Author: admin

Proposal to Transform Paya Indah Into Illegally-traded Protected Species Sanctuary

admin Letters to the Editor
Published in The Star, 1 March 2005

Dear Sir,

I was concerned by the articles in the Star of 22nd February about the
captive breeding programme operated in Janda Baik without legitimate
authorization. It seems apparent that this particular breeder has a special
relationship with someone in Perhilitan, and the fact that it can’t be
explained in an acceptable manner is extremely worrying. The trade in and
ownership of protected species is a crucial test of Malaysia’s commitment to
the preservation of biodiversity, and I strongly support the initiative of
the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment in questioning the
legality of this breeder.

The problem of the trade in protected species is not easily solved. It is
the third largest illegal international trade after drugs and weapons, and
government officers need much support if they are to contain it. It is a
sophisticated business that readily resorts to violence.

The recent closure of the Paya Indah Wetlands Sanctuary, however, might
offer a unique opportunity to improve the fate of illegally traded animals.
At present, I believe most animals that are recovered from the trade by
Perhilitan are destroyed, as Perhilitan does not have a sanctuary that it
can use as a transit point to stabilize these animals before they are
returned to the wild or to the countries where they were captured. (Some of
the more valuable species are placed in the Melaka Zoo, which is already
overcrowded.)

I would suggest that Paya Indah be turned into such a sanctuary. It could
be a vital showcase for eco-tourism, where some animals could be on display
and an educational programme would inform the public about our fauna, as
well as demonstrating Malaysia’s commitment to the preservation and
protection of its biodiversity.

I believe Paya Indah failed as it didn’t have a clear mission statement and
the concept of eco-tourism was poorly understood. By converting it into a
working institution with a definite conservation role that would engage the
public and tourists alike, it could be a unique destination for eco-tourism,
conservation and volunteerism.

Currently, many of our forests are developing the ’empty forest syndrome’,
where even if the forest is protected, the animals are no longer there. The
long term survival of the forest depends on the animals to pollinate
flowers, disperse seeds and ensure their germination. By reinforcing the
role of Perhilitan by providing the resources they need there is a chance
that we can reverse this trend and put some of the animals back where they
belong.

I do hope that the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment will
consider this suggestion.

Yours sincerely,

Angela Hijjas
Chairman, Selangor Branch
Malaysian Nature Society

February 2005 — Garden in Hot Dry Weather

admin Nature Notes
February 2005 — Garden in Hot Dry Weather

BY ANGELA HIJJAS

For the first half of February, the weather seemed unusually hot, dry and hazy. Temperatures in KL reached as high as 38C. In the middle of the month the weather broke with windy storms in the late afternoons and night. This morning I walked around the garden looking at broken branches and just relishing the damp again, when I noticed fallen seeds, since identified as Dryobalanops aromatica, known in Malay as kapor. These canopy trees were planted about 12 years ago, and I am delighted to find that they are fruiting so soon, although I have lost several of the original row planted along the length of the front fence to white ants. Ironically, kapor has a strong camphor frangrance and is preferred for making storage boxes that deter insect attack, but the tree itself seems particularly vulnerable. The fruits have five wings that enable the heavy seed to resist falling straight to the ground under the shade of the parent tree. As happened last night, they were dislodged from the tree by the wind and carried at least several meters, although I am unsure which tree produced the fruit. The fruit commences spinning like a helicopter about 1 meter into the drop, and then falls more slowly, carried away by the wind.

The Grammatophyllum speciosa is flowering in its pot in full sun. This is the world’s largest orchid plant, seen in high canopy positions in the forest. The flowers are yellow and brown, so not outstandingly colourful, but a total of 20 infloresences (stalks) makes up for any deficiency. Seed pods are forming, so hopefully the wind will deliver them eventually to new sites for them to colonize naturally. This plant has flowered once before over the 10 years it has been cultivated, but never so prolifically.

The new planting at the back near the tennis court is settling in, but the previous planting done about two years ago is really starting to go ahead. I have planted three Gondstylus bancanus, known in Malay as ramin melawis, in a low-lying position, and they are now about 5m tall. Native to peatswamps from Perak to west Johor, and in seasonal swamps in Selangor, southeast Sumatra, and Borneo, ramin timber is the main variety that has been illegally logged in Sumatra over recent years and exported through Malaysian ports, although there is now some effort to contain this trade.

Victoria Cattoni

admin Asialink, Resident Artist , , ,
Victoria Cattoni

tree – Victoria Cattoni (in collaboration with Masnoramli Mahmud).

