From 16 to 21 September 2008, British physical theatre artist Al Seed conducted an intensive workshop for actors and dancers interested in exploring physical theatre.
Al Seed giving feedback during the workshop.
Al Seed is the Artist in Residence at The Byre Theatre, St. Andrews, and a Creative Associate of The Arches, Glasgow. He also works as a free-lance performer, writer and director and hosts master-classes in a range of disciplines.
Al received an M.A. in Theatre, Film & Television from the University of Glasgow before studying Physical Theatre and Contemporary Circus Skills at Circomedia, Bristol. He now creates both solo and collaborative works of theatre drawing on a variety of physical disciplines including clown, buffoon and mask-work and often combines the use of these disciplines ith original text.
Al is an award-winning artist who performances have toured in Europe, and he also has acted extensively for film and television. For more information, see his website http://www.alseed.net/.
Physical Theatre Workshop with Al Seed & Lina Limosani
From 16 to 21 September, British physical theatre artist Al Seed conducted an intensive workshop for actors and dancers interested in exploring physical theatre.
Al was invited to Rimbun Dahan by Australian resident choreographer Lina Limosani, to help her lay the foundations for her new contemporary dancework to be performed in Malaysia in December 2008. A number of the workshop participants will perform in the work.
Eight participants — Low Shee Hoe, Grace Ng, David Lim, Elaine Pedley, Suhaili Micheline bt Ahmad Kamil, Shirley Ng, Mcebisi Bhayi, Lee Hui Ling and Teresa Chian — spent long hours in the Dance Studio at Rimbun Dahan with Al and Lina working with masks and costumes, concentrating on rhythmic isolations, developing movements for inhuman creature characters, and being introduced to the painful and confronting truths of clown work.
Above: First day, taking creature work out into the garden. The task: reacting to every sound.
Below: The last day, creature work with self-made costumes in the dance studio, exploring what a costume wants to do.
South African dancer-choreographer Mcebisi Bhayi first came to Rimbun Dahan on a residency with Singaporean choreographer Joey Chua. He returned to Malaysia for a short residency in September 2008, during which time he taught a workshop in Afro-contemporary dance to members of the local dance community.
Bio
Bhayi was one of the three finalists of the Shell Road to Fame Talent Search in Johannesburg in 1995. In 1999 he participated in the Community Dance Teachers Training Programme at Moving Into Dance. Bhayi was a nominee for Most Promising Male Dancer in Contemporary Style at the FNB Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg in 2001. In 2002, Bhayi won the Peak of the Stepping Stones Award. He attended the FNB Dance Umbrella Young Choreographers’ Residency in 2007 and 2008. His works ‘Free Us Now’ and ‘Muntu’ were featured in FNB Dance Umbrella in 2007. He recently attended the Young Choreographers’ Residency in Senegal in March-June 2008. He performed in Gregory Maqoma’s ‘Skeleton Dry’ at FNB Dance Umbrella in 2008.
Workshop
20 excited dancers filled the dance studio at Rimbun Dahan, to take part in Mcebisi’s Afro-contemporary dance workshop. It was an exhausting high-energy romp of furiously contracting rib-cages, cat-like leaps, and endless sequences. Mcebisi’s constant cheery exhortations — “Keep on pouncing!” — and fantastic accompaniment on the drums by Rimbun Dahan resident artist Justin Lim made it an experience to remember. Afro-Contemporary dance combines the spirit and technique of African, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian and Contemporary dance styles. It is a grounded, rhythmic dance form with movements originating from the pelvis and core.
Wong Yoke Hin Nicholas took up a one-month residency at Rimbun Dahan in August 2008. He read some of his poetry in an informal presentation in the Underground Gallery on 25 August 2008. During his residency, he worked on pieces about Malaysian flora and fauna, as part of his first poetry collection.
Bio
Nicholas Wong was born in Selangor, Malaysia. He was a recipient of the 2008 Academy of American Poets Award while at Columbia University, where he will soon commence his second year in Comparative Literature and Society. He has also received the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2006 and the Singapore Young Dramatists Award for playwriting, among other awards.
His publication credits include The Rialto, Softblow, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Tablet and he has been featured in several local newspapers and magazines. He has read his poetry at Dram Projects, Seksan Gallery, National University of Singapore, MPH Bangsar Village and No Black Tie. He was also one of the judges for “50 Years, 50 Heroes: Young Malaysians You Need to Know” essay writing competition, and was part of the editorial team for Inkyhands, an e-zine to promote new Malaysian writing. He was proud to host Preeta Samarasan for her reading of her debut novel Evening is the Whole Day at Barnes & Noble, Columbia University. Besides writing, he loves playing the piano and harpsichord, and is currently learning how to cook.
