithering for shade

another languid day in malim nawar
post colonial
lost tin town
forgotten as the centuries and railway track passes
leaving mrs hameed’s bollywood restaurant
feeding post ramadan thosa eaters
sitting between time and teh tarik

another hot day in malim nawar
malim nowhere
sun pinches
forehead furrows
hand shades eyes
shouty woman resumes
after metal rabbit break
dropping joss dust
mandarins
too much noodles to shake a chopstick at
roti cannai puffed and ready to go

stray dog sleeps adjacent to rail line
honda 50 bumps up and over footbridge
stopping
momentarily
gawping at post colonial houses
brick columns
cats sheltering
children
cockerels pecking colonial remains

muezzin calling faithful to pray
sweet sounds filling ears
hearts
emptiness left by materialism
rivalling nightly hokkien karaoke

another fine day in malim nawar
ah lam nets mining pool fish
pa yusop stretches tea
cup to enamel cup
glass to chipped glass
dreaming of mecca
30 years passing
children gone
empty space of departed wife

pregnant lady mountain pushes up
revealing belly
on another bright
clear
malim nowhere day
as my jeep
rolls
slowly
on

Grandmother screams lata
as I drive
into the kampong
past
blind sisters selling kuey
shed full of cats
spilling
onto the dirt track
path
chasing golden necked
proud cockerels into
sun dried torch ginger

Always on
puffing black smoke
back down that lane
of memory
carbide chimney sold brick
by red brick
dragon fruit weirdness
fluffy bunny gardens
Chinese school disgorging pupils
bicycles
cars
everywhere noisy
on a hot Malim Nawar morning

A chases M
M chases paper
khalwat goons chase both
slipping
sliding
greased palms
fingers too fat to pull wallets
drop cash

Sun shifts
shade to shade
bananas ripe
papayas ripe
coconuts fall
split
pandan water cools thirst
as I drink
from my old jeep cabin and drive
onehandly
slowly ever on

back to the breast

2011-06-12T16:29:00.000+08:00

seeing our passion
a butterfly
faints
crashes onto pseudo-grass tile
buffeted by fan breeze
dances
amidst dust
skinflakes
dead cockroaches

her big butterball breasts
eyes for nipples
smell of Cameron Highland honey
smother me
smiling
I am happy to be back
to the breast

My poem Malim Nawar Morning read by me with music by Eric Hausman on this CD

2011-06-10T18:06:00.000+08:00

http://erichausmann.bandcamp.com/album/16-degrees

Yee I-Lann's Fluid World- not a book review in the latest issue of senTap

2011-06-06T09:35:00.000+08:00

Yee I-Lann's Fluid World in Senses of Malaysia

2011-05-19T11:47:00.000+08:00

download Dusun here

2011-05-11T19:04:00.000+08:00

dusun

Dusun

2011-05-11T18:38:00.002+08:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More arts

Yee I-Lann's Fluid World- not a book review

2011-03-08T08:16:00.000+08:00

For six days and six nights the winds blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world, tempest and flood raged together like warring hosts. When the seventh day dawned the storm from the south subsided, the sea grew calm, the, flood was stilled; I looked at the face of the world and there was silence, all mankind was turned to clay. The surface of the sea stretched as flat as a roof-top; I opened a hatch and the light fell on my face. Then I bowed low, I sat down and I wept, the tears streamed down my face, for on every side was the waste of water. The Epic of Gilamesh, Assyrian International News Agency, Books Online - www.aina.org

I was about to partake in a quite meagre lunch when I noticed a yellow package which had been slipped between the slightly rusting bars of my rustic garden gate. Concerned that the package may be snatched by a passing jentayu, or munched by a myopic water buffalo I, eagerly and with barely a hesitation, slipped on my plastic (pseudo) Japanese slippers and flip-flopped my way to the waiting gate.

I admit to being a little curious about the package as I strolled - not knowing quite what to expect from the yellow and, one could say, quite sun-dazzling parcel. In time I retrieved said package - which nearly fell apart in my hands and completed the unravelling experience as I flip-flopped back to the welcoming shade of our house by the lake.

A rectangular book some 29.5 centimetres long, 22.5 centimetres wide and approximately 2 centimetres in depth smiled back at me as it slid from what remained of its mellow packaging. Instantly I recognised the cover image as being that of Yee I-Lann’s Sulu Stories: Barangay (2005). It was then that an altogether different kind of light began to dawn on me. I held in my hands, at last, a copy of Yee I-Lann’s long awaited book - Fluid World.

front cover

Fluid World is an edition of essays and images which was originally intended to surface at the Bogeyman exhibition, but was delayed. The distinctive essays included in that volume are offered from Dr Isobel Crombie and Dave Lumenta, with an interview of Yee I-Lann by Huzir Sulaman, a textual conversation between Yee I-Lann and Professor Anthony Milner and an introduction by Beverly (Rogue Art)Yong and in between are introductions to some series of the artist’s work.

The title of the book, though really never in doubt, was confirmed on seeing the grey text title hovering above a sepia tinted front cover image. The well-designed book forms a textual and visual overview of the artist Yee I-Lann’s contemporary art works from ‘snapshot’ (1993) through to ‘Boogeyman’ (2010). I say ‘overview’, as it has been impressed upon me that the book is emphatically not a ‘retrospective’.

The book, not being a retrospective, is a teaser. It allows access to some, and no more, of the artist Yee I-Lann’s artistic back catalogue. It is not, emphatically not, that retrospective mentioned earlier for, as it was pointed out to me by the artist - a retrospective would cover the artist’s entire oeuvre and this book does not do that. Besides, the artist has miles and years to go before thoughts of retrospectives permeate into her consciousness, therefore Fluid World is not a retrospective but, instead, perhaps a nicely framed window through which we may access some of the signs, symbols and metaphors painstakingly embedded within the artist’s carefully crafted work. It is a Johari window perhaps, revealing some of the above to the world, while keeping others known only to herself.

To springboard from the title - Yee I-Lann’s landscape of imagery is indeed a fluid world. It is a multi-layered, multi-textural, malleable, plastic world containing multiple narratives, back stories and a tender weaving of digital and photographic manipulation to enhance already existing narratives, or to bring forth narratives anew.

To do this, to arrive at a presentable narrative the artist must first select, isolate, capture, desquamate and then combine disparate imagery to form a meaningful whole - much in the way any other artist might, only Yee I-Lann is prone to work with high definition photographic imagery, captured by her image intensive Mamiya camera, scanned and transformed through her skill (with the digital process) and printed on high quality photographic paper to present new ‘truths’ in art.


Salvadore Dali

Yee I-Lann’s intriguing creations are, essentially, stratified juxtapositions, digital collages, Derridian deconstructions and reconstructions revealing both illusions of truth (not in painting but in the artwork) and truth through illusion. There would be a temptation here to recall Max Ernst’s montages, Dali’s surreal juxtapositions – specifically burning giraffes (L’Age d’Or – 1930; The Invention of Monsters – 1937; Burning Giraffe - 1937), and the slick rendering of modern (or is that post-modern) CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) - but I shall resist it as Fluid World is about so much more than I-Mac enhanced process and Freudian psychoanalysis.

detail of The Ch'i-lin of Calauit

Yee I-Lann forms her own visual language, ocular sentences and paragraphs, chapters which generate fresh narratives – such as those found amidst the wavy waters of the Sulu Sea - where pale sand islands give shelter to storied giraffes, sexualised palm fronds and past Philippine dictators (The Ch’i of Calacuit from Sulu Stories).

a rousing account of migration in the language of the sea

In the watery wetness of I-Lann’s milieu, amidst other waves, in other seascapes, water buffalo churn waters (A rousing account of migration in the language of the sea, from The Orang Besar series, 2010) surrounded by plastic shopping bags bearing a resemblance to the colonial British ‘Union Jack’. The water buffalo churned waters are turbulent, the sky stormy, there is fright and concern on the faces of the buffalo as they search for direction and eventually head off, on-mass , into the depths of the waters.

Yee I-Lann’s Fluid World is not Ukiyo – the Floating World of lustful Edo Japan. When we consider the notion of fluid world it does not necessarily conjure the pleasures of Yoshiwara, but instead provokes comparisons between the grand floods of antiquity, those of Mesopotamian Gilamesh, or the cleansing floods of Biblical Noah.

Aside from ancient deluges there are questing floods, diluvial peregrinations, Ballard’s fictional Drowned World, Kevin Costner’s filmic Water World, Whitman’s poetic seas of immortality - seas which separate, seas which bring together and looming horizons which stretch out both physically and metaphorically, inclusively and exclusively – giving their promises and dashing them in the offing or becalming them in the doldrums. And, in a way, this book - Fluid World is all of those, and none.

What the book – Fluid World does is chart the expansion of the artist’s ideas, concerns and notions of identity, image making and milieu. Through the design and intent of the book we observe these ideas of identity mature, flow, transform over 166 pages, informed by supportive text, glossary, image details etc.

To begin at, almost, the beginning....

Snapshot I

Snapshot (1993, p18 Fluid World) presents us with the almost nostalgic sepia tints of ‘ethnic’ children, questioning ‘photograph’ and ‘identity’. I say almost sepia tints because, as you may expect with Yee I-Lann, nothing is quite what it seems. Within these images there are important issues revolving around Derrida’s questioning of the ‘frame’, whether it is ergon (interior to the work) hors d’oeuvre (exterior to the ‘canvas’), or indeed parergon - standing out from both the wall and the work. In Yee I-Lann’s case we observe the photo image and are asked to consider what the notion of framing does to meaning, significance etc. Framed, unframed, masked images in ‘snapshot’ stand on the political and ethnographic borders of Malaya/Malaysia, revealing notions of personal and national identity. It all seems to begin, for Yee I-Lann, here in the framing and the un-framing, in the metaphorical reminiscence and re-looking at identity.

In slightly later sections of Fluid World (Buy in Yee I-Lann & labDNA - 2001, and Buy Me - 2002) the reader/viewer is introduced to the fragility of identity, how Western consumerist materialism wishes to impose upon identity, subsume it into itself, make us all the same. ‘Through Rose-Coloured Glasses’ (2002) shifts that emphasis slightly and, along with ‘Malaysiana’ (2002), throws up identity as question and provokes dialogue around previously imposed values of station/class, this is highlighted by the questioning of ‘studio’ photography - who has/had access to it and who could afford the luxury of photography. This ‘highlighting’ also provokes another debate (not entered into here) revolving around ‘access’ to the work of art by the impoverished, and concepts of artistic elitism.

Lagenda

Horizon (2003, p 68 Fluid World) is a pivotal work. While not being physically at the centre of the book Fluid World, ‘Horizon’ is metaphorically or perhaps spiritually, at the epicentre of Yee I-Lann’s issues surrounding identity, belonging and distance.

Yee I-Lann has this to say about her concept of horizon, p69-Fluid World......

‘So I took photographs of the horizon, of the unknown, to try to know it.....I would use photographs to surrender the horizon to the “hyper-real”; the image would become my accomplice. I would put a horizon back into our landscape and see what it would tell us.’

And there the horizon would stay, informing those stormy black and white images in the ‘Horizon’ series (2003), and through to the ‘Boogeyman’ (Bugis-man?) exhibition (2010) and highlighting the foreground images which remain all at sea - like the congkak (mancala) forever drifting like some metaphorical Kon-Tiki amidst those forever fluid waters, under perennial stormy skies, delineating the afore-mentioned buffalo/new batik islands which simultaneously welcome and repel cultural migration.