Victoria Cattoni spent an Asialink residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2005. She is a visual artist working in the mediums of video, installation and multimedia. Cattoni’s practice during the residency focused on dress and its cultural interpretations. The first half of the residency took place at Rimbun Dahan and culminated in the presentation of a collaborative video work TREE, at Art for Nature 2005.

TREE is a montage of image, sound, text and performance structured around a simple question: ‘if you were a tree, what kind would you be?’ The video acts as an imaginative trigger, inviting the viewer to identify with a tree that becomes a metaphor for human existence, an embodiment of ourselves in relation to others.

During this time her work was also screened at the not that balai festival and she presented a public lecture at Galeri Petronas. In the second half of her residency Cattoni completed works for a growing list of exhibition commitments in Malaysia and Indonesia. Since completing the residency Cattoni has participated in the Bali Biennale 2005 with a digital media work titled White Onion:Bali Bride and exhibited new work entitled Kedai Kebaya.

Crisis in Captive Breeding for Sumatran Rhinos

admin Letters to the Editor

The recent deaths of all five captive Sumatran rhinoceroses at the Sungai Dusun Sumatran Rhinoceros Conservation Centre in Selangor is yet another step towards extinction for this unfortunate species.   Despite the successful breeding of other endangered species in captivity, it is unlikely that the entire process can be achieved for the rhino.  The objective of captive breeding must always be to release the young into the wild and to repopulate their original habitat.  No species can be artificially sustained in pens forever.

Breeding in captivity is the first problem and this is elusive enough, but the subsequent problem is just as difficult: where is the habitat into which the young are to be released? Malaysia is losing more and more lowland forest every year and with fragmentation and depletion of species diversity as forest reserves are logged, no matter how selectively, there is not enough habitat to sustain wild breeding populations.

To ensure sufficient genetic diversity of any species, biologists believe there must be at least five separate breeding populations of any plant or animal.  We cannot save an animal if there is only one breeding pair as eventually inbreeding saps vitality.

Extinction is not necessarily an easily identified point in time for any species.   Some idealists believe that merely mapping DNA will be enough for future generations to recreate a lost species and that even if all specimens are dead there is a chance to clone it later.  This might produce a zoo exhibit, but it has nothing to do with protecting biodiversity for the long term.

Unfortunately, if an animal no longer has a place in the world, apart from in zoos, genetic banks and breeding centres, then its path to extinction is pretty well determined.  Captive animals are never as vigorous as in the wild and they are easy prey to Sungai Dusun type events. 

This will be the fate of many species in the coming decades as long as we believe that we can have it all.  Unfortunately, we can’t have it all and we must plan now if we are going to really protect our biodiversity rather than just give lip service.  Taman Negara alone is not enough to protect our biological heritage, we need more parks in fragile areas that must be sacrosanct, and a proper network of links between protected areas needs to be planned and enforced so that isolated populations of a species can interbreed naturally.

If they have to depend on man for their breeding, without enough space in the wild, they are doomed;  and so are we.  Our selfishness as a species has made us extraordinarily successful, but we will so easily become victims of that success if we cannot see that the destruction of our shared, broader habitat for short term benefit is not good for our long term survival.  Losing the rhinoceros, tiger, orang hutan and elephant, and the forest ecosystems they have occupied for millennia, will impoverish our own habitat and once that impoverishment spreads to other systems it will impact on us in serious ways.

Angela Hijjas
Chairman, Selangor Branch
Malaysian Nature Society.

January 2005 — Fighting Monitors

admin Nature Notes
January 2005 — Fighting Monitors

BY BILQIS HIJJAS

  • Two water monitors (Varanus salvator) or biawak were witnessed mating in the reflective pool in the late afternoon on 10 January 2005. The pair were causing quite a ruckus, thrashing and rolling in the water, and were not at all disturbed by the barking dogs, or my mother and I loudly discussing their progress from close by. The smaller monitor was holding the muzzle of the larger one in its jaws — there was some blood evident, and at some points it wasn’t clear whether they were mating or fighting (see image left). The scene lasted for over an hour. There are a lot of biawak at Rimbun Dahan; although the dogs keep some check on the population, they can often be seen swimming lazily across the ponds and terrorising the troupes of monkeys. More information on the water monitor. 