Tim Craker, ‘Botanical Data File #3’. Plastic safety fencing, hand-cut. 205 x 300 cm. 2008. Now in the permanent collection at Rimbun Dahan.
dot-net-dot-au was an art exhibition by Tim Craker and Louise Saxton, who separately undertook short term artist residencies at Rimbun Dahan gallery in Malaysia in 2006, exploring their most vivid impressions of the time they’ve spent travelling between their home country and Malaysia. dot-net-dot-au is an artistic meditation on the links that bind us geographically and metaphorically.
The exhibition travelled to Malaysia and Singapore. In Kuala Lumpur it was presented at The Annexe Gallery, Central Market, 10-27 July 2008, where it was supported by the Australian High Commission, Kuala Lumpur. In Singapore it appeared at The Substation, 5-17 August 2008.
Tim Craker and Louise Saxton produced two individual series of artworks that surprisingly complement and work in tandem with one another. Put side by side, the collection of works reveal a disarmingly quirky and personal insight into the experiences of two artists exploring Malaysian life and culture as outsiders.
Running through the entire series is Tim Craker’s elaboration of the net, literally and metaphorically. The net describes communication links, the sieve of memory, a tool to capture experiences and also the imaginary walls that separate cultures.
Interspersed among the nets are Louise Saxton’s insects, flowers and human figures meticulously put together from embroidered and quilted fabric. The effect is an artistic reenactment of the two artists’ process as they absorb, understand and meditate on Malaysian life and culture as outsiders.
dot-net-dot-au was also a continuation of their exhibition dot-net-dot-my at the Red Gallery Contemporary Art Space, in Melbourne, Australia, in 2007.
Above: Tim Craker, detail of ‘Thought Pattern’, plastic chinese soup spoons, nylon thread. 250 x 400cm. 2007.
Exhibition Opening
The exhibition was opened on 10 July at 8pm by Angela Hijjas:
It is a great pleasure to be here to open this show for Louise Saxton and Tim Craker, a show that was partially generated by our Rimbun Dahan residency programme. 2006, when Tim and Louise were resident, was a good year for us as we started inviting artists for shorter periods than the usual year long programme. That year we had a rich assembly of artists, coming and going, overlapping with different experiences from Malaysia and Australia. We hadn’t considered doing this before, as until then we had looked for people who could stay for a year, making organization easier for us, but we subsequently realized how great an impact a shorter stay in a new environment can have on creativity.
Tim and Louise are testament to that. Louise stayed with us for just a month, as that was all the time she could spare from a young family and commitments in Melbourne. For Tim, who was with us for three months, it was a chance for him, as he put it, to live as an artist, and it then precipitated the decision to leave his profession as a veterinarian to embrace his real passion, making art.
It is now obvious to me that life altering experiences don’t necessarily take a year; a month or three can be enough to generate new views of the world and significant developments in an artist’s practice. Subsequently Rimbun Dahan began inviting choreographers and performance artists as well, adding to the variety of interactions and new ideas. So I owe a lot to Tim and Louise for their contribution to Rimbun Dahan, and for their efforts since in developing their early ideas into these works in the Annexe today. Inspiration can come suddenly, but a solid art practice requires time to digest the concepts into new forms and expression.
I was lucky enough to see the beginnings of this show when it was first exhibited in Australia last year, and the potential was obvious. Despite their very different styles, both artists found common ground, not just in the net, but in the everyday experiences that are so easily overlooked in a world sated with materialism.
Above: Detail of Star Flower, cotton and linen embroidery, steel pins on nylon bridal tulle, 300 x 180cm approx, 2008. Now in the permanent collection at Rimbun Dahan.
Louise takes the delicate hand made laces and embroideries of past decades, pieces that would have been treasured as part of a bride’s glory box, that today we rarely appreciate or examine in detail, sated as we are with too many material possessions. She carefully dissects and recasts these delicate pieces into creatures and installations that are suddenly contemporary, forcing us to look closely, to examine the minute detail and to appreciate such a visual treat in our mass produced world. By transforming lacey detail into fantastic insects, she is making a world of fantasy animals that would do nature proud. Some of her animals are indeed real, like the hornbill and koala, but when she expresses them with just a negative space we are reminded of how ephemeral the real world is, and how linked we are to our short term material possessions rather than to the really important things like birds and animals facing extinction.
