Malaysia-Australia Visual Artist Residency 2006
Chang Yoong Chia
Author: admin
Louise Saxton
Louise Saxton is a Melbourne-based artist who trained in painting and printmaking at RMIT and holds a Post-graduate Diploma with the Victorian College of the Arts and a Masters Degree in Fine Arts with the University of Ballarat.
Since 2000, Louise’s practice has centred on the reconstruction of detritus from the home. This has included the re-use of her own paintings, collections of everyday business envelopes and vintage wallpapers and discarded needlework.
In 2006 she was awarded a Sir Ian Potter Cultural Trust travel grant to undertake an artist residency at Rimbun Dahan in Malaysia. In 2008, her joint exhibition dot-net-dot-au (with Tim Craker) toured to Malaysia and Singapore, including works she had conceived and created at Rimbun Dahan.
Artists’ Statement from the Travelling Exhibition dot-net-dot-au
Based on a collection of small henna-hand stencils (mehndi) I found in KL in 2006, I made (the linen coloured) Hand-work first. I chose the hornbill as the negative motif inside the hand because, being a vulnerable species in Malaysia, I wanted to create a connecting point between Malaysia, my time at Rimbun Dahan (the image was found in a Malaysian Nature Society magazine on the property) and our two very different cultures. I liked it so much that I made the blue one, mirroring the hand and repeating the hornbill negative within it. The Home-Tree was made next (based on an Indian Tree of Life image that I’ve been carrying around with me for the past 15 years) and the koala was chosen as the negative motif. Being a vulnerable species here at home, the koala acts for me, as an Australian counterpart to the Malaysian hornbill. The koala also has a deep connection, within Australia, to the decorative home-based traditions of the past (“Australiana” doilies etc) and as a national icon.
The use of the negative motif inside the highly decorative outer motif becomes a metaphor of vulnerability and potential loss (of species and also traditions) which is common to both our cultures. So, the choices I’ve made here are about my trying to find connecting points between my brief encounters with South East Asia and my ongoing life in Australia.
The majority of motifs I am choosing for dot-net-dot-au were “collected” in Asia and the majority of actual embroidered materials were collected here in Australia. These, largely Western motifs (dotted throughout with Asian inspired imagery) could be seen to represent colonisation, but hopefully, they can also create another link between cultures – that of the home and the garden.
In-filled with hundreds of, individually extracted, embroidered motifs, the Hand-work pieces create, because the palms are opened outwards, a gesture of welcome and offering (which links them to the original henna (mehndi) hands used for Indian weddings and other celebrations). In both Hand-works and Home-Tree there is also a sense of protection, by holding the vulnerable, absent image within their palm or branches. There is perhaps also, the possibility of loss and at the same time, the potential for ‘salvage’.
The other image I have chosen to work with is the Buddha head, also brought home with me from Malaysia as a simple pencil line-drawing. Traced from a book I found in my guest room at Rimbun Dahan, the original sculpture housed in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, is a 7th Century Cambodian Buddha. Imitations of these ancient sculptures are found here in Australia, one being spotted recently sitting outside my local garden shop. The image represents my own fascination with the incredible beauty of Eastern arts traditions, but also the difficult arena of the displacement of traditions, of Colonisation and the plundering of other cultures. At the same time, there seems to exist in the image, an enduring sense of quiet, humility and peace, which allows the image to somehow transcend its appropriation – or does it? The Buddha’s cast-down eyes, in my re-appropriation, are made of pearl-drop lace, a feather and a blue flower. His ear and cheek are embellished with tiny blue birds and a miniature Chinese fishing boat, a delicate butterfly caresses his neck and in his hair knots, (made from over 100 circular crochet and embroidered motifs) ‘nest’ two running-stitched swallows. These embellishments on an image once cast in bronze, and now drawn by me in delicate reclaimed lace, could point to the Buddhist idea of transience? However, it also makes me feel uncomfortable – is it still a “stolen” image? This also causes me to wonder, about the nature of travel, of my residency and my return to Malaysia and Singapore to exhibit this year – while we try to grasp something of the wisdom and experience of other traditions, can we ever really hold on to it, or make it our own?
Louise Saxton
March 2008
Helen Bodycomb
Helen Bodycomb of Castlemaine, Australia, had a residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2006. She returned to Malaysia in 2009 with three other mosaic artists to work on the collaborative artwork ‘The Shyness of Trees’ at Hotel Penaga.