Huminodun

From Horizon to Boogeyman that globally curved line of the horizon also seems to stand as a referential frame, reframing distance, nearness, taking us back to ‘snapshots’ and those Derridian concepts of inclusion and exclusion, in-ness and out-ness, framed and the unframed, ergon, hors d’oeuvre or parergon.

But, while we may want to express these notions, included within the works in the book Fluid World, as universals ultimately Yee I-Lann’s works, in all their provocation and ‘knowing’, are personal. They are as personal, private and unknowable, in their own way, as the works of Hannah Hoch (1889-1978), Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) and Meret Oppenheim (1913 – 1985).

There is a sense of a full stop at the Boogeyman exhibition, it being the last series in the book. In that section/exhibition those concerns brought to our attention in ‘snapshot’ seem to have reached fruition, blossomed, solidified pictorially and in metaphor, begging the question – and what next. For that we shall have to wait and see.

Fluid Word by Yee I-Lann, in conjunction with Rogue Art and Valentine Willie Fine Art, may just be the most important book about art to have been produced in Malaysia within the last few years, but that is, of course, an my entirely subjective view.

Enigmatic/Absorbing visions of Rafiee Ghani

2011-03-05T12:14:00.000+08:00

Moonshine 2011

‘The State of awareness of visions is not one in which we are either remembering or perceiving. It is rather a level of consciousness at which we experience visions within ourselves’ Oskar Kokoschka (1886 – 1980), originally delivered as part of a lecture in Vienna, 1912.

Three things become abundantly clear when you witness the artworks of Rafiee Ghani. The first is the artist’s love for the environment, the second is the artist’s unwavering love for colour and the third is the artist’s inimitable vision of his world.

It has been clear since Rafiee Ghani’s early works - including Ingatan dari Gunung (Memories from the Mountain -1985) – shown at Pameran Bakat Muda Sezaman 85 (Young Contemporaries 1985), that these loves – environment, colour, vision have teased Rafiee to wander down some very exciting artistic pathways, and sometimes into ‘The Painted Garden’.

In Rafiee’s works, sometimes, it is the colour sculptured figurative which takes dominance, sometimes it is the artist’s fascination with colour abstraction and sometimes – like in these latest works, it is a delicate and exciting fusion of both the figurative and the abstract - fulfilling the artist’s own unique vision, which delights and excites us.

Hermann Bahr reminds us that ‘The history of painting is nothing but the history of vision – or seeing. Technique changes only when the mode of seeing has changed; it only changes because the method of seeing has changed’ (written in 1914 and published in Expressionismus, Munich, 1916). Of course our relation and reaction to sensory data changes both chronologically and experientially and we would, naturally, expect that an artist and an artist’s work would also change over time and through experiences.

The French philosopher Maurice Merlleau-Ponty, in the Phenomenology of Perception, makes the point that ‘...had we not eyes, or more generally senses, there would be no painting at all for us, yet the picture ‘tells’ us more than the mere use of our senses can ever do’ (p389, Colin Smith English translation, England, 1962). Both time and experience effect the recording of the ‘vision’, and the end result – the painting, in this case Rafiee Ghani’s paintings, are more than their summation, imbued not just with paint on canvas but with all that the artist has to give of himself, his experiences, skill, his vision of his world and his internal vision.

Over the last few years Rafiee Ghani, on his artistic journey, has steadfastly worked towards a delicate melding of line and colour, figurative and abstract, symbol and metaphor. The combinations of these attributes presents Rafiee’s viewer with sometimes complex narratives which weave symbolic fantasies reminiscent of artists like the French painter Odilon Redon, coupled with a vibrancy of colour sense and a gusto gleaned from Rafiee’s excitement with the pulsating works of Dutch master painter Vincent Van Gogh.

The astute viewer might want to add the Austrian abstract Expressionist artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser to that list of artists we are reminded of when coming close to the works of Rafieee Ghani for, increasingly, there is a playful, colourfully organic feel to Rafiee’s newer works.

Beach Drive 1 2011

Already, in the Rainbow Warrior exhibition - Kuala Lumpur, 2010, those organic elements were bubbling through with paintings such as Ali’s Wonderland (2009), The Piano Beach (2009) and in the pockets of surf graced with butterflies in Blue Butterfly Beach (2008). Those playful organic elements are more in evidence in these latest landscape works, specifically the stunning Beach Drive 1, Beach Drive 2, Beach Studio 1, Beach studio 2, Wetlands, Kashmir 1 and Kashmir 2 - all finished in 2011. Those few dazzling works echo the excitement and intensity of a Van Gogh, or even a Monet, but are ultimately all Malaysian and all uniquely Rafiee Ghani, right down to the two pods of green Petai laying strewn in Beach Studio 2.

The figurative is not forgotten, but plays its part in the miasma, dream, vision as demonstrated in The Wait and Moonshine – both, incidentally featuring an enigmatic woman, head crocked, gazing in remembrance and expectancy, perhaps waiting for her lover, or maybe overseeing the small, thoughtful boy who inhabits so many of Rafiee’s later canvases including Baywatch 01 (2008), Beach at 10 (2008) The Calligrapher (2008) and Overslept (2011).

Monet Woman with Parasol

In the canvas Moonshine (2011) Rafiee depicts the light of the full moon falling on a seated woman. In the moonlight she holds a red umbrella and, in holding that umbrella, brings to mind all those Impressionists and post-impressionist paintings which were so enamoured with ladies holding umbrellas – Claude Monet’s Woman with a Parasol (1875) or Eugene Boudin’s Woman with a Parasol on the Beach (1880) perhaps, or there again Pierre Auguste Renoir’s Woman with a Parasol and Small Child (1874/76). There is an irony, for many of the Impressionists of the West looked towards the East for inspiration, specifically to the woodblock Japanese prints of artists like Toyokuni III otherwise known as Kunisada (1786 – 1865) or the great Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858). In Moonshine Rafiee returns those images of women with umbrellas back to the East.

The beloved boy, seen in some previous outings of Rafiee’s works, is man as boy and acts as boy as proto-man exuding a certain pensiveness, drenched frequently in colour amidst a sun-kissed landscape. In Baywatch 01, the young boy squats on a very Van Gogh yellow beach – also a reference to a previous painting – Yellow Wind Coming (2008). In the Baywatch painting a drawn-out shadow indicates that the sun is at the boy’s back. A yellow car, now forgotten in play, rests to one side of the boy as he sits with his hands upon face. There is a brief question mark - is that car, beside the boy, Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi (circa 1970)? Will we allow ourselves to be teased by Rafiee into considering the destruction of the rainforests by loggers, by Palm Oil plantations and all manner of ills such as malls and areas for parking as we silently sing ‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot’? Well, perhaps.

The Calligrapher 2008

A boy – is it the same boy, sits with his legs akimbo on a beach in the painting - The Calligrapher (2008). This painting amply illustrates Rafiee Ghani’s love of both form and colour. The boy’s back is towards the sea, which is caught and inflamed by the setting sun and instantly reminds you of Paul Claudel’s description of poetic colour. Colour drapes the boy and gives him form, picked out in shades of grey and green. His orange (Crocs) shoes compliment the greenness of the boy, the cooked-salmon-pink of the sand and the mesmerising Istanbul-blue of the boy’s shadow. On the sand, in the cool blueness of the shadow, is the practised calligraphy of the boy as he tries to get to grips with his Jawi (Islamic script) learning. The boy concentrates on his writing – the light of the sun is at his rear but the light of his recognition seems yet to appear.

Beach at 10 (2008) sees the boy stretching – callisthenics or sleepy stretching, we don’t know, but the figurative element of the boy draws the viewer’s attention to him as he stands proud amidst an ever increasingly abstracted background. In Overslept (2011) the boy reclines - part figurative part abstract himself, not yet fully awake to become completely a part of the figurative world, but resides still in the dreamy, organic abstracted world, which may, or may not be the real world.

While Rafiee’s colour draped neo-Expressionistic figures may appear, at first glance, to be pensive, pondering, thoughtfully watchful or dreamily wistful, his landscapes, or more correctly his colour-scapes, are buoyant, vibrant and as wonderfully effervescent as any Der Blaue Reiter Franz Marc or 1908 Wassily Kandinsky.

Rafiee Ghani does nothing if not excite. He wets our visual appetites for more stimulation and sets about stirring a virtual visual orgasm of colour and form within us. Rafiee is a natural born colourist. He absorbs form, colour and shade nuanced by experience from his frequent travels. But as far as he travels Rafiee always returns to his homeland to reveal his country’s passion, beauty and vibrancy. In his feel for abstraction, Rafiee emphatically reveals the sumptuousness of his country – Malaysia. That country is revealed as being forever a feast - a banquet, a ‘High Tea’ buffet for you to take your fill at. The luxuriant bounty is seemingly an open ended basket, a cornucopia where everyone may dig deep and feast upon the delicious fruits, but in his wisdom Rafiee also reminds his viewers that the basket must be cared for, nurtured, for it to remain bountiful lest, one day, the bounty should cease.

Oscar Grillo Seaside Woman 1980

Occasionally enigmatic but always absorbing, Rafiee’s latest works burst into the viewer’s consciousness with all the energy, colour and zest of an Oscar Grillo (Kia Ora and Seaside Woman) animation. Rafiee Ghani’s works echo Hari Raya, Deepavali, Christmas and Chinese New Year, in so much as they are celebrations, not just of country but ultimately of life, nature and of a consciousness with that ability to appreciate all the former.

Ultimately it is just not enough to stand once before these breath-taking works. Difficult enough as it is to tear yourself away, there is a compulsion to re-visit, over and over again so that you may fill your senses with Rafiee Ghani’s visionary song of colour, light and shade which emanates from these extraordinary works. These tints and shades, these melded artworks will fill your life with colour and, when away from them, their freshness of colour will grace your consciousness until your return and then your eyes are opened once again to that visual melody giving you, the viewer, paroxysms of delight to be once more face to face with Rafiee Ghani’s works.

January/February Senses of Malaysia 2011

2011-01-26T14:50:00.000+08:00

Speech given at the launch of Vibrancy by Voon Kim Cheong

2011-01-16T11:16:00.000+08:00

Malaysia is a young country. Its History of Art barely reaches eight decades, and while Art has grown in that time it is really within the last two decades that Malaysians of all races, seeking fresh ways of expression and looking at issues of identity have come to the fore.

Although there may never be one singular Art which may be pointed to as representative of the Art of Malaysia, many artists capture the feel, hopes and aspirations of this exciting multicultural country.

Art is about the communication of ideas and sharing experiences. Art can also be instrumental in bringing people together as it has today.

Voon shares with us his energy, but also reveals the energy of his nation. This exhibition will stand as a testament to the vibrancy and energy in our young artists as they seek to understand the country in which they live and the cultures within it.

This exhibition, like the country in which it is set is ultimately a coming together, not a fusion where self is lost in the mix, but a balance of respectful harmony of races, cultures, religions, coming together in harmony in a space called Malaysia, and it is this harmonious space that Voon reveals to us through his vibrant energetic and at times quite stunning works.

This is his first one-man exhibition. I look forward to seeing more in the future.

Vibrancy

Reflect
Feel Chi
Energy
Absorb the life-force
Feel the vibrancy
Observe the texture
Curves
Lines
Understand the bonding
The bringing together
Bridging of distances
The ultimate harmony and oneness of a people
Moving forwards
Unique in their individuality
Collective in their passion
Love
Unity
This is the gift
Given on reflection

This is the gift given to us this day by Voon Kim Cheong

The Commonwealth – in other words

2010-12-21T11:09:00.000+08:00

Admittedly I was a little bemused. My pupils widened as the stunningly attractive woman approached me. You are married, you ARE married said a persistent voice at the back of my hormone ridden brain ...you are married. The young lady came to me, smiling. I’m not sure what dialogue I expected, but I certainly didn’t expect her to say...‘Do you know that you have a very sharp nose’. If I had a crest, it would have fallen.That one ego crushing line was my introduction to one Nigerian writer and from those few words I gathered that my wife had nothing to worry about, and her man was indeed safe from temptation.