  • There have been several sightings of wild boar (Sus scrofa) or babi hutan in the back garden — they come through a gap in the fence to root among the leaf litter in the early morning. Unfortunately gunshots have also been heard close by, resulting in one very dramatic incident. One morning, Jasri, the son of Jesmi, one of the gardeners, opened the front door of their house to see a babi hutan, with its muzzle and one leg covered in blood, staring at him through the doorway. Jasri promptly slammed the door shut, and Jesmi and Roslan (the other gardener) gave chase, but the animal disappeared through the fence. We have complained to the local police station about the danger of shooting in kampung areas and of having injured wild boar running about, but apparently we have no case.

Choy Chun Wei

admin Resident Artist, Yearlong Visual Arts Residency , , , , ,

Malaysian Resident Artist 2005

Choy Chun Wei is enjoying his time playing the “collector” and the “engineer” in Rimbun Dahan. Look around and you will find his workspace populated by jars and tubes of paint in different degrees of exhaustion, while piles of unidentifiable junk and a plethora of paraphernalia lay scattered across the floor. When I visited his studio recently, he tells me “I still return to the city to collect all this junk”. The process of collecting and constructing, or building, forms the root of Chun Wei’s artistic approach. Whether in the form of photographs, paint, ink, or other found materials, the potential in each of the artist’s materials will be stretched out, deconstructed, reconstructed and layered to present unique views of life within an urbanscape. Those familiar with Chun Wei’s body of work will recall his early photo-collage series such as Citadel and Link House from 2001. They were the result of a morning ritual whereby the artist would walk with his camera to work, photographing random exteriors of homes in Bandar Utama to relieve the monotony of this routine. The collection of photographs captured from these walks later grew into a series of musings about home within our fragmented urban environment seen through the eye of an outsider.

In his latest series, Construction Site, paint and found materials have replaced photographs to become the building blocks in the artist’s work. He tells me that every single paint mark and object is treated as an individual units, “like Lego blocks”, built layer upon layer, one over the other. Each work begins with the overlaying of paint onto the surface ground in broad sweeps. “I rarely know what is going to happen during the early stages so I just let it happen.” Once these initial sweeps have been established, ‘units’ of paint and materials are incorporated into and over the initial foundation through the use of a diverse range of tools – hands included – as well as other media to create a spectrum of marks and textures. It is clear, through this new body of work, that the artist has discovered a more instinctive and energetic process in creating image and texture; there is an obvious sense of play, as well as a newfound confidence in distilling the images to near abstraction.

The urban landscape and mapping continue to figure prominently in Chun Wei’s work. The ritual of returning to the city to collect the artist’s ‘junk’ bears poetic resonance in the artist’s dedication to his subject matter. While his mapping process may have begun within the immediate confines of Bandar Utama, his concerns have since extended into farther reaches, taking on a wider worldview beyond geography and tangible matter. Perhaps this development has been prompted by changes in the artist’s personal life. Marriage and moving out to a new home has shifted his outlook on life; he is no longer the wandering outsider looking in, but rather someone who has found hearth and home.

Construction Site begins with The Construction of Metaphysical Site I. While the spatial arrangement in this painting may appear conventional to the eye, it is nonetheless striking in its composition and form. It recalls the imaginary maps many of us would have drawn during childhood. Colours and simple geometric shapes are employed to demarcate different territories and densities while incidental marks may imply roads, railway tracks or borders. The Construction of Metaphysical Site II suggests a fantastical yet apocalyptic cityscape alluding to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Vertical forms, or monoliths, grow from opposite directions; they weave in and out of the dramatic foliage, moving towards each other, drawing closer to convergence.

Subsequent works such as The Changing Mindscape, Intimate Dwelling Site and Configuration l, demonstrate to the viewers that the spatial configuration in each painting has grown progressively tighter and denser through the course of development. The drama and density of this series culminates in the epic Big Dwelling Site. Impressive and intense, the painting’s expanse and tight overlapping layers of paint and found materials overwhelm the senses. The eye picks out the random details and unexpected textures as it roves through this dense forest of marks and colours; you will find bits of corrugated board here, unidentifiable slices of plastic and dried materials there, a shaved off bar code somewhere above. The painting possesses a cubistic resonance as the artist breaks up the picture plane to create multiple perspectives. They also remind us of Mondrian’s earlier paintings where grid and lines form the artist’s primary motives. Spaces move in and out, shifting from two-dimensional to three-dimensional planes, taking our eye on a manic ride through tightly wound nooks and crannies, before launching into exhausting claustrophobic areas that slowly ease off towards the edges.