Bio
Helen Bodycomb moved to the Castlemaine area in late 2007 from Melbourne, where she had lived on and off for almost 30 years. Born in Adelaide and raised as a young child in Elizabeth (SA), she went to Uni High and later – to art school – in Melbourne. She completed a BA in Fine Art (majoring in Painting) at Victoria College, Prahran and then a Post-Graduate Diploma at Monash Uni. See http://www.helenbodycomb.com/
March 2006 — Stink Horn Fungues
BY ANGELA HIJJAS
The last month has been stormy at Rimbun Dahan, with rain almost every day.
This Stink Horn fungus was found mid March under a clump of palms. A
saprophytic (parasitic) fungus, it emits an odour that attracts flies that
visit the messy decaying flesh, subsequently helping to disperse the spores.
Order: Pallales
Family: Pallaceae
Genus: Dictyophora (Stink Horn fungi)
(‘A Guide to Tropical Fungi’, Dr. Tan Teck Hoon, Singapore Science Centre,
1990.)
Could Forests Worsen Global Warming?
Published in The Sunday Star, 15 January 2006
The recent research findings that forests generate methane, a gas responsible for global warming, should not really surprise us, as it highlights how little we understand how ecosystems work. But loggers take note: this is no reason to cut more forest or to avoid our responsibility to rehabilitate damaged forests.
The chemical forces at work within a forest ecosystem have bigger consequences than just locking up carbon or emitting methane. We must take stock of the free and vastly valuable ecological services that forests provide us before we commit yet more damage that may have unforeseen consequences. As a species, we have already seriously mutilated our own ecosystem, to the extent that there is a real possibility that civilization as we know it may cease to exist within the next century. We know that forests and oceans generate the oxygen, water and food we depend on for our very survival, but we extract so much from both for our short term gains and fail to appreciate that these systems can only be taxed so far before they quickly spiral into irreversible unproductivity.
We must therefore apply the cautionary principle: don’t cut forests because one study shows that they generate greenhouse gases, as they are incalculably valuable for other reasons that we have not bothered to quantify. Healthy forests ensure clean water supplies and safe habitats for the myriad of species that make up these unique chemical and biological systems. The plants in Malaysia’s, the oldest, forests in the world are yet to be studied in detail but they surely harbour an entire pharmacopoeia of cures for all man’s ills and needs.
Forests have supported mankind for millennia, and as long as there are healthy forests I believe there will be healthy people.
I appeal to the Prime Minister to realize the impressive National Physical Plan prepared by the Federal Government, by supporting the States financially so that they can protect our forests rather than logging them for short term gain. I believe we face a critical watershed right now: if our forests are allowed to be devastated for the sake of an insatiable world timber market, then the ecology of our tropical paradise may well collapse.
I for one would willingly pay an environmental tax to keep our forests intact.
Angela Hijjas
Member, Malaysian Nature Society
January 2006 — Rambutans Attract Monkeys
BY ANGELA HIJJAS
Greetings to all for Christmas and the New Year. Our rambutan trees are in fruit and are just the right colour for the season. We have had plenty monkeys around to enjoy the fruit, and interestingly, if not surprising, is the fact that the long tailed macaques eat the fruit weeks before it is ripe, therefore securing an evolutionary advantage over humans who must wait, and most likely miss out. But apparently rambutans are adapted to this predation as well, as I noticed as I weeded lots of quite mature seedlings this morning: they obviously germinate from immature fruit. The fruit is green, but the seed is viable.
As well as the ubiquitous macaques, we have what I thought is the Banded Langur. However I’m not clear on the species differentiation, as this one was photographed on 17th December fits the description of the Dusky Langur. It could be that we have both species visiting occasionally.
Dusky Langur, Trachypithecus obscurus, TL 110 – 115 cm.
Most individuals are dark grey, with paler grey on hindlegs and crown and a pale grey or whitish belly patch, sharply demarcated from darker back. The bare skin on the face is dark grey with bold white interrupted rings around the eyes and a white patch over the mouth. Newborn young are bright golden-yellow, like other Trachypethecus. Call is a loud, double snort or grunt, rendered as ‘chengkong’ in Malay. Occurs in a wide range of habitats from montane to coastal forests including some offshore islands. Feed mainly on leaves, nuts and fruits. In peninsular Malaysia, tends to feed higher and in larger trees than Banded langur, Presbytis femoralis, when both species occur together. Found in troops of about 15 individuals with a single male. Gives birth to a single young after a gestation period of about five months. Range includes southern Myanmar and Thailand, peninsular Malaysia and some adjacent islands.