At that brief moment of interaction, I had just stepped down from the dais and, along with three others, had finished reading some of my work at the 6^th of October ‘Writers Meet’ for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Festival, held in conjunction with the Commonwealth Games, New Delhi, for ten days in October.

K.S. Maniam

I was honoured to be there along with another Malaysian writer, playwright/poet - K.S.Maniam. Together we had been invited over to Delhi to take part in a series of readings and seminars, from 4^th October to 13the October, dedicated to writing throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, formerly known as the British Commonwealth.

Delhi is a far country and, when not raining, the sun rebounded off minarets as auto-rickshaws, seemingly invulnerable to accident, sped their chaotic ways through streets crowded with Delhites and tourists visiting for the 19^th Commonwealth Games. At that time Delhi was going through a make-over, sprucing itself up to be centre stage for the world’s press and sports tourists and, in so doing, was only adding to the already existing chaos on the previously congested streets. Various road races, a by-product of the Games, did not help much to quell the disturbances either.

But it was not the Games that we had come for, at least not the physical but perhaps more the verbal games of poetry and finely wrought prose brought to Delhi by the Sahitya Akademi - the National Academy of Letters for India. For it was they (Sahitya Akademi) who held the Commonwealth Writers Festival - inviting writers and poets from the far reaches of the Commonwealth of Nationals to strut our stuff in front of a most appreciative Delhi audience - and strut we did indeed.

Subodh Sarkar

And it was all thanks to poet and photographer Ankur Betageri, renown Bengali poet, professor Subodh Sarkar (editor of Indian Literature) and Deputy Secretary of the Sahitya Akademi - Geetanjali Chatterjee, who were instrumental in bringing together writers and poets from Nigeria, Bengal, Manipur, Malaysia, South Africa, Canada, Guyana, Samoa, Bangladesh, Botswana, Pakistan, U.K., The Gambia, New Zealand, Punjab, Kashmir, Cyprus, Australia, Gujarat, Mauritius and many other places, backed by Commonwealth funding and India’s Ministry of Culture to interact, read, recite and debate.

I was most grateful to be on the same bill as Malaysia’s K.S. Maniam - recipient of the Raja Rao Award for outstanding contributions to the literature of the South Asian Diaspora, in 2000, author of In a Far Country (1993), The Loved Flaw (2001) and many other works. I was also privileged to be included with international writer Kunal Basu, author of The Japanese Wife (2008) made into a beautiful film by Aparna Sen (2010) and together with Nigerian writer Abaobi Tricia Nwangbani (already mentioned in connection with the sharp nose incident). It was a highly successful series of events running (pun intended) alongside the more physical endeavours normally associated with the Commonwealth Games, held every four years.

And that was the week that was, well 10 days, and later in the week our very own Mr Maniam read an adaption of his story The Loved Flaw, written to include many ‘voices’ in the telling of his tale of love and marriage. However, that evening, the evening of my Delhi debut, Bengali poet Yashodhara Roychoudhury highlighted man’s, and woman’s, relationship to household objects in her stunning series of quirkily brilliant poems while the quiet Ibomcha Singh read and wowed us all with the intonation of poems in his beautiful language – Manipuri. For those not in the know Manipur is a state in North Eastern India and borders on Myanmar (Burma) hence the uniqueness of its language.

When it came to my turn to read, I had already decided against wearying listeners in the 5-7pm slot by reading any of my short stories, instead I produced a number of shorter pieces, poems included, to tantalise literary taste buds and hoped not to let the minutes drag too much before the next reader – the wonderful Sukrita Paul Kumar, took to the lectern.

For one brief second, albeit closer to Andy Warhol’s infamous 15 minutes than seconds, I had my moment of near rock star fame - but not rock star fortune. Galloping groupies galumphed from out of the crowd - or was that my imagination running on overdrive, and one solitary poetess remarking on my nose. I was mobbed, well asked to sign my autograph by at least a couple of members of the audience – probably students, and to this day I am not too sure exactly why but apparently it has become a custom at such events in India for students to acquire scribbling of such hapless writers .

So it was worth it. The cramped seat in the silver cigar tube loosely called an airline, the heat and the billowing dust of Delhi’s eternally dusty streets, the near kills in auto-rickshaws dodging cattle, trishaws, cars, motorcycles, trucks and just about any object, animal, vegetable or mineral which may chance to be on a Delhi street anywhere and at any time.

Of course it was worth it to be cosseted for three nights in five, yes five-star luxury, transported to and fro to read, watch, listen and comment on current Commonwealth literature from Urdu poets to those from the African continent and scattered all around the world in what is loosely called the Commonwealth of Nations – comprising of fifty four independent member states.

My regret and regrets ...I have but a few, but then again, too few to mention are all concerned with separation anxiety. It was a marvellous time, friendships forged and old friends re-met, and an exciting time to meet so many people with similar ideas and interest – like writing and the eternal innocence of the writer wondering why he/she has no money.

But it had to end. We each hastened off to our loved ones, dissipated throughout the world with, no doubt, thoughts and feelings not too dissimilar to those hard working athletes who also had come together for a few days in the exotic location of Delhi, India, no longer part of the Empire or the Raj but remaining a distinguished member of the Commonwealth.

It would be nice if we were able to do it all over again in another four years time and, who knows, in these times of increasing awareness of writers and poetry it may just happen. If South Korea can have an ‘Olympics of Literature’ in Seoul (2010), in conjunction with the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), anything can happen.

Abstract Expressionism - in the works of Khalil Ibrahim

2010-12-19T11:23:00.001+08:00

There is something sublime, ethereal and yes, perhaps, even a little spiritual about the Expressionistic abstract works created by that master Malaysian artist - Khalil Ibrahim.

Ever since his art apprenticeship in 1960s England (at St.Martin’s School of Art, central London) meeting Malaysian abstract/expressionist artist Ibrahim Hussein (known for Gardu – 1968 and My Father the Astronaut - 1970) and, later, meeting with Malaysian Expressionist painter/poet Latiff Mohidin (famous for his Pago Pago series) - there had been a distinctly abstract undercurrent to many of Khalil Ibrahim’s works.

There seems little doubt that studying at an English art school, learning fresh ways of seeing, coupled with having contact with artists discovering new approaches to their art and lives, changed the way Khalil approached his own artistic works.

Destruction I

In art school, in London, the student Khalil began experimenting with abstract forms in works such as Judith in Still Life and Abstract Queens Gardens Bayswater, drawn into his sketch book and demonstrating the artist’s attempts at bringing portraiture and concepts of abstraction together. Later he painted Destruction and Destruction II (1960-1965) which bear the hallmarks of European Expressionism and experimentation with organic and inorganic forms, as well as uses of contrasting colouration.

Inevitably, at art school, students are encouraged to try different mediums. Khalil produced Geese (1965) - a delectable figurative work, in gouache, bordering on abstraction, while another of his gouache-on-paper works - Figurative Study (1965), sees the artist leaning towards the abstractions and influences of Expressionism, both in the movement of the subject and in its colour style while leaning towards elements of cubism or perhaps Italian Futurism in the figurative ‘movement’ of both pieces.

Sutherland

There is little doubt that Khalil was exposed to British art during his sojourn in London, and was perhaps even influenced by artists such as Graham Sutherland, Michael Ayrton, John and/or Paul Nash, particularly for works such as Destruction I and II. The artists mentioned were well known in British artistic circles at the time Khalil was in London and their works popular, and accessible.

David Hockney, Britain’s best loved modern painter, frequently visited St. Martin’s while Khalil was there, giving lectures, while Eduardo Paolozzi, who studied at St. Martin’s (in 1944), was producing abstract Pop influenced screen prints at the time of Khalil’s studentship in London.

Abstract 1

Whatever those influences were, they appear to become more prominent in Abstract I (1968) – a natural progression from Destruction I and II and demonstrating an interest in organic abstraction, similar to those expressed by the British artists already mentioned.

In London, Khalil’s art works were still in flux as he sought styles and methods which spoke of his own unique journey. Temporarily abstraction was abandoned while he painted Self Portrait (1965), in acrylics, though it would be hard to deny the influences of Picasso’s Classicism in this picture.

One year further on (1966), and Khalil was still seeking an artistic ‘voice’ as he painted Temerloh Girl (1966), which is a stunningly beautiful study, reminiscent of the Post-Impressionist works of Paul Gauguin. This work is an acrylic, on board, which has all the feel of Gauguin’s ‘warm’ oil paintings from the South Seas – Tehamana Has Many Ancestors (1893) perhaps or Girl with Fan (1902). It is another early indication of Khalil’s fascination with colour and Post- Impressionist, if not Expressionistic abstraction. Khalil’s Temerloh Girl is also reminiscent of Malaysia’s Mazli Mat Som’s Yati (pastel – 1963).

Yati

A few years later (1970) there is an interesting (untitled) colour pencil on paper drawing which demonstrates Khalil’s leanings towards Expressionism and/or the German Blue Rider group (Der Blaue Reiter). The drawing is untitled, but the intriguing use of primary colours suggests Khalil’s fascination not only with form, but also with colour too.

In the pages of Khalil’s 1970s sketchbook we see, for the very first time, abstract images which occur and reoccur throughout the next three decades of Khalil’s painting– the brief watercolour sketches (Abstract Figures) which eventually form the basis of works like Abstract 11 (1996), Velocity IV (2003) and Figurative Celebration 1(2004), which was seen in the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia’s Merdeka 50 book, A Celebration of Malaysian Art.

Portrait of a Balinese Lady

Khalil’s absorption in Expressionism is finally revealed with his painting Portrait of a Balinese Lady (1975) – and the influences of painterly styles like Van Gogh’s self evident. Five years later, in his 1980s sketch book, Khalil took great pains to copy a paragraph, concerning Expressionism, from an art book, while he was in Switzerland - such was his love for and fascination with the subject.

Expressionism

The search for expressiveness of style by means of exaggerations and distortion of line and colour: a deliberate abandon of naturalism implicit in Impressionism in favour of simplified style which should .....far greater emotional impact, in this sense of emotional force expressionism is feature of non-Mediterranean art in general. In the more limited context of modern art Expressionist movement may be said to spring from Van Gogh’s use of drastically simplified art line and very strong colour

The road to abstraction is frequently a long one, and Khalil’s interest in painterly abstraction surfaces in other ways throughout his artistic career. This becomes evident in such works as the airbrushed oil painting Airbrush Abstract (1981) – essentially oil on canvas with a red background over-sprayed with blue, with small red bands at the top and a lighter blue band at the base. Further abstractions include Refections IV (1981) and Shadow XX11 - painted in acrylic (1981).

Shadow XXII

Shadow XXII is an early East Coast painting, using starkly saronged figures in silhouetted colour against a predominantly red background. Variously coloured figures appear in a strip of lighter red near the top of the painting, rendering a more graphic feel to the painting over all. It is a distinctive work, clear and crisp in its execution.

Over the length of his artistic career, Khalil’s abstractions were somewhat overshadowed by his other, more naturalistic works until, that is, he moves towards the 2000s. That is when Khalil began producing such intriguing paintings such as - Abstract II (oil -1996), East Coast Series VI (acrylic – 1998) and Bayang-Bayang 1 (2002).