Configuration lll (Breathing Space), one of the later pieces, sees the artist side-stepping his usual media employed in this series. It is perhaps the most carefree piece in this body of work, and as the title suggests, this painting provides a beguiling reprieve from the intense concentration of heavy impasto marks and texture. Here, the brush takes over from the palette knife to create a delicate yet intricate web of lines. They float evocatively in space, layered in muted neutral shades, amidst collaged drawings of furniture culled from the pages of an IKEA catalogue. The minimal treatment draws attention to the construction of the image, allowing the visual narrative and emotional content to exude its understated charm.

Adeline Ooi
December 2005, KL

Garden Objects

This is part of a series exhibited in Art for Nature 2005 that delves into the formation of mental maps to explore human dwellings within the landscape. The garden is a place for tactile and sensory engagement, where one may expand sensibility within space. Click on the thumbnails above to view larger images.

Biodata

Choy Chun Wei (b. 1973) is a graduate and full scholarship holder from the faculty of Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, majoring in Illustration. He has been actively painting and exhibiting in a number of exhibitions in Kuala Lumpur and won an Honourable Mention at the Philip Morris Malaysia/ASEAN Art Awards in 2003. In 2004, Chun Wei received the Juror’s Choice Award (2D) at the Malaysian Young Contemporaries Exhibition organized by National Art Gallery. He became the artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan Artist in Residence Programme in 2005.

See more of Chun Wei’s work on his blog website http://cwconstructionsite.blogspot.com/

No Support for Artists in Malaysia

admin Exhibitions Elsewhere

Dear Editor,

The cancellation of DBKL’s permits to the Instant Café Theatre shows a bureaucracy overstepping itself.  From a single complaint they have taken the initiative to close down a company that has given so much pleasure and food for thought to thousands of Malaysians.  It seems that DBKL missed the point, and they may well find themselves the brunt of future satire from ICT, as I cannot accept that this ban can be sustained.

Unfortunately, the government, from DBKL to Cabinet, only pays lip service to the importance of the arts in enriching lives or increasing the tourist dollar, let alone bolstering the creativity of a nation.  But, hey, even in Singapore now it’s OK to dance on tables and chew gum… because a society that is too straight laced and incapable of creativity is on a slippery slope.

Rather than banning creative people, DBKL should be supporting them by providing good venues, helping to market and promote their products and providing grants so that artists and performers can continue to enrich our lives and dull the irritations that city living generates.   Has DBKL done anything to help Actors Studio continue operating since the flood last month or are they expected to go it alone?

Can we only have foreign musicians at the Petronas Philharmonic being creative and supported by government taxpayer’s money?  Why, for heaven’s sake, can’t we also help our own?  There are no government grants for artists or performers that I know of.  A few prizes are reserved for national treasure type people who have struggled a lifetime to fulfill their talent, but precious little comes the way of young artists struggling to develop their art practices, musical skills or theatrical talent.

A recent press article praised a pair of talented East Malaysian twins who had been given grants to further their studies in cello at a prestigious college in Europe, but the grants came from the University of Adelaide in Australia.  When Malaysia gives a grant to an Australian artist to study in Indonesia I will be convinced that our policies to promote creativity have come of age.

But for now, artists get no support, just harassment.  This has to change.


Angela Hijjas
Rimbun Dahan Artists’ Residency Programme

Art for Nature 2004: Paradise Lost

admin Art for Nature, Visual Arts
Art for Nature 2004: Paradise Lost

para_lostfoundYOURS TO CHOOSE – it’s in your heart

This year’s exhibition deals with personal definitions of paradise and explores our roles in creating or destroying these ideal places. Malaysian reefs and rainforests resemble descriptions of paradise on earth and yet we continue to destroy them at an astonishing rate. How do concepts of paradise guide our actions? Can they lift us outside our immediate concerns? Can we save our paradise?

Art for Nature will be open to the public from
September 25th – October 10th 2004
at Rimbun Dahan, 10am – 6pm

The word paradise conjures up a range of image. We tend to think of paradise as a place; beautiful, idyllic and free of suffering. Often tropical beaches and rainforests are described as paradise on earth. Pleasure may or may not be included but paradise always includes settings of natural wonder.

Paradise also carries a strong spiritual association. The Garden of Eden that man inhibited before the realization of Original Sin is often described as being like paradise. Heaven is also described as Paradise.

Islam, Christianity and some forms of Mahayana Buddhism incorporate concepts of paradise as reward for man’s good works on earth. In this way, paradise exists on an alternative/higher level of reality and is reachable through man’s choices. This dimension of will and effort is an important consideration. Paradise is both a spiritual goal and a personal goal. We strive to use action to reach an invisible ideal.