Photographic Guide to Mammals of South-East Asia, by Charles M. Francis
Suzanne Ingleton
Suzanne Ingleton has been at the forefront of political cabaret and stand-up comedy since the mid-seventies, touring widely in Australia and overseas, writing and producing for television and community arts projects. During this residency Ingleton completed a play dealing with the Malayan Emergency of the fifties, Flower of Malaya, and visited local communities in Kelantan to undertake field study and research into shamanism and performance which will feed into her book Being There in Spirit.
Jayne Fenton Keane
In 2005, Australian poet Jayne Fenton-Keane spent an Asialink residency in India, Singapore, and at Rimbun Dahan in Malaysia.
Jayne Fenton-Keane is a poet, new media artist and composer who takes poetry to different spaces with her poetry-sound fusions, installations and performances. The author of three poetry books, Torn, Ophelia’s Codpiece and The Transparent Lung, Keane is an award winner in several genres, is completing a doctorate on embodiment and spatial poetics, and the founding Director of National Poetry Week. During her residency Keane explored pilgrimage as a creative method for inviting new knowledge into her writing. Activities included a residency at Rimbun Dahan in Malaysia, a residency at the Singapore Poetry Festival and appearances with the CGH Earth Chain in India.
October 2005 — Jungle Fowl
BY ANGELA HIJJAS
Until the 18th September, the predominant dry, hazy weather prevailed at Rimbun Dahan. Since the coming of the Equinox on about the 22nd September, we have had 309 mm rain in the last 35 days and clear blue skies are once more the norm. The Equinox, when the sun is directly above the Equator, usually brings unsettled weather that could have contributed to the prevalence of the American hurricanes in the last month.
In the last week of October, with the rainy season well under way, we decided to lop branches in the orchard, to give more light to smaller trees and thus encourage them to grow taller. As we dragged branches to a heap, a jungle fowl flew off from under our feet, revealing this nest with five eggs. We immediately moved away, except for a quick photograph, but didn’t see her return to the nest.
The species name is Gallus gallus, the evolutionary ancestor of all domestic breeds of chicken. Unmistakable with long, slender body. The male has bare red facial skin, comb and lappets below throat distinctive. Bright yellow hackles cover neck, breast and upper back; lower back maroon contrasting with reddish orange rump; secondaries largely chestnut; primates blackish. The female crown, head and neck reddish chestnut with dark brown and buff streaks on neck; upperparts dark olive brown, breast chestnut brown merging into olive brown belly; bare facial skin and superficial comb red. Both sexes have dark greyish legs and distinctive white ear patches. Readily intra-breeds with domestic chickens (that are the same species) but progeny usually lack these last characteristics. domestic varieties generally have more prominent combs and lappets. Strong flyers over short distances.
Nadiah Bamadhaj
Nadiah Bamadhaj was in residence at Rimbun Dahan in 2005 alongside her spouse Arie Dyanto. A number of Nadiah’s works are in the Permanent Collection at Rimbun Dahan. Angela Hijjas also opened the exhibition of her work, ‘1965 Rebuilding its Monuments’, at Galeri Petronas in 2001.
Bio
Nadiah Bamadhaj (b. 1968, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia) was initially trained as a sculptor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand but now produces drawings, sculptures, installations and digital images. She has worked in nongovernmental organizations, lectured in art, and has written on both Malaysia and Indonesia. In 2000, she began her fulltime art-practice and was awarded the Nippon Foundation’s Asian Public Intellectual Fellowship in 2002, electing to spend her fellowship period in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where she currently lives with her husband and son. Her artwork continues to focus on the social intricacies of Yogyakarta’s society, using myth, architecture, and dwelling to articulate her observations.
Exhibition opening remarks by Angela Hijjas
1965: Rebuilding its Monuments
An Installation of Drawings by Nadiah Bamadhaj
I am honoured to be invited to open this outstanding exhibition in Galeri Petronas. I have been intrigued by watching Nadiah weave paper into maps and sculpt forms out of plaster of Paris, but I did not have a clear understanding of the cohesion of the exhibition until I saw the final display of the scale and content of her intentions.