Bayang Bayang II

In some respects Bayang-Bayang 1I looks back to Shadow XXII - there is a familiar ‘bar’ of colour towards the top of the canvas and the figures in Bayang-Bayang 1I may be seen to be silhouettes similar to those in Shadow XXII, though the former work has a more painterly style, less stark.

Pembicaraan III (2002), Velocity IV (2003), Tangtu (2003) Pura (2003) Padang Galak (2004), Pabean (2004) and the ink on paper set of images from Bali, Indonesia, entitled The Spirit of the East Coast and Sanur (2003-2004) continue this trend.

There is a continuance of the East Coast series, not only in watercolour but also in acrylics and others in oils. Paintings such as Malam di Pantai (acrylic - 2007) are semi-abstracts inspired by life on the East Coast of Malaysia. Pantai Melawati (acrylic - 2004) also highlights Khalil’s tendency towards abstraction while the Pericaraan series (2002) – watercolours and acrylics, and the Vivacity series (2004) – acrylics. These take Khalil’s movement towards abstraction one step further, leaning in the direction of a purer form of abstraction and more in keeping with the artist’s previous penchant for Expressionism and Expressionistic abstraction.

Perbicaraan VI

It is, perhaps, the Vivacity and Pericaraan series where Khalil Ibrahim has been heading all along, ever since his sojourn in the London art school. In both of these series the artist’s fondness for Expressionism shines through like a beacon of light radiating colour and movement onto his watercolours and canvases.

It is in paying homage to the likes of Van Gogh, Emil Nolde (The Dance round the Golden Calf - 1910), Franz Marc (Struggling Forms – 1914) and Max Pechstein (Evening in the Dunes – 1911) that the artist Khalil Ibrahim seems happiest, engaging with the colours and forms found on the East Coast of Malaysia and rendering his own vibrant Malaysian Expressionist/abstract style to engage the viewer.

sentAp December 2010

2010-12-18T19:24:00.000+08:00

Vibrancy - a forthcoming exhibition by Voon Kim Cheong

2010-11-29T19:03:00.000+08:00

There is a tremendous energy and movement which emanates from the works of Voon Kim Cheong - a resonance and a vibrancy which almost catches the casual viewer off-guard with his stunningly beautiful paintings.

In Voon Kim Cheong’s vivacious oil canvases, reminiscent of Italian Futurism, curved kites dart and sway in the wind - tossing and turning amidst turbulent thermals. Gyroscopically spinning tops whirl and jostle while lively multi-racial drummers pound out the country’s life-beat, reverberating and resonating with a dynamic passion uniquely displayed in a sultry equatorial Malaysia.

Born in 1968, In Kuala Lumpur, Voon Kim Cheong graduated from the Saito Academy of Graphic Design in 1992. He sought further training as a fine artist and has made a living in illustration, design and painting.

He was included in the Young Artists Exhibition, 1995, in Klang, Selangor and The Philip Morris Group of Malaysia Awards at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur in 1999. The following year (2000) Voon Kim Cheong had art works in ‘Little Treasures Art Exhibition’ organised by Klang Fine Art Centre, The Philip Morris Group of Malaysia Awards, again at the National Art Gallery and ‘The First Step’ art exhibition organised by Klang Fine Art Centre, Klang, Selangor.

In 2001 Voon Kim Cheong exhibited in the ‘Open Show 2001’ in the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, and five years later was part of the 1^st Malaysia World Art Tourism Expo 2006 at MITC Ayer Keroh, Malacca. The following year he took part in the International Art Exhibition 2007 as part of the Malaysia’s 50^thanniversary celebrations at the Daiichi Modern Art Gallery in Sungei Petani, Kedah.

As part of an international initiative, Voon Kim Cheong took part in the ‘World of Imagination’ (Vol 2) - an exhibition in the APW Gallery, Long Island City, USA, in 2009. There his works was part of 2000 paintings, hung in a single gallery, featuring 500 artists worldwide. That same year he took part in the Malaysian Chinese Art Exhibition, celebrating the 35^th anniversary of Malaysia/China ties, at the Cheng Ho Cultural Museum, Malacca. That year he also had his work exhibited in the Penang Art Society 56^th Anniversary Art Exhibition in the Penang State Art Gallery, Penang. In 2010 Voon Kim Cheong took part in the International Famous Artists’ Paintings Exhibition at the Daiichi Modern Art Gallery in Sungei Petani.

The current exhibition springs from work the artist had done back in 1998 – Rhythm of the Night. It is a darker piece, more surreal than his later works but, in it, is the love of music – a combining of musical instruments that brings to mind the Chilean surrealist Roberto Matta, the colouration and fluidity of line of Frans Marc (The Little Blue Horses - 1911) or the dynamics of The Golden Eye by Max Ernst (1948).

Voon Kim Cheong’s latest work focuses, primarily, on Malaysian drums, drummers and drumming using dynamic rudiments of the ‘curved line’. Other elements on show are spinning tops (Gasing), flying kites (Wau) and the ‘Performer’ series, accompanied by still life, fishing villages and antique architecture.

Drums and drumming are integral to the races living harmoniously in Malaysia. A full Chinese drum troupe may consist of 24 drums - 6 representing each season from the first of spring to the great freeze. Malays use a longer drum called a ‘Gendang’, of which there are more than a dozen different types, used in civil and religious ceremonies. Malaysia’s Indian population have brought with them the popular drums of India, used in the north and south of that country and there are many other drums used by indigenous peoples.

‘I use the idea of drum to represent the sun and moon. Sun is harder while the moon is soft. Sometimes when you bang a drum it is hard, and the sound is hard, at other times it is soft. When I paint the images of drumming, I try to depict colours relevant to the race of the drum and drummers, in my work’ said Voon Kim Cheong as he revealed the passion, energy and vitality explicit in the reverberations of Malaysian drums depicted through his rich, evocative canvases.

With influences from Picasso, Cubism and Futurism, Voon Kim Cheong’s art works are reminiscent of those spectacular paintings by master Futurist Umberto Boccioni in their lyrical sweeps of movement and dynamic colouration. Voon Kin Cheong’s latest works have his figures spring with gusto from the canvases, aided by carefully placed colour dynamics and racing shapes which immediately engage the viewer.

Even in the simplicity of black and white, Voon Kim Cheong’s work explodes with a painterly intensity seldom seen in a young Malaysian artist. Whether dancers sway, drummers beat; kites drift, or tops spin Voon Kim Cheong’s works are about delicious movement, vibrant energy, a resounding passion for art and a love for life.

Airey Watercolours and Thundering Hooves

2010-11-29T18:36:00.000+08:00

Khoo Khay Tat was born in Penang in1938. At twenty-two he had success in an exhibition entitled Six Young Artists, in Penang (1960). In 1986, the National Art Gallery exhibited the artist’s work and, during the next decade, he held many exhibitions including several memorable showings with the Penang Watercolour Society - which he had joined in 1986.

From 2000 to the present Khoo Khay Tat has been prolific with his work. He has held nearly thirty exhibitions in countries as far ranging as Taiwan, China and Japan, culminating in his current exhibition in Kuala Lumpur.

In 2001 he won an award at the 20^th Japan Modern Art Association, in Osaka, and in 2008 he was part of the Malaysian contingent of artists chosen to attend the 4^th Exhibition of New Impressions of Asian Art, in Henan, Zhenzhou, China.

This current retrospective spans an artistic career of some fifty years and, in this way, is also a poignant landmark for the artist. Khoo Khay Tat, from his early years in the 1960s as a budding young artist, to his highly successful time as a watercolourist and through to contemporary times as an internationally renowned artist demonstrates his skill as an accomplished master, able to successfully turn his hand to any medium and elucidate any subject.

Khoo Khay Tat’s, richly deserved, fiftieth year retrospective exhibition presents a variety of new works from his delicately sensitive watercolours to his vibrant oils. In this way Khoo Khay Tat has recorded and interpreted his loves and his environment in an ever increasingly captivating way, drawing his audience into subjects which have alerted his attention and engaged his well practised eye.

In the esteemed contemporary company of Penang artist Sylvia Lee Goh, Malay expatriate Ali Rahmad and Perak’s superlative painter Yeong Seak Ling, Khoo Khay Tat is also a self taught artist. He is untainted by the art school factory mill and able to develop his own unique style of work, independent of academy and artistic confinements - which he does with increasing style and panache.

From early in his career as an artist Khoo Khay Tat has presented stunningly graphic representations of Malay kampongs, he has studied nature and depicted hard working fishermen dragging water-logged weighty nets across dazzling beaches and superb watercolour images of his home town – Penang. Trees, flowers, birds - all are captured in stunning detail, with mesmerising colour.

Yet Khoo Khay Tat’s acutely artistic eye does not only gaze upon Fishermen, nature and kampongs. The artist has become noted for his evocative, yet sensitive, renderings of buildings, especially in his light, airy, watercolour creations which at once capture reality as it is presented but also hint at a re-captured past forever encapsulated in Khoo Khay Tat’s watercolour wash techniques, and skilled artist’s observation.

The last few years have shown Khoo Khay Tat developing an immense love for oil painting as well as new directions for his watercolour, and acrylic work. In many of his later oil canvases the artist has revealed a deep love of horses, especially through images of thundering thoroughbred mounts, their heels kicking dust as they pound toward the gallery visitor who is trapped, unable to take their gaze away from the race and the magnificent rushing animals.

However, Khoo Khay Tat’s horses are not the docile mounts of Sir Alfred Munnings or the equestrian studies of George Stubbs, but a fine array of stunning images – naturalistic and fantastic, giving praise to all things equine.

As time canters past, the artist finds a greater fascination with horses of all kinds, be they the small Mongolian mounts in China, the fine Arab horses used for breeding or racing or horses of the imagination. Horses in all styles spring from the artist’s diligent eye and practised hand, delighting those who gaze upon his works.

Over five decades Khoo Khay Tat has developed his artistic ability, formulated it to captivate as well as sooth his audience. In this exhibition, coinciding with the artist’s seventy second birthday, he allows his gallery audience to luxuriate in a collection of some of his very best equine works, with a small sample of his other works and some of the artworks which inspire him.

November/December Senses of Malaysia 2010

2010-11-21T12:14:00.000+08:00

Postcards from Another Reality

2010-11-16T18:08:00.001+08:00

Galeri Petronas, secreted on the third floor of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC), reveals an exciting new exhibition. It is the other worldly work of Penang artist Chan Kok Hooi displayed from 12^th October 2010 to January 9^th 2011.

That nugget, that little hidden gem of an exhibition, within the mainstay of the general Petronas Galleri is a small exhibition which is well named, tucked away, as it is, virtually out of sight. It belongs to one of Malaysia’s most exciting young artists – Chan Kok Hooi. It is the exhibition - I SEE(K) YOU. To discover this gem the visitor has to negotiate an exhibition of landscapes, through a virtual maze and literally SEEK out the splendours of Chan’s painstaking detailed work, but it is well worth the effort.

It was to have been a much larger exhibition but it was necessarily shortened to make way for more work in the landscapes exhibition. It some ways it was a cruel blow to the visitor, for Chan has been recognised for his talents across the world – recently London and Taiwan, soon Singapore and New York and for his home country to diminish his exhibition is somewhat short sighted.

Within Chan Kok Hooi’s fascinating works there are gross elements of superb pictorial comedy embedded within the more recent works produced by that young master surreal fantasist. While mostly appearing as decaying postcards, vague memories of perhaps a digital time lived, these works are snapshots of a world to one-side of commonplace reality, a land where the Asian version of the ‘Microsoft messenger’ icon lives along with his 3D icon family and 3D icon pets.

