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Sangeeta Sandrasegar

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Sangeeta Sandrasegar

Sangeeta Sandrasegar works within a research-based practice, building narratives in which every new work connects to previous projects. Her practice consolidates postcolonial and hybridity theory, exploring her context within Australia and its relationship to migrant communities and homelands. Her work concerns itself within the overlap of cultural structures – sexuality, race and identity, in contemporary society – and interpreting and representing these shifts. These themes are explored through a visual language concerned with shadows. From installations of paper cutouts, material works and/or sculpture, the constructed shadows of the installation become a motif for themes of self-hood, otherness and in-between spaces. By extending the scope of the art object the cast shadows simultaneously engage with the history of the shadow in Art, and hint towards cognitive alternatives and sites of transformation.

In 2004 Sandrasegar completed a Doctorate of Philosophy across the Victorian College of the Arts and the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne.  The content of the exegesis was to formalize a visual practice centred on the creative space of shadows into a theoretical tool.  She proposed that the shadow subject could be re-examined and liberated from its historical representations and to be employed as both a positive and salient visual device for representing the ideas being examined in post-colonial and hybridity studies.

Sandrasegar has been represented in group and solo exhibitions since 1996, and is the recipient of several fellowships and prizes. In particular, national showcases for emerging artists: Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NEW04, Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, Melbourne. As well as the Auckland Triennial and SCAPE: New Zealand Community Art & Industry Biennial in New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 05, Gallery of Modern Art Queensland. Last year her work was shown in the Incheon Women Artists Biennale in Korea, and Slash: Paper Under the Knife, Museum of Arts and Design, New York.

Sangeeta was in residency at Hotel Penaga from October to December 2012.

Links to Sangeeta’s work
http://sangeetasandrasegar.photoshelter.com/
http://sangeetasandrasegar.blogspot.com

You Ask Me About That Country
You Ask Me About That Country

August 2012 — Tree Felling, and a Musang

admin Nature Notes
August 2012 — Tree Felling, and a Musang

We had to fell a 23-year old Hopea odorata in July as it was threatening to fall on either Kak Putih’s house or the spare staff cottage: the main trunk had split into two leaders, neither strong enough to carry the weight of branches and wind. Soon after palnting these we realised that rainforest trees must be planted well away from buildings. Girth was 2 meters, and we are keeping the trunk to mill into timber. If anyone knows of a portable mill that could come and do the necessary, do let us know!

Another smaller tree had to be felled to enable the hired cherry picker to access the Hopea odorata, manoeuvring into position in the tight space between the buildings. After Raya we will hire the cherry picker again to remove all split trunks along the driveway, retaining just the strongest.

In other news, a juvenile Asian palm civet fell into the middle well of the underground gallery at Rimbun Dahan and had to be rescued. The glass doors of the well were opened, and it escaped into the gallery, where it quickly found a nice dark space in the storage area, and was difficult to persuade to leave. Angela has given instructions that if it happens again, a ladder is to be put down into the air well. It works for snakes, so it should work for musang too!

Jumaadi

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Jumaadi

Jumaadi, an artist of Indonesian origin but practicing in Australia, completed a three month residency at Hotel Penaga in 2012 with a stunning performance of wayang kulit, the traditional shadow play of Southeast Asia.  This one, though, stretched tradition in a new direction, being based on a Chinese folk tale about the Moon Cake, a timely performance as the festival is just around the corner at the next full moon on 30th September, when children parade through neighbourhoods carrying candle lit lanterns in animal and fantasy shapes. Jumaadi’s wayang was produced with the help of the curator of the Penang State Museum, Puan Haryani Muhamad. Developed with students from KDU and with the puppets made by one of the museum’s janitorial staff, and the gamelan music was provided by museum staff, it was a wonderful collaboration of talent from all directions.

July 2012 — Python Returns to Henhouse

admin Nature Notes
July 2012 — Python Returns to Henhouse

This morning we had a snake alert: python in the hen house, again! This time three dead birds, one already consumed, two lined up ready to be eaten. When the snake was bagged, Lubis estimated its weight at 6 kilograms, including the eaten chook, as it didn’t have the amazing foresight of our last python who realized if you chuck it up, you might escape. This one was captured and released near a local stream with dinner to digest.