The title Nadiah chose, 1965 Rebuilding its Monuments, unites all the disparate elements into a cohesive creation. I suspect that all of us have a fragmented understanding, at best, of the events in 1965, but this exhibition brings them all together. The exhibition highlights the separate events of the overthrow of Sukarno by Suharto, the subsequent slaughter of suspected Communists in Java and Bali, the split between Malaysia and Singapore, and the foreign construct of the domino theory that overshadowed the entire region. The year 1965 represented a major turning point in the history and culture of this region, and Nadiah’s exhibition forces us to realise not only that no event occurs in isolation, but also that a new marker or monument of 1965 is required.
I would like to note some of my impressions from viewing the exhibition.
The first segment represents the arsenal of Communism in Indonesia, and the wave of revolution and violence from Jakarta which topples the original monument to independence from colonisation. The catastrophe of crisis is brilliantly illustrated by the torn hole of society’s woven fabric, frayed and broken around a black abyss, and the sheer size of the archipelago as it stretches beyond the horizons, with only violence for a compass.
The next segment commemorates the subsequent bloodletting. Half a million people were slaughtered by militant Muslims in the backlash against Communism, while the Indonesian military stood by. In Nadiah’s work, the sparseness of the remaining landscape is haunted by the lack of figures, even the tomb stones are massed together in an unfamiliar and unacceptable way. A single monolithic stone is felled in grief, while Arabic numerals spiral out of control.
The quieter worlds of Malaysia and Singapore were not immune to the upheavals of that year. The declared objectives of ‘peace, tolerance and stability’ were undermined by communal insecurities. In the next sector of the exhibition we see the postcolonial network coming apart in our own country, as Singapore was forced out to find its own way. The emergence of the so-called Malay Ultras effectively destroyed the marriage, and we see the procession of the hantaran (gifts in a traditional Malay wedding) tumble into the crevasse.
The final sector of the exhibition looks at how the rest of the world perceived the region at this time, a perception dominated by the so-called domino theory. Escalating tensions in the region between Communism and the American Way were an unspoken omnipresence in Southeast Asia. Now it is apparent that many events at the time were engineered by the centres of the Cold War. In Nadiah’s work, the tiny local protagonists are surrounded by the interests of these larger powers, disguised in the traditional regalia of the shadow play. The larger powers, like the shadow puppeteers, were supposedly magnanimous, but ignored the needs of Southeast Asia for the sake of their own agendas.
The exhibition comes full circle, returning to the arsenal of Communism and the violence between Right and Left, the recent horrors, and the reactions of neighbouring countries and the international community. After several revolutions of the exhibition, one has an impression of the drama and complexity of those times and of how each event fuelled and influenced the others. Traditional history tends to itemize events on a time scale and from a single point of view, but experiencing the power of these individual events and realizing how they influence each other is the great message of this exhibition.
There is also another imperative in this show: the need to commemorate by reinventing our monuments.
After the First World War between 1914 and 18, monuments sprang up all over England propounding ‘For God, King and Country’, glorifying the dead while while never questioning the responsibility of the existing power structure. But the process of modernization unleashed by the war left people feeling betrayed by the same God, King and Country. The tone of later monuments changed to ‘Never Again’ and ‘Lest We Forget’, which provide none of the comfort of glorious death but reassert the absolute imperative to remember.
The monument to the Vietnam War in the United States is a memorial that was very long in coming. It commemorates a lost war with a discredited cause. It honours individual soldiers who gave their lives, but it still only tells one side of the story. One day I hope there will be a parallel monument to the other sides. Any monument, like the Vietnam War Memorial, reminds us of the imperfections of history and the necessity for constant revision. Periodically we need to recast our monuments in a manner that relates to the changes we have experienced since, because any monument to a major event also marks the beginning of a new era that was built on the past.
Often damage is caused not just by the commemorated events, but by the monuments that remain to perpetuate the old myths. There is no predominantly right way to remember and memories do change over time. Rather than accepting the platitudes of existing monuments and the history books, this exhibition marks a new interpretation of an important period in the history of Southeast Asia, calling us to build again on our new understanding.
Quite apart from the cultural importance of Nadiah’s exhibition, the work is remarkable in Malaysia because it deals not only with visual impact, but with underlying ideas. Betrayed by history as written in books, Nadiah communicates her strong intellectual ideas in a different medium. Not only has she accomplished the presentation of ideas as an art form, but she has built a new monument to remembrance, cast in the idiom of our own time but in memory of all that has gone before.
Angela Hijjas
12 April, 2001