Author: admin

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

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.

Angela Hijjas was invited to give the opening speech at an exhibition of works by Jeganathan Ramachandram at Sutra Gallery, from 7 to 31 May 2004.

Opening Speech by Angela Hijjas

Ramli Ibrahim, Jeganathan Ramachandram and friends.

I was delighted to be asked by Ramli to officiate here this evening, as it provides me with an opportunity not just to appreciate the work of the artist, but to acknowledge Ramli’s massive contribution to our creative world. He is well known and loved for his dance, but he has also made enormous differences to the whole realm of artistic creativity in Malaysia. Music, dance, visual art and the capacity to think and discuss how we shape our lives, are the important things, and Ramli has opened the eyes of many of us to these riches. A Sutra event always has a multi faceted complexity that demonstrates how we should respond to life’s challenges in artistic and original ways. I thank Ramli for leading the way so courageously as he focuses his and our attention on the truly important things in life, not only by his teaching, but with the many exhibitions that he holds here every year. He makes his home and studio available for everyone to enjoy, and to participate in his many passions with incredible generosity.

I must also congratulate Jeganathan Ramachandram for this beautiful series of paintings. I had the opportunity yesterday to meet him, see the show and discuss the ways he develops his work and what it means to him. His art practice is strongly lead by his philosophy of life, his studies in India and his life experience in both India and Malaysia.

His development of traditional Hindu geomancy into an artistic expression is a major achievement, aesthetically and technically. The forms, compositions, colour and symbols are all drawn from his knowledge of a traditional understanding that defies scientific western explanation. By presenting it as an aesthetic experience informed by traditional science, his work becomes an accessible contemplative guide towards spiritualism. For his subject matter, he takes each of the times of day and explores its character in the natural, the human and the spiritual worlds, synthesizing a unique expression of how he sees everything: as a complex and dynamic interface between the physical and the spiritual.

As contemporary art, I find it refreshing to see work driven by an aesthetic that is traditional in many ways, and yet Jega selects ideas from contemporary abstraction and uses them as effective tools to express the things that really matter in his life. It seems that so much art today is driven by fashion, the random scribble is currently very popular, rather than by a search for a deeper understanding of how to express yourself as an artist without resorting to trendy solutions.

Originally Ramli invited me to open this show because of my involvement in both the arts and the environment, interests that I share with Jeganathan. Indeed the environment is a rich lodestone for creativity, and the environment too benefits from creative people. I am not creative, apart from planting a garden, and I have been searching for ways to balance the environmental destruction around me with something positive. I am now convinced that supporting and encouraging creativity in people is one constructive step that I can take.

However, I fear that the battle to save our forests and seas is entering its final stages. We may save some, but much will be lost in the next few decades, and as I become increasingly desperate, Jega, on the other hand, is more philosophical and sees it as part of the cycle of rise and fall, life and death. I know he is right, but we don’t all think on this cosmic level, as we rush around trying to reverse what will surely happen, sooner or later.

But if more of us were to contemplate on the issues and paint such evocative works of a perfect world, like these that we see here this evening, then we may have an answer to our environmental problems. The long term protection of our habitat will depend on us developing different values for the environment. A short term monetary value does not tell us the real value of a forest, for example. The trees felled are worth money to the logger and to industry, but what of its value to our water supply and our sense of place and who we are after the trees have gone? We will then need dams to store water, filtration and treatment plants to make it drinkable, and artificial places to restore our sense of who we are, all of which was previously done completely free of charge by forests.

If we develop different value systems for the environment, then we need different values in our lives as well. Money does not deliver the richness of life and experience that people like Jeganathan and Ramli have, and if we all were to share their values I know there would be fewer environmental problems in the world today.

I was delighted yesterday to hear that the artist is approaching the point where he can consider leaving his night job with the Malay Mail and committing himself full time to his life of philosophy, poetry and painting. He didn’t train only as an artist, that was just one part of his entire development as a man living in complex world. Now that he has a mature sense of himself as a poet, geomancer and one gifted with profound spiritual insight, I’m sure he will continue to produce important art works that will resonate with us all.

His expression owes as much to his philosophy as to his artistic skill, and it is this holistic approach that will give us the insight we need into the problems of the world so that we can solve them.

Thanks again to Ramli and Sutra for this wonderful evening, and again I congratulate Jeganathan for leading us into his world with such beautiful works. Thank you.