Marcia Ong & Hilary Schwartz

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Marcia Ong & Hilary Schwartz

Born and raised in Singapore, Marcia Ong is a filmmaker whose experience covers almost every aspect of the filmmaking process. Her short film, Kristy, has won awards at Kids First! Children’s Film Festival and Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. It has screened internationally in Amsterdam, Melbourne, Seoul, Paris, Berlin, Brussels and Singapore. In 2010, Marcia completed her latest film, Standing Still, which premiered at the 33rd Mill Valley Film Festival. Marcia Ong recently shot a feature documentary titled Ten Eleven O Two, directed by Mackenzie Mathis and Jellyfish, an independent short film set in Borneo directed by Rosie Haber.

Coded within the domestic spaces, scenes, and objects that I create are traces of intimacy. Susan Stewart identifies narrative in On Longing as a structure of desire that is suspended in impossibility. My own experiences of displacement, nostalgia for intimacy and longing for an imagined home and family, as well as a larger queer narrative of dislocation and isolation, lead me to the subject of domesticity and the making of a “home”. While queerness is not easily read in all of my pieces, it is coded throughout. Coding originates from within a context of marginalization, but moves beyond this in its role as a language of identity and a signifier of shared experience.

Hilary Schwartz is a sculptor engaged with concepts of domesticity, displacement, temporality, and queer desire. She received her MFA in 2009 from San Francisco Art Institute and her BFA from California College of the Arts. She has exhibited internationally. Most recently, her work has been seen in Etiquette at the Substation Gallery in Singapore, Feeding Ghosts at Kitsch Gallery in San Francisco, and Domestic Materials at PLAySPACE Gallery in San Francisco. Hilary’s work has been featured online on KQED, Art Practical, and SFGate. She is currently a fulltime lecturer at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore. Hilary recently conducted a workshop entitled Play with Your Food at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

Hilary and Martha collaborated on a series of video pieces reflecting upon living together in Singapore. They undertook a short one-month residency in Hotel Penaga in June 2012.

Contemporary Mask Workshop by Agung Gunawan

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Contemporary Mask Workshop by Agung Gunawan

workshop_panorama

On Saturday 26 May 2012, MyDance Alliance in collaboration with Nyoba Kan presented a workshop at Rimbun Dahan by visiting Indonesian dancer and choreographer Agung Gunawan.

For three hours, Agung led a group of 15 dancers through various elements of his artistic practice. He started with a rough and ready taster of tarian topeng klono, a mask dance from the royal court of Jogjakarta. He then encouraged the participants to get to know their own masks, in a series of exercises involving looking at the mask, feeling the mask on the face, free movement and moving while focusing upon the mask.

The workshop culminated in a group improvisation with all the masked participants exploring their own and each other’s developing characters, before a final wild return to the tarian topeng klono. As a finale, Agung performed the tarian topeng klono wearing his mask, to the delight of the group whose appreciation had deepened through their brief encounter with the art form.

For more images of the workshop, see the album on Rimbun Dahan’s Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.373531749362522.83693.109567465758953&type=1

About Agung Gunawan

Agung Gunawan was born in 1971 in Klaten, Central Java. After graduation from the High School of Arts in Yogyakarta, he continued studies of Yogyakarta classical dance in Surya Kencana and at the Kraton (Palace) where he continues to perform. He studied Sumatranese, Betawian and Kalimantan dance with Bagong Kusudiharjo and contemporary dance with M. Miroto. He is presently Assistant Choreographer of the Miroto Dance Company and has toured with them in Holland, Belgium, Germany Africa and of course Indonesia. He has performed with other groups in USA, Romania, Italy, South Korea, Australia and Japan. He is actively involved in contemporary music and has also choreographed for movies. Agung is director of Manisrenggo Culture Festival and he is also conceptual director of The Arts Island Festival which tours through Java and Bali.

May 2012 — Otters again!

admin Nature Notes
May 2012 — Otters again!