Yet the concept of paradise is not defined by religion but holds a universal appeal. Most powerfully, the concept of paradise is a metaphor for a state of being, free form guilt, suffering and pain. Unlike ecstasy or bliss, paradise does not carry the associations of enjoying pleasure but rather is a happy state that we can attain and earn.

Some dimensions explored by the contributing artists include personal definitions or paradise, spiritual or secular; paradise as an environ or paradise as an absolute state of being; is paradise a cultural or personally defined state or place?; does it exist physically or mentally? Note that one can be in paradise and not recognise it until it is destroyed or withdrawn.

This year’s theme takes its inspiration from the epic poem by John Milton, Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained. For those who may be interested in Milton’s Paradise Lost, the poem provides rich imagery. It was written just after the time of Shakespeare and finished in 1667. The book is a way into the theme and does not have to be involved in your deliberations.

In Paradise Lost, Satan leads a rebellion against God and is thrown out of Heaven with all the heavenly beings who sided with him. To decide on their course of action, he opens the debate to all his followers to decide what to do next. They decide on exploring the new world of man. Earth is the only dimension that has a gate to heaven and so is the only way possible to approach heaven. Prophecy states that God will create a new world: Earth. Chief amongst his world is man.

God gave man the gift of free will, the choices of good or evil are up to him. The rebellious angels decide to tempt man instead of attacking heaven directly. Created as the first man and woman, Adam and Eve live in blissful ignorance in the Garden of Eden. God’s only requirement is that they do not eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

The poem continues to describe Satan’s successful persuasion of Eve to taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. After Eve and then Adam eat of the fruit, they are cast out of Eden and doomed to make their way with life on earth.

— Laura Fan, curator

curator

Laura Fan

contributing artists

Ahmad Fuad Othman
Ahmad Shukri Mohamed
Ahmad Zakii Anwar
Bayu Utomo Radjikin
Bibi Chew
Chong Siew Ying
Choy Chun Wei
Chuah Chong Yong
Eric Chan Chee Seng
Fariza Adline
Jalaini Abu Hassan
Malcolm Utley
Nadiah Bamadhaj
Noor Mahnun Mohamed
Nur Hanim bt Mohamed
Khairuddin
Raja Shahriman
Saiful Razman
Sharmiza Abu Hassan
Shooshie Sulaiman
Tara Sosrowardoyo
Terry Law
the clickproject
Umibaizurah Mahir

Protecting the environment strengthens our culture

admin Letters to the Editor

Dear Sir,

Regarding the article in April 22nd’s edition of the NST, I would like to express similar concerns about the recent poaching incidents in the Endau Park, Johor.

If we cannot protect our tigers, elephants and rhinoceros in designated reserves, then there is little reason to be optimistic that they will survive into the next century. The numbers of tigers and rhinos, particularly, without counting plants, birds and other animals, has fallen precipitously over the last twenty years.

I welcome the initiative of the Prime Minister to reorganize the federal ministries so that forests are no longer included in Primary Industries; this is a major shift in thinking about our natural assets. Without protecting our forests we will not only lose the animals within them but also the incredibly valuable natural services that forests generate: more and better fresh water, the absorption and retention of carbon dioxide and other green house gasses, and not least the retention of the natural landscape that has shaped the region’s culture for millennia.

What is Malay culture without the kampong and the forest? It provided the only livelihood before the developed era, shaping thinking and ways of life. Now that we have left the kampongs and forests with scarcely a backward glance, we are in danger of losing our sense of place and who we are in the face of globalization. It is this sense of place, engendered in the forests and our natural landscapes, that will shape a new culture for the future.

In so many other ways Malaysians are divided from each other, be it by language, religion or food, but our feelings of ‘Malaysianness’ inevitably come down to the special characteristics of the place that we love and belong to. Looking at the remarkable diversity of Malaysia’s cultural heritage, it is the landscape alone that we truly share with each other. The beaches, the rivers, forests and mountains, give us all a profound sense of place and pride. Malay place names have always followed the predominant physical or botanical features that made the place special, be it Sungai Buloh or Kuala Lumpur. This importance of place is part of our culture, and we stand to lose it if we fail to protect those features of our natural heritage that have sustained us in the past.

I appeal to the government, in particular to the Prime Minister, to protect our landscape, protect our forests and all that is within them, give some real teeth to the enforcement of forest and marine protection. Otherwise, our descendants will be left with a blighted landscape and a blighted culture.