We witness the humble lives of simple 3D icons, set in Asia – with ball heads, three dimensional triangular bodies and arms with no hands. We frequently see typical Asian bathrooms, un-flushed Asian toilets, Asian hallways where family pictures hang from the walls as if to fall at any moment, family pets carrying other ball-headed creatures, young perhaps, abattoirs where captives are bound by microphone cord forced to perform into poised microphones amidst a backdrop of freshly killed carcasses, blood dripping into a plastic bucket.

There are murder scenes where liver-pocked ball-heads have their head staved in with a durian, their ghost seen exiting the body while a figure sits on the bed having watched TV until the channel closes. More bathroom scenes, yet more bathroom scenes as we realise that the bathroom is central to life, the cleansing and excreting processes involved, enabling us all to get through the day of seemingly endless cubicles – ‘boxes little boxes ...and they’re all made out of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same’ with boringly repetitive computer screens.

It is a chess board. The gallery floor is a chessboard. As the figures in Chan Kok Hooi’s canvases are but pawns in some celestial chess game demonstrated by the black and white squares on many floors of the paintings, so to the gallery visitors move white square by tentative black square, to and fro, canvas to canvas. I wonder if any of the many visitors to this show are aware of the delicate game they enter.

In one sense it would have been easier to replicate these images using computer generated imagery (CGI) or modelling programmes like Maya, 3ds Max, Carrara or even lightweight programmes such as Bryce 3D but no, Chan Kok Hooi chooses to deliberately and diligently paint his images with acrylic paints on various surfaces including, for this exhibition, jute.

Chan Kok Hooi is, as many talented and able people are, a quiet, humble man. His day to day persona is the Clark Kent to his artist Superman, the more unassuming and modest the man seems so the artist in him makes imaginative leaps and creative bounds leaving us all breathless and wondering at this modern day super hero of a painter. Like many modern Malaysian artists Chan Kok Hooi is beginning to be known, and appreciated, around the world. His meticulous style of painting prohibits a rash of gallery openings, but the paintings that we, the viewing public, do come across are to be savoured for their intricate detail and painstaking work, barely revealing a brushstroke or the ‘hand’ of the artist.

This is the artist’s triumphant technique, and the final trick to capture the audience with his engaging works of art. While the size of the works (often 122centimetres by 153 centimetres) baffles an entire audience expecting small postcards, and the computer monitor-like ‘buttons’ on the frame of each piece give a very 21^st century dimension to the images, that final illusion of the hidden artist’s hand completes the fantasy that we have stumbled upon postcards not from the edge, but from another reality - the secret life of the computer icon, or the day to day life of the chess pawn.

The exhibition I SEE(K) YOU by Penang artist Chan Kok Hooi is currently running at Galerie Petronas, 3 rd Floor Suria KLCC, Kuala Lumpur from 12^th October 2010 to January 9^th 2011.

Best of SOUTHEAST ASIAN EROTICA

2010-10-18T14:22:00.000+08:00

And here it finally is, the hottest of all the hotties, fire hot sizzling chilli hot, plunging necklines and smooth smooth silky hot…….

Best of SOUTHEAST ASIAN EROTICA

Edited by Richard Lord

Featuring my short story Awakening (p45)

Contributors (by country)

MALAYSIA

Amir Muhammad

Lee Ee Leen

Amirul B Ruslan

Yusuf Martin

INDONESIA

Suzanna Kusuma

PHILIPPINES

Annabel Pagunsan

Nigel Hogge

THAILAND

Stephen Leather

John Burdett

Andrew Penney

Erich R, Sysak

Brenton Rossow

SINGAPORE

Christopher Taylor

Dawn Farnham

Chris Mooney-Singh

Zafar Anjum

Alaric Leong

hungry dogs

2010-10-12T18:18:00.000+08:00

hungry dogs sniff

waiting

anticipating to sink teeth into waste stained narratives

it is the scent of narratives

narrator

odour of metaphor

sign

symbol

semiotic meaning

correspondences

a symbiosis of sniffer

and sniffed

each needing the 'other'

the representative and represented

briefly bound

tentative in their connection

until waft of scent dissipates

need expires

recognition dies.

tea and peacocks

2010-10-12T17:23:00.002+08:00

fan brushes Delhi heat
I shelter waiting for tea

a solitary peacock preens

jumps down from his perch
marches across parade grounds
of my father

Lal Qila
once royal
endures squirrels
mynahs, pigeons
tourists

the barbarians have come and gone
and
it is another kind of game

you have a very sharp nose

2010-10-12T16:10:00.000+08:00

you have a very sharp nose

said the Nigerian poet

you are young and beautiful

said the sharp nosed pregnant man

my beauty may fade

and I may grow old

said the Nigerian poet

and

whether you give birth

or not

you will always have

a sharp nose

she said

Dogcatbird (an allegory)

2010-10-12T12:50:00.000+08:00

A dog, cat and a bird sat on a pier jutting out into the clear blue ocean waters.

At times they would argue about who the pier belonged to, at other times they were content to partake of the scraps of food laying on the pier.

One argument involved who had come to the pier first. The cat, always standing a little proud, boasted that it had come before either of the others, and that really the pier belonged to it, and the other two only remained on the pier due to the cat's own good graces.

Often times the dog would bark and the bird would squawk that this was not so.
'I and my ancestors were here first' the dog would say
'No mine were' the bird would interject.
'But, with respect, you both are wrong, for this has been mine and my ancestor's home long before either of you came to know of it' the cat would say, sometimes purring its words, sometimes growling them deep in its throat.

The argument raged on and off until such a time that the dog fell silent, curled up and permitted the cat and bird to verbally wrestle on.

Over time the bird too fell silent, realising that there was no point in arguing. All three remained on the pier watching other animals climb on and off the pier, still the original three remained.

The cat, unable to remain silent, and now that the dog and bird refused to argue, argued by itself. often times it would scream at the fish in the sea, the planks of wood on the pier, the rope holding the pier together.

Long into the humid night the cat would continue its argument while the dog slept and the bird watched, curious at the cat's need for argument.

One day, when all three had eaten well of the produce on the pier, the cat too feel silent. It looked into the far distance, gazing out to sea, imagining it was alone.

The silent dog and the watchful cat looked at the cat, then at each other and shrugged, then looked on.

Gradually the cat turned, looked at its companions, smiled a weak smile in the realisation that the pier was only the pier when all three were on it.

The cat sat, curled its tail around itself, content to be amongst friends.

Malim Nawar Morning

2010-09-23T09:41:00.002+08:00

surreal hummingbird morning

garden papaya drips dew

kingfishers flash blue against candy-floss skies.

Judy Collins sings of Chelsea

warming chill of jeep cabin

softening hard pangolin killing road

three cat stooges in compound.

warming sun

bougainvillea bright

golden helliconia, jasmine

mangy, mangled one-eyed thief in kitchen stealing fish.

brighter hotter morning

sky cleared to pale blue

sun pounding grass to yellow

bleaching paintwork

cobras slithering for shade.

languid day in Malim Nawar

post colonial

lost tin town

centuries forgotten

railway track bypassed

Mrs Hameed’s Bollywood restaurant

post Ramadan thosa eaters

sit between time and teh tarik.

Gypsy

2010-09-20T07:53:00.001+08:00

forty years gone
still you electrify
resonate
fill my jeep with
mermaids
castles
sixes
which could be nines
were you
experienced
well
I
am

lemang

2010-09-14T11:46:00.002+08:00

you come to me

all soft and creamy

scents of coconut, rice, bamboo

fire-smoke and banana leaf.

I sense your firmness, al dente,

taste your pliancy and succulent delights.

i want to drizzle you with wild bee honey,

drip over your sides

bite into you

sweet stickiness dribbling

into my beard

while you

kill me

slowly

softly

modern psychosis

2010-09-14T11:43:00.000+08:00

sorry if i seem a little vague

only

i’m

not

quite

all

here

really

my light’s a little dim

there are bits of me missing

a hole where the whole used to be

scraps of me are left scattered around the world wide web

relegated to dark corners on servers

dispersed throughout the internetwork of computers

leaving

fragments

tucked away

on facebook

myspace

blogger

flickr

deviant art

well you get the picture

only you don’t

do you

you don’t get the whole picture

you only get part of the picture

it’s not as though you can google me

collate the missing bits

staple me back together

make me whole again

(careful not to staple through any vital organs or non-vital but extremely useful organs)

you see

or don’t see

that

fragmented

man

A man in portions

particles of parts

spread out like some chips of shell

waiting for some kindly soul to put this poor humpty dumpty back together again

that’s why i appear

little

vague

blur

not quite myself

bits and pieces

really

need

to pull myself

together

sometime

soon

Indian Mesmer too

2010-09-14T11:26:00.001+08:00

In the sweet balminess of an English summer, sky blue, air clear and sun gentle, condescendingly English bees sought to weave their pollen laden ways in and out of the Bajaj’s turmeric and kohl structure, oblivious to its stark anomaly.

Tiny hunter spiders, unaware of the surreality of their situation, spun their delicate webs hoping to catch peculiarly English flies in the Indian-ess of the rickshaw’s interior.

On a nearby wooden post a solo majestic magpie preened itself, one crow eye on its onyx and ivory feathers, the other mesmerised by a small shaft of light sparkling off the Bajaj’s exterior chromium.

As if it was a dream’s residue the essence of the Indian Bajaj seeped into my consciousness, stirring memories of India, begging me to recall past journeying and eccentric sojourns.

Recollections of Goa and labyrinthine excursions from Candolim to Panaji came unbidden as did memories of dusty Chennai with its crowded streets between Anna Nagar and the Thyagaraja Nagar (T Nagar) - where the tailors stitch for their livelihoods.

A soporific flood of reminiscences sought to overwhelm my senses as dream and reality became blurred - I imagined rasping hawkers calling and the lowing of emaciated Brahma bulls. I saw the disturbed street dust, sensed the acrid essence of borneol camphor and the ever sweet smell of jasmine flowers.

Kipling, Gandhi and my own dear father spun as symbolic wraiths drifting in and out of focus, blending into the exotica of my imaginings, subsumed into the beckoning daydream and lost to the world of reason.

An enchantment bewitched me, an oriental glamour sought to unseat my understanding as my mind danced a crazed dance among temples and rivers, statues and hazy coromandel beaches with cooling maritime breezes. Transposed and transported I became at one with my imaginings, subsumed into the opiate dream of conjured recollection.

In those giddy days I was too much in lust to notice mosquito bites amongst the tumbling and fondling, sometimes helplessly lost in Chennai watching Bollywood VCDs on the Sony Vaio, pretending to be in the melon seed carpeted cinema, air-con whirring too loud for the laptop’s feeble speakers.

Outside, on the heat pounded streets, silken saris gracefully floated, maidens in fine cloth/cottons smiled beguiling smiles, third eye marks punctuating foreheads as a fitting accolade to sublime beauty.

Enraptured, my senses floated to tunes of sitar, veena, flute and tabla, my ears straining to catch the delicacy of lilt and profundity of melody. Classical ragas caught and transcended my soul with each new melody/rhythm, uplifting me to ever newer heights.

It was a bright burning flame of lust, to bright and too hot to last, for it dimmed, flickered and went out amidst the floods and storms coming after the long parched city days, drenching the ancient buildings, temples, washing over the brilliance of that city’s colours.