By contrast, as if from the other end of the continuum, Tim takes inspiration from mass produced plastic paraphernalia that has never enjoyed much aesthetic appeal… but he transforms it into something unique and stunning, in scale and form. In 2006 he made a work for Art for Nature on the theme of appetites, all about food and its roles in our lives. Tim created a huge net of linked disposable wooden chopsticks draped in the light well of our gallery; like a fishing net it was an immense Chinese banquet “celebrating” our disposable culture. With his pieces here today, he has gone further, by choosing new disposable items and binding and cutting into them to create something beautiful and puzzling. Beautiful because of the shift in scale and the surprisingly tactile effect of plastic, and puzzling because of the complete reversal of ideas of durability and impermanence. I just wish he could do something with the orange plastic barrier blocks that now litter our roads at every turn… being stuck in a traffic jam might be a better experience for some artful transformation of the detritus that surrounds us.
Louise and Tim came to Rimbun Dahan, after being art students in Melbourne together some years before, and again in this show. Their works are from very different perspectives, and yet they reverberate against each other to create a stunning exhibition. We are honoured to have this work visit Malaysia, and for that I would like to thank the Australian High Commissions, both in KL and in Singapore for their support. Unfortunately most of the High Commission staff, including the High Commissioner herself, could not be here tonight because of an official visit from the Australian Prime Minister, but I’m sure Tim and Louise would want to thank them for the support that made the show possible.
Thank you all for coming, and I’m sure you will enjoy the show. Congratulations to both Louise Saxton and Tim Craker for a stunning exhibition that illustrates superbly what both Australian and Malaysian artists are working towards: new expression, new materials and new ideas. And I’m sure you will all enjoy it. Thank you.
In 2006 Tim Craker and Louise Saxton undertook sequential short-term artist residencies at Rimbun Dahan in Malaysia.Rimbun Dahan is set on fourteen acres of lush indigenous gardens featuring a fully restored nineteenth-century Malay house. The location is beautiful but remote. Craker and Saxton were bodily transported from a cold, grey Melbourne winter into a humid tropical environment and exposed to more extreme contrasts as they moved between the seductive isolation of their garden retreat and the sensory overload of crowded Asian cities.
The work they separately completed on their return to Australia they link, literally and metaphorically, to the net – a term of multiple references. Today, ‘the Net’ is everyday shorthand for the internet and the worldwide web, alluded to in the exhibition’s title dot-net-dot-au. Developed in Malaysia, made in Australia, exhibited in Melbourne and exported for viewing to Malaysia and Singapore, the exhibition is part of this contemporary globalised network of information exchange. The net as a physical entity also figures prominently, albeit very differently, in both artists’ work.
Above: Detail of A bird in the hand #1, cotton and linen embroidery, steel pins on nylon bridal tulle. 300 x 150cm approx. 2008.
The bridal veil, made of the finest, translucent ivory-coloured net, forms the backing of Saxton’s embroidered wall pieces. This net marks a barrier between self and non-self, or, in the case of the bridal veil, a transition between one state of being (or possession) and another.
Psychologically ambiguous when considered in relation to the body, the net signifies protection but simultaneously advertises the presence of danger. The cosseted bride cocooned in her veil, or the baby breathing peacefully beneath a mosquito net, is insulated from threats lurking in the outside world. In other manifestations, like the spider’s web, the net intended to entangle and entrap is the danger.
Insect metaphors abound because the net, in many ways, defines our human interaction with them. The bee keeper goes swathed in net to collect her honey. The insect collector arms herself with the net and the jar to gather her specimens. Saxton uses embroidery pins to skewer her ‘specimens’ to the net for display. As the veil flutters gently and the pieces cast a shadow against the wall, they take on an illusory delicate life.