Angela Hijjas

Opening of Khalil Ibrahim Solo Exhibition at Galeri Petronas

admin Exhibitions Elsewhere

Hijjas Kasturi was invited to give the opening address for the exhibition Khalil Ibrahim: “A Continued Dialogue” at Gallery Petrons, KLCC Kuala Lumpur, until 20 June 2004.

Opening Speech by Hijjas Kasturi

Tuan Zainal Abidin, director of Gallery Petronas, Khalil Ibrahim and Judith,  Shireen Naziree, curator of this show, guests and friends:  I was delighted to be invited by Khalil to open this exhibition.  As a peer of Khalil’s, it seemed a little unusual that I should be honoured in this way, but I realise now that we are both members of the older generation, and most of our mentors, who would usually perform these duties, have passed on.  However, I am pleased to be here, and thank Khalil and the gallery for inviting me.

It is always a major achievement for an artist to be honoured by a large show of his work, with representative pieces from all periods of his painting career on display, but also with a major focus on new work.  At first, I was under the impression that this was to be a retrospective, but that is not so.  Khalil has continued to produce an impressive range of new work, much of which is on display today.  Rather than a retrospective for the end of a career, this is an exhibition of work that is as vibrant as it ever was, with no end in sight.

Throughout his long career, Khalil has shown a remarkable tenacity in pursuing his subject and technique, and has achieved special success in developing an idea into an expression that resonates with all of us.  His themes of figures in the endless performance of everyday tasks have been developed in distinctive ways, but the remarkable thing that is apparent from this show, is that he continues to develop all of his artistic techniques simultaneously.  In this collection of the last five years’ work, he continues developing his skills in drawing, watercolour and acrylic, in styles that move from the almost real to the almost abstract. 

By executing his themes time and time again, but with variations in the exploration of technique or subject, his work attains the rhythm of his figures:  the bending, lifting, pulling, striving and pausing to reflect, are all part of his artistic process that becomes the expression itself.  

The fact that he never deviates very far from his subject matter shows a remarkable faithfulness to his chosen path.  As a younger architect, I was constantly searching for originality in form and finish, believing that it represented the ultimate goal in design: to be different was a goal in itself.  Now that I am older, and I hope wiser, the search for novelty is not so important.  What is important is to deliver work that, apart from solving the technical problems, also intrigues and fascinates the public viewer, not necessarily revealing all at once, but leaving more to explore and to experience.  I think Khalil was wiser than I at an earlier age:  he knew all the time what his subject was, he knew he had to paint and to use his talent, and he was undeflected by the surges of fashion around him.  He concentrated on developing his skills drawing, painting and making batek, exploring with every piece how to express the unique power of these simple figures performing simple tasks. 

Each medium that Khalil uses expresses a different mood, and within the medium, too, there are great variations in tone and feeling.  His line drawings shimmer rather than develop the volume that you would expect in a drawing.  Some do have a three dimensional quality, as if they were studies for sculpture, but he is very much a painter of two dimensions, and uses those dimensions to create new ideas in his drawing rather than a mere fullness of form.  The flatness of some of his works, where plains of perfect colour are interjected by figures and the occasional line, exhibit his superb sense of colour and composition, and are, I am sure, an expression of the Malay in him:  his love of vibrant colour and contrast, even when he chooses the most unlikely combinations, always look absolutely right. 

Khalil’s subject matter reminds us, too, of a past that was normal for untold generations of coastal villagers, a past that is at the core of Malay culture.  In just one generation, this way of life has been lost and for those of us whose lives span that period, his work has an element of pathos that no other subject could ever convey.

Khalil’s continuing journey, or dialogue, is a great career path for any artist, interpreting and expressing the noble figures of the east coast and Balinese fishing villages.  Their travail is timeless, and so is the work that it inspired in Khalil, who is ever sharpening his artistic expression and rediscovering the familiar with every new work.  Over the years, I have seen his paintings in many homes, and although they are instantly identifiable by the consistency of his subject, it is always amazing to see the diversity of his expression: so many moods, so many vistas, and each unique.

I must say how proud I am of Khalil, surrounded by so many of his works expressing his enthusiasm and candor, and showing us the exuberant side of his quiet and reserved personality. These paintings and drawings will give so much pleasure to all, and will stand to record the spirit of a changing world.  Khalil has sustained and sharpened his resoluteness and dedication to his art over fifty years, and that dedication will continue, I’m sure, until his last breath.

Congratulations to Khalil Ibrahim on this superb show and I am delighted to declare it open.