What colours there were - bright, dazzling hues - golden yellows, vibrant pinks, stunning blues, oranges and a veritable kaleidoscope of colours clamouring in the sultry sun. It shone, reflected, refracted, ricocheting from chromium, golden bangles bringing a feast of hues/shades.

Snapped from my reverie, a sound began to assert itself into my labouring mind - tap, tap, tapping, rapping itself into my consciousness. I was loath to emerge from my dream and reluctant to re-engage with the world.

The sound grew louder - tap, tap, tapping on the bonnet of the Bajaj. There stood the stupendous magpie, coat resplendent with blacks/blues of his sensuous feathers, a snail in it’s cruel beak. Tap, the magpie’s head darted to the bonnet, tap again, as he struck the still moving prey against the paintwork.

Tap, India was lost, tap, I was found. Tap, the displaced Bajaj remained but a poignant reminder of my reverie, of those half remembered dreams and half lived fantasies. Tap, all I recall of her is her name and her shoulder length hair, crinkled, obsidian and how she rose in the morning smelling of love and jasmine.

Our Country Right or Wrong

2010-09-06T12:09:00.002+08:00

written for the forthcoming edition of sentAP magazine

video from the National Art Gallery made by Kamal Sabran

(Being a review of Zulkifli Yusoff’s National Art Gallery exhibition - Negaraku – Kuala Lumpur 26^th July to 26^th September 2010)

Negaraku translates as my country. For Zulkifli Yusoff that is the freshly liberated country – Malaya into which he was born in 1962. During August and September this year Zulkifli Yusoff’s latest exhibition reminded, revealed and suggested questions of what is ‘my’ country, that country to which we all relate uniquely, personally and individually.

The exhibition - Negaraku was a timely revelation of what could only have been Zulkifli Yusoff’s singular country - his personal milieu. In that exhibition the artist presented the country of his psyche, sometimes with nostalgia, sometimes with a crystal clear eye and mind. It is the country of the artist’s past, where he had grown and the experiences which had, to some degree, shaped the artist’s reality coupled with those things which had been shared with others within that unique entity - formerly Malaya which, since September 16^th 1963, has been known as Malaysia.

The expansive and multi-layered exhibition straddled two galleries on the second floor of the Balai Seni Lukis Negara (National Art Gallery Malaysia) – Gallery 2A and Gallery 2B.

This was a well planned and crafted exhibition, presenting a variety of mediums, surfaces and imagery to keep the wandering visitor transfixed. Large acrylic canvases fused two of Zulkifli Yusoff’s best known styles – the ‘printed’ flat (Pop Art) style and the energetic ‘expressionistic’ style, into a surprising delight of essentially black and white fully laden, and ultimately deeply symbolic, imagery.

Why black and white - I don’t think that it had anything to do with Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney’s ‘Ebony and Ivory’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’ or Subhash Ghai’s film of the same title – or maybe it has to do with all three. Perhaps it is because modern man is so conditioned to accept the viability of text and images if they are presented in black and white. If it’s in the newspaper it must be true; there it is, we say – ‘spelled out in black and white’, it’s official, it must be right because it’s printed (and read [red]) there in black and white.

Black and white, and of course sepia, are the colours of the past. B/W represents those intimate days of radio broadcasts, before TV created passive zombies. It is the colour of photographs, the colour of cherished memories, of past magazines in the days when the world was captured, for posterity, in lush black & white, or toned in that curious brown of sepia. Zulkifli Yusoff re-presented us with the marvel which is black and white and presented the greater part of his exhibition in these colours of memory and nostalgia.

We were informed, by a well placed black wall plaque with white text, that there were sub-headings for the exhibition. They were Patriotism, Economy, Government (broadcasts), National flower and Peace – 5 sub-headings in all, incidentally mirroring the petals of the Bunga Raya – the national flower.

To emphasise the overall point of nationhood and nostalgia, the exhibition ran over that period of time which incorporated both the Merdeka and Malaysia Day national celebrations, at a time when patriotism and nationalism is upper most in many people’s minds. The exhibition was, perhaps, a thoughtful and thought provoking counter to the worse extremes of jingoism.

The visitor moved past the hoardings announcing the exhibition - now in red, black and white and into the first gallery. It was there that the visitor encountered an installation of small print covered objects, reminiscent of those small collections by the American Surrealist Joseph Cornell; items neatly laid out in pleasing geometries, covered with print. On one papered box a printed hand of bananas was neatly offset by a small (yellow) ribbon bow, on another the image of a bitter gourd, yet another a cut durian. A paper and print covered wheelbarrow and two paper and print-covered, symmetrically placed child’s pull carts greeted the visitor with a calm, orderly vision setting out its wares in a carefully laid out display.

On the walls, on small printed blocks there were names of companies, like Felda, engaged with agriculture and types of barely remembered rice, past and present– Malinja, Mahsuri etc. Other wall blocks housed semi-3D imagery of fruit or prints of insects, fruit or vegetables. The visitor was alerted to the danger of the nation’s agriculture being relegated to museums – where only representations of reality may survive in image form, the original long since perished leaving wayan kulit shadows playing in Plato’s cave. The installation might have been titled ‘Memories of a rural past’, or ‘Boyhood in a rural setting’.

We moved swiftly on to Kebun Pak Awang II (Uncle Awang’s Garden II ) linked by content but not by style to the former. Kebun Pak Awang, many will recall, was the name of a popular Government radio programme, highlighting farmer’s problems, back in the 1970s.

Kebun Pak Awang II was the first large black and white canvas in the exhibition. The 244 x 366 cm canvas was dominated by a single phallic ear of sweet corn on the viewer’s left and images of bitter melons encased in a very feminine ellipse on the right. If this were an Indian painting I would been talking about lingam and yoni.

That painting was a stunning piece, beautifully rendered. Was it a wistful lament for missing fields of corn which once swayed adjacent to the kampongs under Malayan breezes - maybe. Was there interplay between the corn - brought to this country by foreign settlers and the indigenous vegetable bitter melon – a thought that the exhibition visitor may have pondered. Were we to read that corn plus bitter melon equals Malaysia being the child of foreign and the indigenous worlds combining, that is a thought.

Would I be naive to believe that the artist was alluding to radio broadcasts and his own controversial Professor Katak (frog) character from previous exhibitions, I wonder. FYI - Bitter melon is known as peria katak in Malay.

There was something reminiscent of the Puerto Rican artist Rafael Tufino’s linocuts, about this painting, perhaps it was the strong black and white lines coupled with the obvious fondness for the rurality of the image and the starkness similar to linocuts.

A large part of Zulkifli’s exhibition was devoted to Malaysia’s national flower (since 28^th July 1960 that is) - the Chinese Rose Hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa sinensis), renamed the Bunga Raya. Songs devoted to the flower are woven across paintings, while images of the hibiscus flowers occur on etching plates, screen processed images and their painted forms appeared and re-appeared across a number of canvases, boards and surfaces either in full bloom or in bud – nascent or pre-nascent.

The multiplicity of hibiscus imagery begs the notion, and discourse, on the wanton use and misuse of imagery, thereby provoking endless conversations on the devaluing of one symbol, chosen out of a seven possible, to imbue national symbolism and therefore meaning into.

The Bunga Raya has come to be revered, amongst many other things, for its five petals representing the five principles of Malayan nationhood – Belief in God, Loyalty to King and Country, Supremacy of the constitution, Rule of law, Courtesy and Morality. It is laden with significance, symbolism and injected with meaning and it is no surprise that there is a proliferation of hairdressers, tourist spots, island resorts et al, all proudly proclaiming to be Bunga Raya - alluded to in Zulkifli’s work Kedai Gunting Rambut.

Popular 1960s songs (including those by M Noor and The Night Shadows etc) equated women to the Bunga Raya, unaware that the naming of things often reinterprets a symbol’s meaning. I hear a little bird called Andrew singing and a Belgian proudly proclaiming that this is not a pipe.

The hibiscus pièce d résistance, for me, was the large painted canvas replete with giant hibiscus flower, painted left of canvas, exposing its stamen as a dalliance for its audience, while balanced by its potted sister on the viewer’s right. The painting was a masterpiece, full of energy, vibrancy and gusto. A nice gesture was ‘alif, lam, lam, ha (or Allah) painted in Arabic, top right of canvas, reminding the viewer who is responsible for the delicate beauty of the Bunga Raya. That essentially ‘floral painting’ took the concept of floral painting not just to a new level, but defied the concept of levels altogether – Georgia O’Keefe eat your heart out.

In other, more personal works, the audience was introduced to Zulkifli’s mother (through collage) and his teacher father. The artist’s mother is represented through love hearts, scraps of 1960s radio, film and Wanita (Woman) magazines as well as Muslim readers and multiple images of Bougainvillea flowers under the title Koleksi Ibu (Mother’s Collection). At the end wall of Gallery 2A, one board had a ‘positive’ image of the artist himself, in red on board, while a corresponding board held a ‘negative’ image of the artist’s father, the two images were separated by an expanse of wood with the words to Malaysian jingoistic songs carved into them - the three works were called - Aku, Ayah dan Lagu Patriotik (My father and a patriotic song).

Finally we came to peace, or were at peace, represented by collages and wall mounted CND ‘ban-the-bomb’ signs in tubular metal – reminiscent of bicycles. Odd really that Gerald Holtom’s simple symbol, initially constructed out of the semaphore (flag signalling) letters N and D for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament should have such resonance around the world as a universal sign for peace, and in Malaysia too.

In a series of works, in his exhibition, Zulkifli used that CND logo accompanied by another universal symbol, or rather two. Along with the CND sign Zulkifli used a hand sign universally acknowledged as being a sign for ‘peace’ – the two fingers rampant, palm outward, made popular by Winston Churchill. But if the visitor were to observe very closely, some of those hand images were reversed, an indication not of the universal sign for peace but the aggressive, insulting, V sign said to have derived from British battles with the French, the showing of bowmen’s two fingers.

There was a, ceiling mounted, projected film in Gallery 2B, but sadly on the day I viewed the film was too bright against the wall and all that could be seen were flashes of white light. Instead I listened to the dialogue and Kamal Sabran’s marvellous music.

Within the historical narrative which has become Zulkifli Yusoff’s work, time has moved on from those days of Malaya from before the artists’ birth to the 1960s and 70s. Yes, it is the artist’s remembrances, it is his country – Negaraku, but it is also the country of all those who have lived there and/or continue to live there. It is, to quote the often misquoted lines of Stephen Decatur’s sentiment - ‘our country, right or wrong’.

To Blend or not to Blend that is the Question

2010-09-01T17:37:00.001+08:00

(Being a review of young Malaysian artists . new object(ion) at Galeri Petronas, KLCC.)

The new Galeri Petronas exhibition poses many poignant questions, for instance - what is the object of art, are there new objects of art (Object d’art?) fresh objections concerning art and/or why is there objectification in art. Doubtless the visitor will be unable to find the answers here, but the questions are posed afresh in the exhibition – ‘young malaysian artists . new object(ion)’ at Galeri Petronas, in KLCC, Kuala Lumpur for it is a collection of works by up-and-coming Malaysian artists.

In the sense of a collection it really is a veritable cornucopia of art - all shapes, sizes and pretentions. Some of the offerings will titivate some please, some annoy and others will have the visitor moving swiftly on to a more conducive piece - but that is the innate nature of diverse collections – it is to be expected and encouraged.