Saxton draws inspiration from a collection of women’s domestic crafts she has amassed over many years. Items such as hand-embroidered table linen and lace, once treasures destined for a bride’s glory-box, are now culturally obsolete in Australia and are commonly found discarded in charity shops. Saxton has added to this collection aesthetically-related crafts from other traditions, including Chinese papercuts and Indian wall embroidery. In a painstaking process of extraction and reconstruction that takes place over many hours, Saxton cuts, glues, stitches and backs hundreds of the tiny coloured textile or paper fragments into new configurations. Among the more common motifs found in the Western embroideries are butterflies and flowers, based on and debased from natural history prototypes going back to the eighteenth century. Influenced by this and the memory of the Malaysian garden, she transforms them into fantastical individual insects or cloud-like swarms. Lately, these have expanded into more complex compositions drawing on Asian spiritual imagery: henna hand stencils Saxton found in Kuala Lumpur, a seventh-century Cambodian Buddha head, traced from a book, the Yoga Tree of Life, a Chinese Cloud motif and a Star Flower, based on a Malay Islamic design. These compositions contain a motif-within-a-motif in the negative space in the centre of each work. For example, the Malaysian Hornbill sits within A bird in the Hand and the Australian Koala within Home-Tree. Both species are threatened. As Saxton explains: ‘The use of the negative form within the highly decorative outer motif becomes a metaphor of vulnerability and potential loss, (of species and also traditions) common to both our cultures.’
Detail of Tim Craker, ‘Botanical Data File #3’. Plastic safety fencing, hand-cut. 205 x 300 cm. 2008. Now in the permanent collection at Rimbun Dahan.
As far removed from the individuality and preciousness of Saxton’s salvaged, decorative elements as possible, the elements of Craker’s grids, nets and patterns are mass-produced and interchangeable. Craker chooses items such as moulded plastic spoons, cups and lunch-boxes not only for their ‘transformative potential’, but because they are readily available, easily worked and, not least, cheap (650 plastic cups or fifty metres of orange safety fencing are still affordable). The abundance of these cheap throw-away objects gives the artist licence to experiment freely on a larger scale and to explore the potential of the multiple. As he observes, he likes making ‘something big out of something little’, or perhaps even, something out of nothing. Taken individually, these disposable, transparent, almost weightless objects are so self-effacing and familiar that they almost disappear into their surroundings. Taken together, as units linked into wall or floor-sized configurations they become monumental, although not overpowering. They retain a sense of provisional-ness as they buckle or sag, sway in the breeze or gleam in reflected light in response to subtle changes in their environment. By keeping his touch light, Craker draws out of the banality, even abjectness, of his materials an unexpected quality – grace.
Although Craker works within the staple of abstract art, the grid, and preserves and observes the integrity of his minimalist units, he is not interested in ‘pure’ formalism or in creating self-referential, impersonal systems. Craker’s ‘recycling’ has a humanistic and environmentalist dimension. This is most clearly expressed in his Botanical Data Files series, in which leaves emerge as positive shapes from a snipped-away grid, the orange plastic leaf litter left in untidy drifts on the floor. Craker’s patterns refer to things in the world, among other things: genetic codes and their transcription errors, cellular arrays and honeycomb, three-dimensional computer drawing and molecular models. By juxtaposing the organic with the plastic and non-biodegradable in Botanical Data Files, Craker draws a different affect out of his despised materials, which he acknowledges as products of hyper-consumerism and an environmentally-destructive petrochemical industry. Similarly, his use of food utensils in such works as Cascade, Blanket and Ripple is not purely a matter of the expediency of a cheap available resource. He has said he is drawn to using food utensils, not only for the tactile attractions of their immediately-recognisable and particular shapes, but to what food and the sharing of food represents. Craker mentions the role food – recipes, preparation, eating – has played in the successful meeting of his family with that of his Malaysian partner. Food both epitomises cultural difference and offers the means to transcend it through common civilised rituals.
In dot-net-dot-au Saxton and Craker are concerned with identifying the threads of commonality that link their Malaysian experiences with their Australian lives – from the mutually-sustaining human traditions of ritual, food and the decorative arts to the global stresses on a fragile, shared environment. This travelling exhibition in Malaysia and Singapore brings their work full circle, back to its source. The Malaysian garden that once haunted the Australian studio now frames the work and reveals its hybridity from a different angle.
Photography on this page by Andrew Wuttke & Gavin Hansford.
Above: Power is So Sweet Whoever Tastes it Wants More by Ahmad Fuad Osman. Acrylic on canvas / 123 x 92 cm / 2008. Ahmad Fuad Osman was Malaysian Resident at Rimbun Dahan in 2007.
Artriangle is a collective show that bring together artists from four different countries – Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore. With the purpose of increasing the appreciation of art in this region through a more open network of exchange and to further inculcate closer working ties amongst our artists, it aspires to energise a 4-way art dialogue between these countries and inadvertently, adds more excitement to the art scene in South East Asia.