The otters are back, and they are bristling! Having been our occasional visitors for a few months, we are no longer surprised by the odd spraint by the side of the swimming pool, but so far direct contact between humans and otters at Rimbun Dahan has been rare. This morning Angela Hijjas had a thrilling encounter with our fish-eating friends:

“I woke with the azan this morning to hear desultory barking by Samson and Santan… I went out because it sounded a bit odd, and when I turned on the loggia light a big splash near the blue pots indicated something large in the water. It had to be an otter. I turned off the light and retreated with dogs in the house.

“I watched for the next 45 minutes and then gave up, but it was starting to get light and from upstairs I could see waves in the lower pond, so I got my camera and went down even though it was still dark. The dogs didn’t see me as I was behind the hedge, and I could see there were about 6 of the otters cruising around in formation. I think they hunt together by herding the fish into a corner and then attacking. They were catching fish but I didn’t see any eating.

“It quietened down, and I realised they were in the upper pond so I followed via the edging of the reflective pond and of course Santan and Samson saw me and followed. I thought the game would be up if the dogs got wind of the otters, but no indeed!

“The dogs went down to the divide between the ponds and the otters attacked! Four of them, heads rearing out of the water simultaneously towards the dogs, and then advancing out of the pond and onto the grass! Of course my faithful dogs retreated and were going to go home, but it would have been a huge loss of face with me there to protect. I had my SLR camera, and was clicking continuously although not with the camera to my eye, so most of the shots were out of focus but I was so close I had to get something, and I felt that if the noise of the camera continued they wouldn’t bother with me, but eventually when I was thinking I should retreat they realised I was there and disappeared.

“What an exciting morning!”

A group of otters is variously called a family, a bevy, a lodge or a romp, or, when in the water, a raft. At Rimbun Dahan, we might call ours an attack.

Lina Limosani

admin Asialink, Performances, Resident Artist ,
Lina Limosani

lina

Australian dancer and choreographer Lina Limosani undertook an Asialink residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2008, during which time she developed and presented the full-length contemporary dance work A Delicate Situation. Lina returned in 2012 for a short redevelopment of the work, with Australian dancer Carol Wellman-Kelly.

About the Artist

Lina Limosani graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1999 and became a member of the Australian Dance Theatre (ADT) from 2000-2005. In 2003 she was awarded the Emerging Artist award by the Adelaide Critics Circle for her works in ADT’s in-house choreographic seasons of Ignition. In 2004 Lina was nominated for a Green Room Award for her performance in The Age of Unbeauty at the Melbourne Festival. She also featured in Anton’s dance film When You’re Alone, which was a finalist in the 2004 Reel Dance International Dance on Screen Awards.

After leaving ADT Lina worked with artists including Narelle Benjamin, Lucy Guerin and Gideon Obarzanek. She has since maintained a performance career both in Australia and New Zealand, and gone on to create her own works independently. Lina’s works are known for their fast, aggressive movement style, as well as their humour, and use of speech and theatre.

Below: Suhaili Micheline rehearsing for the redevelopment of ‘A Delicate Situation’ in the studio at Rimbun Dahan.

Residency in 2012

Australian choreographer Lina Limosani has returned to Rimbun Dahan on a short redevelopment of the work A Delicate Situation, which she created at Rimbun Dahan in 2008.

Accompanied by Australian dancer Carol Wellman-Kelly, and reconnecting with Malaysian dance Suhaili Micheline Ahmad Kamil who was involved in the original work, Lina reformed A Delicate Situation to confront different cultural approaches to death, dying and the afterlife.

The original work investigated Malaysian superstition through the story of the pontianak, a female vampire ghost believed to have died at childbirth. The redeveloped version is also set in Malaysia, but is the story of a Western woman’s struggle to come to terms with death surrounded by a culture saturated in legend, myth and superstition.

“What I found compelling [with the pontianak] is the seemingly universal necessity for humans to personify death,” says Lina. “This tendency became central to A Delicate Situation and it was through the character of Death that I invite the viewer to be deeply drawn into the work. Death, its personification in the lore surrounding it, and the fear that accompanies it remain fundamental in A Delicate Situation.”

The finished work will premier in the inSPACE program at the Adelaide Festival Centre in August 2012. Lina Limosani and Carol Wellman-Kelly’s residencies at Rimbun Dahan in May 2012 are supported by Arts SA.

govt-sa-arts-sa

Below: Lina Limosani, Carol Wellman-Kelly and Suhaili Micheline learning the classical Malay dance tari inai from Malaysian dancer Hasmizan Abdul Hamid from ASWARA.