One slight grumble - concerning not the exhibition, but the catalogue - it is the image on the very first page of the catalogue which, we are told, denotes ‘Chilli Padi’ and ‘is synonymous with the young and fresh artistic representations showcased in OBJECT(ION)’, It is the image of an open electric blender - spewing blended chillies

I confess to being slightly confused. The Chilli image and metaphor is a good one; however there is scant connection between that image, the slight blurb about it and the actual exhibition. Admittedly red is used as the colour for the catalogue title and some of the internal pages, but you might have expected a little more connection to tie it all together – a chilli on the front cover perhaps. It is also a pity that there is no reference to the maker of that spewing blender image.

The exhibition, we are told, concerns either objects or objections - not chillies, unless, the chillies are the objects, or the objections. Ok, yes I get the concept - chillies equals hot equals bright new things equals new and exciting - but it is a little vague and perhaps needed a tad more thought to bring the disparate elements together. Perhaps it might have been nice to call the exhibition Chilli Padi, or simply Chillies, with a sub-heading of Young Malaysian Artists, maybe in brackets.

But where does the object or the objection come in other than in the internal text. Maybe my brain is too addled by fiery Malaysian sambal, but the discourse around objects, though admirable in themselves, needed to be less objective and more concerning the subject, i.e. the works themselves, which seemed to get lost amongst the intellectual dialogue - no I did not say onanism, though I was tempted. The subject, once covered, could then have meandered concerning the new object/objections, ramble through feminist dialogues of objectification even tipping a sonkok, mὰo zi or turban to Klein’s object theory discourse, if it so desired.

The exhibition has been described elsewhere as ‘brash, edgy and exciting’, which might have been once true, once, some way down the line but, perhaps, Malaysia’s 53^rd year of independence from colonial rule deserves new adjectives for new art.

While Zulkifli Yusoff’s Negaraku exhibition, over at The National Art Gallery, celebrates concepts of independence and reminds Malaysians why it is so good to be independent from western colonialism, much of the Galeri Petronas exhibition seems to wallow in what Syed Hussein Alatas calls - the problem of the captive mind.

That is - a mind still held enthralled by its colonial masters in a post-colonial era or, as Alatas puts it, the captive mind is an ‘uncritical and imitative mind dominated by an external source, whose thinking is deflected from an independent perspective’. That is, simply, ‘cutting and pasting’ imagery, notions and ideas from a ‘Modern Art’ whose very foundation has been created, applauded and made significant by a culture which now re-colonises the rest of the world through new media and mediums. That is the real shock of the new.

Having said that, and accepting that all art is mimesis in some shape sense or form, this new exhibition does entertain and provides an eclectic enough selection of 40 young Malaysian artists to have something for everyone. At least one artist in the exhibition – Nurazmal Mohd Yusof (Ali Nurazmal) successfully uses western painting methods, and materials – acrylic on canvas, to deconstruct a colonial narrative with their image of a Malay man as puppet, strings on his fingers being pulled by his ‘colonial?’ masters, in the painting ‘Festival’.

But that, all pervasive, western imagery does seep through; so when confronted by Izzaddin Matrahah’s ‘The Lizard King’ (acrylic and collage on canvas) I must admit that I did a double-take. I was a great fan of The Doors, way back when and so was taken aback to see Jim Morrison and other images, straight out of his ‘The Celebration of the Lizard’, gracing Izzaddin Matrahah’s work. Though, perhaps, not quite so surprised to see ‘that rascally rabbit’- Bugs Bunny appear in Hoo Kiew Hang’s ‘Smiley Bunny’, or Muhd Sarip Abd Rahman’s menacing ‘Storm Trooper’ in his mixed media work ‘Playing with Inte”geli”ty’. These images are, after all, super-glued into contemporary popular culture.

Although the installations are there – from Rini Fauzan Mohd Zuhairi’s ‘Take Heed’ to Tan Nan See’s ‘I Wanna be a Contemporary Artist’ there is nothing indicating the magnificence of those recent installations by Zulkilfi Yusoff, though Liew Cheng Hua’s ‘The Kapitan’ points in that direction.

Some imagery, such as those acrylic paintings by Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof, are very much of our time and sit nicely within a youth culture enamoured with graphic design, cartooning and comic books. This is work which would not look out of place in the design and illustration magazine - Territory, perhaps sitting alongside the works of Noor Azizan Rahman Paiman, Khairina Khairuddin or Tan See Ling - artists also featured within this exhibition.

The High and Low Art debate has been around probably as long as art itself has. What is fit for the wall or fit for the page – the contest continues, but there is a sense that with former graffiti artists like Jean Michel Basquiat becoming elevated to Fine Art the lines blurred even more, paving the way for young Malaysian artists like Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof , Noor Azizan Rahman Paiman, Khairina Khairuddin and Tan See Ling to not even consider the boundaries of their work, or where it is more suitably placed – page or wall.

Once again there is little in the way of ‘new media’. Granted there is Wong Eng Leong’s 2 channel video projection ‘Vestige’ and Mohamad Fadly Sabran’s ‘Cyber Electro Evolution’ (mixed media and video projection) but still there is less experimentation than we are led to believe in the exhibition’s promotional materials.

The exhibition is a very small step in the right direction, but Malaysia’s art schools and collages need to get their noses out of western media, and mediums, and look to those more locally found, as well as seriously considering the interplay between traditional and contemporary, new and old media. On a personal note I should like to see young contemporary artists engaging with 3D design, modelling and rendering but not from a design/illustration perspective, but from a contemporary Fine Arts one.

Galeri Petronas continues to produce interesting and thought provoking exhibitions, you may not like all you see, for that is the beauty of it, but you will like some.

9 Beats

2010-07-28T16:42:00.000+08:00

Understand that these images are not in any chronological order, neither of the time they were produced nor when I encountered them. These nine images are absolutely non-representative in-so-much-as the nine could be any nine at any point in time, and it just so happened that I picked these out of some metaphorical hat containing perhaps billions of images, at this particular moment in time. These images are not intended to be the best of anything, just available to my short-term memory at a singular moment in time.

The images of my youth, in particular those years between the ages of 17 – 21, have haunted me for the past three decades, some are represented here. So, in no particular order are nine images which, to some degree, have rocked my little world.

1 ANDY WARHOL – VELVET UNDERGROUND WITH NICO – ALBUM COVER (1967)

Prince of Pop Art Andy Warhol suggested that we all might have 15 minutes of fame he, of course, had a great deal longer. This is Andy’s infamous Banana skin album sleeve to the Velvet Underground with Nico album (1967). The banana skin was peel-able, and when peeled revealed a very pink banana beneath – subtle huh! I first heard this album in 1968 and, as we used to say then, it blew me away. On occasions I still listen to this incredible album, in particular to Welshman John Cale’s electric viola and ‘ostrich tuned’ guitar. It was a milestone – I never imagined that music could sound like that, nor album covers peel.

2 JIM STERANKO – NICK FURY AGENT OF SHIELD NO 7 – COMIC BOOK COVER (1969)

I had been ‘into’ comics since a very early age. I’ve been a comic book collector on and off for probably five decades and owned my own comic shop at one point. It just so happened that I saw this cover in 1969, just after the Rene Magritte retrospective at the Tate Gallery London. Admittedly this image is by Jim Steranko – one of the finest comic book artists, and references Dali rather than Magritte, but it reminds me of seeing Surrealist art for the very first time at that Magritte retrospective. Later I was to meet British Surrealist and jazz man George Melly and study Dali under Dali biographer - Dawn Ades. Many people forget the inextricable link between what is considered High and Low art, the many crossovers and referencing between arts. Comics/graphic novels have mostly had a raw deal when it comes to talking about art.

3 ROGER LAW - AXIS BOLD AS LOVE – ALBUM COVER (1967)

Summer of LOVE, hippies, beads bells and incense – we were all into things Indian. The Beatles sojourned in Rishikesh, India, Donovan wore a paisley kaftan on the cover of The Best of Donovan. We all were listening to Ravi Shankar. Jimi Hendrix produced this album with a cover which spoke directly to his buying audience. It is a rip-off of a Hindu devotional poster – first indication of postmodernism perhaps or just a rip-off. I believe you can still buy the original posters in Brickfields or Jalan Musjid India, KL, sans faces of The Jimi Hendrix Experience. This gatefold sleeve doubled as a nifty poster to state you claim on your in-crowd of choice, reveal your tribal affiliations and display the lurking hippie for all to see, even if you didn’t have a convenient headband to wear. Oh and the music was, er, groovy man.

4 DAVE GIBBONS – K ALBUM COVER FOR KULA SHAKER (1996)

Like the band Kula Shaker, the album cover was a retro gaze to the psychedelic era of the 60s, in some ways mimicking the Pop Artist Peter Blake’s 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s cover. It also looked back to albums like Roger Law’s Axis Bold as Love - Hendrix album cover. Again, it was a shrewd choice to have Dave Gibbons as the artist, as he is well known for his British comic strips - especially in 2000 AD and Dr Who, not to mention American works like Alan Moore’s The Watchmen and Green Lantern Corps. Let us not forget that band leader/frontman Crispian Mills is the son of 60s actress and all round groovy chick Hayley Mills. He was initiated into Gaudiya Vaishnavism and his Hare Krishna name is Krishna Kantha dasa.

5 JIM FITZPATRICK – LUGH THE IL-DANA (1979)

I love this work because I was going through an ‘I love everything Celtic’ phase, which may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I am half Irish. This included buying all I could on Irish mythology including The Mythology of the British Isles by Charles Squire. It was then I came across the works of Jim Fitzpatrick – Celtia, The Book of Conquests, The Silver Arm and The Children of Lir. He had also designed many of the Thin Lizzy album covers at that time. That was round about the time I was using an airbrush to paint. I was commissioned to airbrush a series of ‘Hell’s Angels’ motorcycle petrol tanks. My showpiece was based upon Celtic mythology and included the warriors seen at the back of this picture – in silhouette. Many years later (in 2008) Jim Fitzpatrick was to comment on a digital work (Peace) that I had produced and had exhibited in Spain.

6 BARRY WINDSOR SMITH – PANDORA (1975)

Known for his illustrations for Conan the Barbarian and ‘Art’ books like Opus, Barry Windsor Smith, in conjunction with Gorblimely Press, produced a number of stunning Fine Art print posters. Pandora was one such, available as a limited edition poster. It was one that I bought shortly after it came out, in 1975, and subsequently left in England when I came to Malaysia. Like the comic book artist P. Craig Russell there is always the Fine Artist trying to burst out from Barry Windsor Smith’s pen or brush. He treads lightly from the one world into the other, always leaving the faintest of scent of the Pre-Raphaelites wherever he goes.

7 ROGER DEAN – TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS, ALBUM COVER - YES (1973)

I admit to being a past YES fan. I was in a small town, in England, searching through a box of record albums in a second-hand shop. I saw this album cover and loved it, instantly. I bought the record and all the others with similar covers. There were four or five YES albums. Only later was I to love the music too. Roger Dean, airbrush artist and watercolourist extraordinaire, became an instant hero of mine way back in the days before Adobe Photoshop or CorelDraw. It was Roger Dean’s work which encouraged me to learn to use an airbrush.

8 HECTOR HYPPOLITE – MAITRESSE ERZULIE (1948)

Hector Hyppolite, the Haitian naïf painter, was discovered by the American De Witt Peters. He helped Haitian artists set up their first art gallery. I came across this picture when I was studying for my first Master’s degree and taking Latin American art. My thesis for that course was Haitian Naive Art. Since then, this image reminds me of that course and the lovely people I met there.