Artriangle is a fund-raising exhibition. All the benefit from the sales will be channeled to the MATAHATI Art Fund. The Art Fund will be used for the benefits of our local artists and the art scene. It will go towards assisting in the welfare of those artists in need, which includes incidences involving natural disasters, accidents or health issues. The Art Fund also used as a grant for artists to initiating art projects and art activities.
Opening Speech by Angela Hijjas
Ladies and gentlemen, friends.
I was flattered to be asked to open this fund raising exhibition organized by Artriangle, even though I was not quite sure what the fund raising objectives were when Bayu first approached me. But my exposure to his art group, Matahati has always been inspiring, so I was quite sure I was going to support any initiative that they might take, and I wasn’t disappointed.
I first got to know Matahati when Ahmad Shukri was one of our resident artists in 2002, and again last year we hosted another of the Matahati “boys”, Ahmad Fuad Osman. They have always been very keen to share their experience and opportunities with other artists, and they have organized visits for young Malaysian artists to Jogjakarta and Manila, and as well reciprocal visits for Indonesian and Filipino artists; they have shared their gallery and work spaces with visiting artists, and put a huge effort into introducing them to foreign places, taking them to galleries and to meet the collectors in each country.
This is quite contrary to the self absorbed image that we usually have of artists… as it is hugely difficult to combine a creative career with looking after other people, but “the boys” have managed to do that, and to sustain it over many years. I congratulate them all for that.
This exhibition is another example of their initiative to support artists and to take a proactive position rather than waiting for someone else to do something. A similar exhibition was held last year to raise money for the victims of the earthquake in central Java, but as Bayu told me, by the time it was organized and the money raised, the worst of the crisis had passed and an opportunity lost. So that is a part of what this show is about: to create a fund of RM20,000 that is available immediately to support artists’ communities that are affected by similar disasters, or for artists in each of the participating countries who are facing severe hardship.
I’m sure you will all agree that this is greatly needed… artists frequently lack the financial security that others strive for, and it is perhaps their sense of freedom from this constraint that allows them to be creative, but it often comes at a huge personal cost to themselves and their families.
This welfare fund will be used not just for natural disasters, but to help artists cover health care expenses and emergencies. It will be topped up with the money raised by this annual show as it is used. Last year it assisted two Malaysian and two Indonesian artists who were facing personal difficulties.
Two Women Oil on Canvas by Yau Bee Ling. 79 x 62cm (2 Panels), 2008. Yau Bee Ling was Malaysian Resident Artist at Rimbun Dahan in 2005.
The second objective of today’s show is to create another fund for artists’ projects. Unfortunately in Malaysia, there are not many agencies that give money to make new work. A few years ago our Ministry allocated RM20 million for artists, but no one seems to know what happened to that… suffice it to say that there is a severe shortage of funding for art projects. The good news is that Artriangle has stepped into the gap. Last year, money from the previous exhibition was used to fund nine art projects, so at last there is somewhere for artists to get this kind of support, and I congratulate Artriangle for this great initiative.
The project funding is only for Malaysian artists, while the relief funding is for all member countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and now including Singapore. But Artriangle is also helping each of the participating countries to set up their own funding mechanisms to support artists’ projects in each country.
And that brings us to today’s show. As you can see, it has wide support from artists of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore. An important aspect of this charity show is that the artist whose work sells, does get 50% of the selling price. Too many charities ask artists to contribute their work for free… no one seems to think that this is a hard ask… the work is there sitting in the studio, why not give it away? Which businessman would think of his stock in this way? But enthusiastic charities are sometimes extremely naïve…
Just as financial reward is important, so too the work must be good; we expect the work to be fresh, something we haven’t seen before, and indeed this show is successful in that regard. The criteria for selection is that the work must be the best, and I’m sure you will find many impressive pieces here. Last year Artriangle raised $90,000 after the costs of the show were deducted, and with your support this year I’m sure it will be more.
When I came for a preview last week, I walked around, looking particularly for the artists whose work I know; there were no labels on at that stage and I couldn’t find Shukri… until I did another round and did indeed find him and his work is a completely new take on his practice to date. A show like this is an opportunity for artists to explore new ideas that might not fit into their current focus, but it could well be the direction for a later body of work, so each of the works here today could be seminal to an artists’ future development.