Residency in 2008

Lina was resident at Rimbun Dahan from September to December 2008, with the support of a performing arts grant from Asialink. During her stay, she created a new contemporary dance work for performance in December 2008. She collaborated with physical theatre artist Al Seed and costume designer Eve Lambert who were resident at Rimbun Dahan for short periods.

Lina Limosani worked with four accomplished local dancers — Elaine Pedley, Suhaili Ahmad Kamil, Low Shee Hoe and Rathimalar Govindarajoo — to create A Delicate Situation, a full-length performance with a strong visual and emotional impact, which was performed at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre in December 2008.

Ashly Nandong

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Ashly Nandong

ashly-performing-close-up

Ashly Nandong is a thirty-year old artist from Kuching, Sarawak who joins us for three months as short-stay artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan.

Ahsly completed a Bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering at Swinburne University, in Victoria, Australia in 2009, returning to Malaysia in early 2011. However, it was his informal art education and exposure to traditional dance and music during his formative adolescent years that marked him for quite a different life direction. Eventually, and inevitably it seemed, what placed him firmly on this different road was his continued active involvement in the performance and visual arts, while living in Melbourne. Having been taught the sapeh lute as a teenager under different gurus, the traditional Dayak dance of the Orang Ulu and Iban people, and now as painter, Ashly crosses from performance to visual arts and back with ease.

A strong sense of his Iban cultural heritage is what binds; one medium of expression inspires the other in a non-hierarchy. Traditional motifs and metaphors make for meaningful markers and anchor him along the way in his berjalai, an ancient Iban custom of roaming or journeying in search of greener pastures of knowledge and hopefully the ‘wisdom’ that comes from hands-on experience.

At Rimbun Dahan, Ashly is given a much-needed time for contemplation in an important  part of his berjalai; an introspective time to connect with his creative aspirations in response to his current ‘spiritual’ situation. Ashly is presently working on a painting depicting the Tree of Life, a motif found in Iban symbolism and in religions, mythologies and philosophies throughout many different cultures, in varying permutations.

A unifying principle that unites all cultures and religions is something Ashly gravitates towards, being very keen to understand deeper the creative force that at core animates all living entities with spirit. The living tree, rooted in earth but with branches reaching upwards for the heavens is aptly symbolic of Ashly’s current station of berjalai at Rimbun Dahan, a place of lofty trees and sounds of ancient cicadas and birdsong.

Rebecca Stevens

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Rebecca Stevens

Bec_portrait

Bec Stevens undertook a three month residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2012, in association with Asialink. Bec is a Hobart-based visual artist whose work is underpinned by studies in Architecture and Horticulture. She graduated from the University of Tasmania’s: School of Art in 2003 and School of Architecture and Design in 1999.

Her practice is site-responsive and inter-disciplinary, using a range of mediums as tools to respond to the social and historical nuances of constructed environments. More specifically she is interested in, and responds to public spaces that are left-over, in-between states or unplanned, often resulting in works that reflect on processes of development or entropy.

Bec frequently uses plant material within works, and during her time at Rimbun Dahan she intends to respond directly to the garden of indigenous Southeast Asian species. She is interested in the garden as an island of biodiversity in the context of the surrounding area of Kuala Lumpur, particularly in light of the rare and endangered species it holds; and in the social customs and specific relationships to botanic species. Alongside this she is interested in the rates of change, growth and decay in the region, in terms of the inherent maintenance required for living in a place that sits in close proximity to the equator, and she intends to use this as impetus for developing work.

Bec Stevens recent projects and exhibitions include: ‘STOP. REST. PLAY.’ (2011) commissioned as an activity of the CWA CBD Branch; ‘Lookout’ at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (2010) and ‘Canopy’ (2008) commissioned for the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. She has received funding from Arts Tasmania for numerous projects and in 2009 was the recipient of a New Work Grant through the Australia Council for the Arts. In 2010 she completed a Studio Residency at Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania and she is currently the recipient of the Curatorial Mentorship through Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania. She is an active member of the CWA CBD Branch, see www.cwa-cbdbranch.com.