Last but by no means least

9 ZULKIFLI YUSOFF – MERDEKA 57 (2009)

It is difficult not to repeat myself when writing about Zulkifli Yusoff. This work was my introduction to the genius of Zulkifli Yusoff. It and I met face to face in Galleri Petronas and it was love at first sight, well at least for me it was. Like many other of Zulkifli’s works it resonates deeply, while casually appearing to be slight. It is the careful juxtaposition of the symbolic imagery which tantalises and teases the visual palette. As an introduction to Zulkifli’s work this installation was the best that I could have imagined.

Off the Edge May 2010

2010-05-15T16:59:00.004+08:00

Senses of Malaysia May/June Issue

2010-05-15T12:24:00.004+08:00

Meditative Minimalism?

2010-04-20T11:04:00.001+08:00

From 29^th May to June 19^th, 2010, the visual artist Sand T (Soh Tan Kalloch) exhibits her most recent epoxy resin/clayboard works, in an exhibition entitled ‘Material Tendencies’, at Paris CONCRET, Paris, France, alongside artists from France and the Netherlands.

Last year I was very disappointed not to be able to see Sand T’s works, in her proposed solo exhibition, at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang. The exhibition was cancelled due to lack of financial support. It would seem a pity that an artist of Sand T’s international repute, and a home grown artist at that, was unable to draw sufficient support for her show. Thus denying many the chance to engage with her exciting works, and discover more about the art of minimalism.

Sand T was born in historical Melaka, land of Nonya/Baba, cincalok and gula. This extremely prolific artist, whose work is also in the Malaysian National Art Gallery collection, drifted towards the US of A for her Master of Fine Arts degree - and stayed on, in Massachusetts. There she has developed her stunning visual style and makes a point in promoting better understanding of fine art through her minimalist works and her ST Gallery.

For those more familiar with the figurative art of Zakaria Ali, Rafiee Ghani, or indeed the more abstract works of Latiff Mohidin and Ibrahim Hussein, Sand T’s take on minimalist art refreshes the senses that other arts cannot reach.

Michael Fried, in Artforum 1967, suggested that the concept of minimalist art, or liberalist art as he prefers, is an entirely ideological enterprise. To a large extent minimalist art separates itself off from modernist art, and more especially from the contemporary arts of the time – Op Art and Pop Art. Released from the boundaries of painting, minimalist art becomes freed from the need for pictorial illusion and, to a large extent, representation and ‘flat’ art altogether, in favour of an art utilising three dimensions.

Minimalism, in its stillness, transcends the mere mimetic, stripping away the irrelevant, revealing the fundamental and it is these very qualities which are inherent in Sand T’s works, and may go some way into describing the otherwise indescribable qualities of her transcendental, seemingly tranquil, art.

Sand T specialises in art made using epoxy resin, usually on a clayboard, with additional colour, and occasionally the use of graphite too. Her works are highly reflective, making use of internal colour and space as well as reflections and shadows cast onto her works.

There is a sublimely sumptuous quality about Sand T’s epoxy resin works which, though termed by the artist ‘minimalist’, actually defy categorisation. At moments when visitors wax lyrical, these highly polished and reflective epoxy resin works, often graced with graphite, appear to have freeze-framed 1970s lava lamps (as seen at the Massachusetts exhibition Negotiating the Irrationalities hosted by artSPACE@16). At other times the viewer might be encouraged to imagine that the tiny globules of semi-opaque fluid, are, seemingly, suspended, transfixed in time and space (Black Ecstasy B-2).

The self-delusionary viewer, who may or may not be a budding art historian high on the uniqueness of Sand T’s art, may imagine water droplets on the Pop Artist Allen Jones’ black patent leather boots (Voice of Silence), or perhaps the steamed windows of Dali’s surreal Rainy Taxi (Dancing Lights (clear)) as seemingly represented by Sand T’s radiant epoxy works; for there is little doubt that her works lend themselves to such reveries.

Old hippies may recall the 1960s band – Traffic, singing ‘...capturing moments of life in a jar’ from the song ‘Heaven Is In Your Mind’ (album Mr Fantasy-1967). From one perspective that is exactly what Sand T appears to do with her works. Observing globules of epoxy resin seemingly suspended within the works lends a notion of time transfixed, or caught. This notion might be encouraged by the resonance of the spectacular Time and Space B-1 (in the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur), where carefully placed semi-translucent epoxy drips and lines, against a backdrop of deep reflective black, may give the viewer the illusion of a transcendental, Zen-space.

A mind oft used to indulgent fantasies might imagine strains of Miles Davis’ cool jazz, John Cage’s Dream (1948) or Phillip Glass’s Opening (from Glassworks 1981) frozen at a potentially mind-blowing ecstatic moment, solidified music, entrapped in epoxy resin, forever blowing, notes gelling into reality, reincarnated into resin.

In German philosophy, Martin Heidegger reveals the concept of the Augenblick, a specific minimal moment in time – quite literally the blink, or glance of an eye, time frozen, reduced to its smallest component part. And in many ways Augenblick may be enough to describe Sand T’s work, where drops of epoxy resin, on clay covered board, come to represent, in the eye of the beholder, infinite time and space encapsulated.

Whatever the viewer projects onto, or into, Sand T’s works, there is certainly little doubt that those works, whatever they may appear to be, are a trigger to meditation, or prayer, if ever there was one. For the viewer, observing Sand T’s work becomes inundated, washed with spiritual, Zen-like vibes; this is one of the most vital, intrinsic values of these alluring works - their innate ability to seemingly encourage contemplation and introspection.

Sand T’s frozen Zen drops are painstakingly placed for maximum effect, despite minimalist content, delivering surfaces which at once reflect an external world of physicality, while revealing a transcendental space for meditation, inner reflection and projection. Her intricately constructed resin works literally mirror external shifting reality while, simultaneously, capturing moments forever in stasis, sitting somewhere between realism and abstract, reality and construct.

While Sand T’s works have the appearance of trapping the moment, catching the Augenblick that notion is, in reality, a sheer fallacy, for movement and time continues reflected on the surface of her works in a gleam of her highly polished epoxy resin. The works’ surfaces, with their mirror-esque qualities, bring exciting new dynamics into an already complex artistic equation.

It is true that Sand T’s artworks may appear as stasis, time encapsulated, but that is all it is - a Platonic appearance, not reality. Where romantic artistic interpreters dream of flies in amber and imagine raindrops on tropical leaves (Euclidean Space in Electric Lime), sheen on black metal (Voice of Silence), condensation in taxis (Minus Space) reality is, in fact, reflected on the works’ surfaces.

Like froth on a daydream, life is being lived external to the epoxy resin works themselves - reflections of cameras, lights, visitors, and in the darkened gallery – shadows, all dance to the tune of light reflected on the surface of Sand T’s works. For that, essentially, fundamentally is the delicious tension of Sand T’s constructs – the projected into and the reflected onto. Ultimately her artistic constructs are non-representational, in so much as they are things/goods/objects in themselves, and need exist only for themselves.

I, for one, hope that Sand T may be persuaded to bring her works over to Malaysia, to exhibit them in a space worthy of them, so that a larger Malaysian public may share in what the world has already seen – the exquisiteness of form, the meditative grace of her epoxy resin coated clayboards, in all their unique splendour.

Off the Edge April 2010 - Signs of Life

2010-04-08T18:22:00.000+08:00

Seni untuk AIDS 2 (Art for AIDS two)

2010-03-30T06:48:00.006+08:00

The severity of the AIDS pandemic remains a prime concern across the world. Although statistics from major monitoring organisations, including UNICEF, UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation report some significant major changes in the virulence of the pandemic in Malaysia, there still remains a great need for awareness of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), particularly among the young.

In Malaysia, where there are more than 80, 000 reported cases of HIV infection, and nearly 14,000 reported cases of AIDS, official international and national organisations - like the Malaysian Aids Council (MAC) spearhead the fight against AIDS. MAC is seen to be in the vanguard of authorities spreading awareness and education concerning the pandemic, within Malaysia, but there also local, non-profit organisations, engaging in the devastating war against HIV/AIDS.

In between film making and music making, last year local artist/musician/academic Kamal Sabran teamed up with a project worker - Dr Ismail bin Lasa, president of Prostar Malaysia (programme for healthy adolescents) - a club raising awareness of HIV/AIDS among youth, to engage in the spreading of awareness about HIV/AIDS.

Together, doctor and artist initiated Art for Aids (Seni untuk AIDS), and successfully engaged in bringing the anti -HIV/AIDS message home to younger people.

The concept of Art for AIDS may have began in San Francisco (USA) some fourteen years ago, when a few local artists got together and decided to sell art to help their friends suffering from HIV and AIDS, but it continues worldwide with Malaysia also making its mark.

In 2009, Seni untuk AIDS (Art for AIDS) started in Malaysia as a network of artists, scholars and social activists pooling together ideas and resources to bring AIDS awareness to the general public’s view. Their intent was to raise consciousness, as well as funds, to continue the fight against one of the world’s most crippling virulent diseases – the HIV/AIDS virus.

Known as Fighting AIDS with Art – an online visual art competition and exhibition, the Malaysian Art for AIDS initiative (Seni untuk AIDS) founded a web based art competition which evolved into an exhibition with over two hundred stunning entries.

A website poll enabled visitors to vote for their favourite image, or the most effect/striking image and closed with 1,693 votes being registered on the website meter. Prizes were awarded for the top three artworks at a ceremony including the national poet A. Samad Said in Shah Alam, 20th February this year (2010).

Nur Suria Mansor won RM1000 for her evocative expressionistic work ‘Fading Away’ - a powerful piece full of emotive command, and obviously popular with the website voters. M. Syazwan gained RM500 for the nostalgically resonant image ‘Mangsa’ and Ammin received third, but not least, prize of RM250 for demonstrating, pictorially, ‘How HIV cannot be Spread’. All the artists and collaborators involved, as well as those who voted, deserve praise for just being involved in this initial project.

However, all art is in a way subjective, and the one work that caught my eye is – Jerit (scream), by Abdullah Hamdan (number 116 on the website). This is a poignant digital artwork, for me saying all there needs to be said about the fight against AIDS, the pain and suffering this disease brings not only to the individual whose body has been invaded by the virus, but for those connected to that individual, friends and family. The top 30 artworks can still be seen online, at http://seniuntukaids.blogspot.com .

That was merely a beginning. On the 28th March this year (2010), Perak witnessed the launching of a second initiative concerning art against AIDS. At the Prostar convention, in Bukit Merah, Perak, YB Datuk Rosnah Shirlin bt Hj Abdul Rashid Shirlin helped launch ‘Drop the Hate’, the fresh Seni untuk AIDS project initiative for this new year, concentrating specifically on photography.

Seni untuk AIDS, in this fresh venture, asks everyone, beginner, amateur and professional to send in their best photographic shots for the photography exhibition which closes 12 noon 31st May 2010. As last year, there will be cash prizes and certificates available to the winners, and there will be an online exhibition of the received photographs. Entrants are asked to send their photographic images to seniuntukaids@gmail.com by 31st of May this year.

As well as a second website – http://seniuntukaids2.blogspot, Seni untuk AIDS can be reached through a Facebook page. Links to Facebook and to the web pages of Kamal Sabran and Dr Ismail Lasa can be found on the aforementioned website if further information is sought regarding both the Seni untuk AIDS project itself, or this year’s initiative.

These initiatives are most important to draw attention to the AIDS pandemic, to facilitate spreading awareness of the disease, promoting ways in which sufferers may be assisted, and helping prevent fresh people from becoming infected in the future.

Off the Edge March 2010

2010-03-17T07:49:00.002+08:00

my first article in Off the Edge.

Social-i magazine Poetry Special (UK)

2010-02-09T17:27:00.002+08:00

Two of my poems published

the magazine can be found HERE