And at the end of 2008, Matahati goes to Jogja, taking more Malaysian artists with them, for a show hosted by Putu Sutawijaya’s new gallery. Another project this year for Artriangle is to take three artists each from Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, to Liverpool, to develop links between artists and to promote the region’s work in the UK. To get such international exposure is a great experience for the artists, but most could not do it alone, no matter how beneficial it might be to their practice.
It is these initiatives that will make a creative industry for Malaysia. I congratulate Matahati for developing and acting on so many of their good ideas.
I’m sure you will enjoy the show and encourage you to support artists, and support their ideas. We may not have the time or, more importantly, the talent to do what they do, but by being here today and buying their work, we can be an essential part of their projects. Thank you.
The brilliant green of this snake drew my attention to it as I walked through a deeply shaded area of the garden; fortunately it stayed motionless for the camera and the dogs didn’t disturb it. They are mainly tree bound but can sometimes be seen on the ground, and according to the text cited below they can be picked up with little risk of being bitten. It feeds on small birds and lizards, and has the curious habit of sticking out its tongue for a long time. About 4 to 6 young are born in a litter and they are light brown in colour. The young feed on flies and small lizards, and attain a length of about 2 m when fully grown. This species is common in Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia.
Fascinating Snakes of Southeast Asia-An Introduction by Francis Lim Leong Keng and Monty Lee Tat-Mong. 1989, Tropical Press Sdn. Bhd.
Burmese visual artist Khin Zaw Latt was resident at Rimbun Dahan in May 2008. Following his residency, he returned home where he was awarded the first prize at the Myanmar Contemporary Art Award 2008 competition, a prestigious achievement which has greatly increased the selling price of his work in Myanmar.
Khin Zaw Latt then travelled to Laputta, in the Burmese south, an area devastated by Cyclone Nargis at the beginning of May. Armed with a donation from Rimbun Dahan, he provided the inhabitants of Laputta with aid in the form of clothes, food and help building houses, as well as books and school materials for children.
The work by Khin Zaw Latt which won the Myanmar Contemporary Art Award 2008.
The call of the blue-winged pitta can be heard all over the garden, and occasionally we catch the flash of its brilliant wings in the Taman Sari. Jesmi the gardener discovered their nest in an abandoned woodpile in the garden, and watched the birds fly in and out and issue alarm calls from a perch in a nearby tree.
The nest is hidden in thick growth on a pile of wood cuttings.
The nest is dug into the mound, supported with sticks and lined with fibers.
This is the second year that this species has been spotted at Rimbun Dahan. Last year it was only detected towards the end of its stay, when it was often seen hunting for worms in the Taman Sari which were carried off to its unseen nest — see Nature Notes August 2007.
The blue-winged pitta is a shy ground-foraging bird. This impressionistic photograph, showing the brilliant blue of the wings, black back of head, orange breast, white throat and bright red vent, is the only photo so far this year of our visitors.
The nest is hidden in thick growth on a pile of wood cuttings.
The nest is dug into the mound, supported with sticks and lined with fibers.
Hijjas bin Kasturi delivered the following address to over 50 alumni of the University of Melbourne at an alumni gathering at the Royal Selangor Visitor Centre in Kuala Lumpur on 24 May 2008. The event was hosted by Mr Ian Renard, Chancellor of the University of Melbourne and also several deans of schools, including the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, Professor Tom Kvan.
Even though it is many decades since I was at the University of Melbourne, it was an important period of my life and I am honoured to have been invited to speak this evening to a new generation of Alumni.
We are amongst the privileged few to have had a university education, and not just any education… but at one of the world’s top ranking universities. Some of the alumni in Malaysia have gone on to have outstanding careers, starting with Tun Dr Ismail, who studied medicine there after World War II and who went on to become a key figure in Merdeka politics and in the first Malaysian cabinet where he was a champion of a multi-racial society. There are many other examples, in politics, the judiciary, business and government, which makes one think that perhaps their experiences in Melbourne developed their leadership qualities and equipped them to go out and make a difference.
Asian families have always placed a high priority on education, and I was the first in my family to have the opportunity to go to university. A good education is seen as a partial guarantee for the future, especially for poor families. When I finished school in 1955 there was just one university, the University of Malaya, in all of Singapore and Malaya, and of course I failed to make the grade to get in. Now there are over 20 public universities in Malaysia alone, as well as 15 private and 4 foreign universities. This rapid physical development has perhaps not been matched in quality development, but hopefully this will happen in the future so that coming generations of students will be able to have a quality education here at home.
But those of you here tonight have benefited from not just a good education, but the experience too of living overseas, being forced out of your comfort zones into a completely new environment. I have known Melbourne since the 1950s and how it has changed radically over that time, and which ever period you actually lived there would have opened new doors for you, too. More than merely attending University, Melbourne alone was as much the experience that shaped your attitudes and responses. As a boy from war torn Singapore, I was stunned by the honour system of buying a newspaper at the railway station… why no one stole the money was an early lesson for me in civil society, and I’m sure all of you experienced similar examples of culture shock that forces you to put your own way of doing things in a different perspective, and it is perspectives of change that I want to talk about tonight.
Some of you may have had scholarships to Australia, others were there thanks to your parents’ hard work and sacrifice, but however you got there, you now have an obligation to repay. We all owe someone for the privileges we have enjoyed. I personally owe to the Australian government and the people of Australia, as I was given a Colombo Plan scholarship when there was absolutely no one else offering a helping hand. Only three scholarships were given to Singapore that year, and one of them was for architecture that my boss in the Singapore Housing Trust recommended me for. Without any doubt, without that scholarship my life would have been completely different: possibly I might have ended up as the senior draftsman in the Housing Trust, as without that education my prospects were very limited. Instead, with that scholarship and education in hand, I came back to a newly independent country that had no money but lots of optimism, and by the time the building booms began in the ’70s I was in the right place with the right skills to have a career, make money, raise a family and be successful. Thanks to Australia.
To give you a little of my own history, I came back in the early ’60s, worked in Singapore for a year, before being bought out by MARA college to start a school in architecture and design. I worked there for 5 years, before establishing a professional practice of my own. Doing that “national service” was important, but it did not repay what I had gained.
So I still owe something, even at this late stage of my life, because this is a debt that can never be completely repaid… and the same applies to you. Your education hasn’t just provided you with a meal ticket, but it has equipped you as a citizen of Malaysia with a better intellectual understanding of your world, giving you the responsibility to help others and to develop the nation. I know the idea of developing the nation has become a boring refrain, especially over the last year of anniversary celebrations, but development is what we need if we are going to match what Australia has shown is possible. Our education system needs developing, so does our health care, so does public transport, just as the environment needs more consideration, and there is a slew of social issues that need to be addressed regarding social equity and justice… I suspect every field that we work in today needs the experience and vision that we have brought back from Australia, in particular from Melbourne, to truly develop Malaysia to hold its head high in the international arena.
We talk a lot about being a caring society but in reality the talk is not matched by our behavior. Malaysians, surprisingly, have been ranked amongst the rudest by an international study on tourism, and you only have to ask for help in a department store to know that this is true. We talk about Malaysia truly Asia, about our multi-culturalism and inter-racial respect, but the fact is that these things have to be re-invented by each generation. I went to school in Singapore, so of course I had lots of Chinese friends who are friends to this day, but this is not the experience of young Malays today. Something has to be done about it, and it’s not just the government that has to resolve this problem, it is we as individuals who have to make a difference.
You are among the future leaders, you need to play your part, and you will be rewarded, but it is not always a financial reward. To help others, either providing your skills and services free of charge to worthy causes, or initiating change and new ideas that will provide benefits beyond mere money, these are the important things. Take an active role in developing a civil society, you can influence policy that will have an impact. You can play a role in seeking social justice for those who don’t have the benefits you enjoy. Start thinking about something else apart from consumerism and when you are going to buy your next BMW… think instead about your global footprint and how you can change things. It must start with you, because you are the most educated and privileged in our society and it is up to you to show the way.
I was very disturbed at a recent meeting with Malaysian architecture students in Melbourne. Most of them expressed a wish to stay in Australia because of the high rewards that are offered in professional positions there compared with here, and the belief that the life style there and personal security is much better. I am appalled by such self-serving attitudes, and want to rectify the perception that Malaysia cannot offer a good life and adequate rewards. I have told my own children that whatever they do here can have a major impact, whereas if they were to stay in Australia or the UK, they will not be able to have anything like the same influence on social and business outcomes. There you have no social connections, here you do; there everything has been done already, here it is all waiting to be done… and that in itself offers a level of fulfillment that working and living overseas can never match.
The usual Malaysian response to need is to consider the family first, and yes this is important, but it must go beyond that. The patriarchs of our wealthiest families in previous decades started charities that built schools, orphanages and hospitals, purely because this country had given them the opportunity to build a good life for themselves and they wanted to repay their debt to society; but what has happened to this culture of philanthropy? Who now is starting foundations to help the poor? How are our newly rich entrepreneurs expressing their gratitude? Yes, in Australia there are tax benefits if you form a foundation, whereas here we don’t have that incentive, but that is exactly what needs fixing. someone in tax law should start lobbying for better incentives for charity, and our entrepreneurs should be made to feel obliged to get up and make a difference. We have all enjoyed a good business climate for the last few decades, we make money here in Malaysia, but we want to live in Australia because the lifestyle is better… sorry, count me out on the last item.
Don’t get me wrong; I love Melbourne and Australia, but I don’t want to live there… I am Malaysian and I must pay my debt here. Australia gave me an opportunity, but I came back here to make a difference, and Malaysia gave me that chance. What I want to stress to you is that you can make a huge difference here rather than there, and that alone shapes the quality of your life in terms of satisfaction rather than just your pay packet, because it is not just personal satisfaction at issue here, it is the fact that we all owe someone for the opportunities that were given to us and we have an obligation to reciprocate: do something to help someone else, or generate change that you believe in, just get involved, and distance yourself from those who urge you to migrate so you can enjoy the Australian life style. In the end, life is more than going to the beach and playing golf, and I assure you that you are more likely to find true happiness and fulfillment here, at home, in your own culture and place, where there is so much needing to be done and where indeed you can make a difference.
You are the ones that have to change whatever it is that you find undesirable in this country. You are among the future leaders, and you must play your part, and you will be rewarded, not just financially but in knowing that you have effected change and betterment, because at the end of your life this is what matters most: what you have done, not how much money you made or how many lifestyle holidays you have taken, but where you have made a difference, especially now, when the pace of change is beginning to accelerate. The recent elections and political developments here are opening a window where all the outstanding issues that have been ignored for too long will come to the surface, and it is your turn to re-tool society and the professions for a new age. That is what I want you to think about.
This specimen of Python reticulatus, about 3m long, was caught in the hen house, along with two dead chickens, one of which had been eaten. In an attempt to escape, the python then regurgitated the chicken it had eaten. Some time later, the python was still in the henhouse, so Rimbun Dahan staff transferred it to a gunny sack and released it outside the property near a small stream.
The python, surprised in the henhouse.
The python in a gunny sack.
In its natural habitat, the python is perfectly camouflaged.
The python bolts for freedom.
This is only one of many such encounters with pythons at Rimbun Dahan. Two years ago, a large python was found trapped in the well and helped to escape; see Nature Notes August 2006. Other reptiles observed at Rimbun Dahan include the monitor lizard and other snakes including rat snakes, paradise tree snakes and cobras.
Python reticulatus
The Reticulated python is known to be the longest of all snakes, attaining a miximum length of 15 m. Its normal prey is warm blooded animals from chickens, pigs, goats and monkeys to small deer. Prey is swallowed whole, the snake’s jaws are not rigidly joined and thus can be stretched wide to acommodate bulky food. This python is normally found in forest, especially close to water, it can also be found in urban settlements. Small pythons can easily be captured and tamed, but adults are dangerous as they can deliver vicious bites, and their powerful coils may be too much for a man to handle. The female python lays from 20 to 50 eggs, rarely up to 100. The eggs adhere together in a mass, which the femail coils around and incubates for a period of betweeen 75 and 90 days. Baby pythons look similar to adults and measure about 60 cm in length.
Reference: Fascinating Snakes of Southeast Asia, by Francis Lim Leong Keng and Monty Lee Tat Mong
Bhayi was one of the three finalists of the Shell Road to Fame Talent Search in Johannesburg in 1995. In 1999 he participated in the Community Dance Teachers Training Programme at Moving Into Dance. Bhayi was a nominee for Most Promising Male Dancer in Contemporary Style at the FNB Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg in 2001. In 2002, Bhayi won the Peak of the Stepping Stones Award. He attended the FNB Dance Umbrella Young Choreographers’ Residency in 2007 and 2008. His works ‘Free Us Now’ and ‘Muntu’ were featured in FNB Dance Umbrella in 2007. He recently attended the Young Choreographers’ Residency in Senegal in March-June 2008. He performed in Gregory Maqoma’s ‘Skeleton Dry’ at FNB Dance Umbrella in 2008.
