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.
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.
Saiful Razman was the Malaysian artist of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency in 2004-05.
Bio
Saiful Razman (b.1980, Malaysia) graduated from UiTM with a bachelor degree in Fine Art in 2003. He has exhibited widely in Malaysia, Lebanon, Australia and Singapore. In 2003, he was awarded both the Honourable Mention at the Philip Morris Malaysia-Asean Arts Awards and the Incentive Award at the Open Show, Galeri Shah Alam.
Mesej. 2004. 61 x 61cm. Acrylic on canvas.
Gantunglah kami sebelum kamu digantungkan… (in collaboration with Bernice Chauly and Rahmat Haron).
This work uses Bernice’s text and Rahmat’s poetry that speak of hopes and dreams. The words have been transferred to the cloth, creating an amulet to symbolise protection against evil.
‘Kuala Lumpur Journey with Rain’, 2004, 120 x 120 cm, oil on sealed board.
Malcolm Utley, from Bellawongarah, New South Wales, Australia, was the Australian artist of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency in 2004.
Malcolm Utley has a varied art practice encompassing architecture, film, installations, painting and sculpture. He graduated with 1st Class Honours in Architecture from the University of Sydney in 1990 and was awarded the Elizabeth Munro Prize for Design and the Ruskin Rowe Prize for History. In 1993 he studied film at FAMU, the national film school in Prague, Czech Republic. From 1998 he studied painting in the 3-year course at the Charlie Sheard Painting School in Sydney.
In 2002, Utley traveled to Paris, France to work as assistant to the Australian painter Tim Maguire. Upon returning to Australia, he enjoyed a brief contract as a visiting artist teaching sculpture at four Aboriginal community schools in the central lands of South Australia, before taking up his residency at Rimbun Dahan.
In 2004, Australian illustrator Sally Heinrich spent an Asialink residency at Rimbun Dahan.
Sally Heinrich has worked as a freelance illustrator for twenty years. As well as writing and illustrating children’s books, her clients have included ad agencies, design studios and government departments. During her residency at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia, and during side trips to Singapore, Heinrich produced an impressive volume of work, including the completion of the final draft of a YA novel Hungry Ghosts. She also collected much valuable reference material which will aid in polishing the illustrations for another forthcoming book The Most Beautiful Lantern.
She also made the work Princess Wonky in the Painted Castle, an illustration of the Rumah Uda Manap at Rimbun Dahan where Sally lived with her family, their adopted cat Wonky, and other birds and animals. The work currently hands in the Rumah Uda Manap.
Sally’s residency at Rimbun Dahan was also supported by Arts SA and the Australian High Commission, Kuala Lumpur.
Ahmad Zakii Anwar, Breath, 2003, oil on canvas, 68 x 200 cm.
This year’s exhibition involves the concept of playing games. In different contexts, play can have positive and negative meanings and outcomes. Playing builds friendships, tests physical and mental skills and develops the ability to concentrate. The danger arises when people play at policy or relationships without considering how it affects others. Policy makers play with the environment, threatening the ecosystem; and in relationships, people play with their lovers or people around them to gratify their ego. In any case the games people play affect all of us.
Playing games is an activity that occupies our lives from childhood and beyond. In youth, playing builds friendships, tests physical and mental skills and develops concentration.
Yet, as adults, games take on a more complex nature. In every language, play as a word has both positive and negative meanings. When a person tries to cover up a hurtful comment they might say main main sahaja or jyou shr kai wan siau, both meaning I’m just joking. Romance also uses the language of games with main mata or the angry accusation that someone is just playing with you and not taking the relationship seriously.
Games on their own are neutral. They require an agreed upon set of rules, clear objectives and a willingness to suspend disbelief. We have to step out of our lives for a game to be fully played. Sometimes the game becomes confused with life or becomes so attractive that we find ways to make it a crucial part of our lives.
The danger arises when others play at policy or relationships without considering how it affects the fabric of life. Policy makers may play with the environment, imposing grandiose structure that will destroy endangered species or threaten fragile ecosystems. Rather than considering the impact of their actions, the fleeting goals of pride and greed are fed in the game of power accumulation.
In relationships, people play at love to gratify their ego or provide distraction from pressing issues at home. Romance serves as an escape from reality, the reality of ageing, emotional complexity or financial concerns.
Play can also be a very positive activity. As a means to build up the skills to make changes in life, playing with something or as someone else may help to give one the confidence to make necessary changes. Additionally, play is a crucial ingredient for creativity. Artists, designers and architects use the freeing power of play to learn what happy accidents can reveal. Without play, creativity is impossible.
— Laura Fan, curator
Anne Morrison, From ‘Hybrid series’ 1. Hive 2. Pod 3. Spore 4. Scale, Size: 71.5 x 71.5cm (each work), Medium: oil on canvas
Ilse Noor
Istana Mestika
2003
20 x 30 cm
Line drawing etching, AP (artist’s proof)
on Hahnemuhle paper, 250 gm.
Troy Ruffels: Artist in Residence Rimbun Dahan
Sampled Reality (detail)
Size: 58 x 58cm (each panel)
Medium: oil on canvas
Yusof Majid
Enough of your games
2003
oil on canvas
153 x 168 cm
Troy Ruffels was the Australian resident artist of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2003.
Biography
Troy Ruffels was born in Devonport, Tasmania in 1972. Upon completion of the 12 month Rimbun Dahan Art’s Residency in Malaysia he will return to Tasmania where he works and resides – overlooking the Forth Valley and farmlands of the Tasmania’s North West Coastline. Ruffels graduated from the Tasmanian School of Art @ Hobart, University of Tasmania (UTAS) with a Bachelor of Fine Art in 1994, where he was also awarded the degree BFA (1st Class Honours) in 1996. He obtained a Postgraduate Diploma ( with Distinction) from the Glasgow School of Art, 2001, and was in 2002 admitted to the degree Doctor of Philosophy ( Fine Art), University of Tasmania.
Ruffels’ work has been featured in numerous Australian and international curated exhibitions, with work exhibited in New York, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Alicante, Lisbon, Lubjjana, the Canary islands, Glasgow, Berlin, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth and Hobart. His work is held in numerous collections including the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, The Devonport Regional Gallery, and Artbank.
Above: ‘Bonnet’ 58cm x 58cm Digital Print 2003
Above: Sampled Reality: Pool 1.9m x 1.9m oil on canvas 2003
Above: Sampled Reality: Cloud Gazing 1.9m x 1.9m oil on canvas 2003
Exhibition Catalogue Essay
Filtered Sky
Rimbun Dahan exhibition catalogue cover.
I have a memory of Troy Ruffels as the only outdoor coffee drinker in the hair-raising cold of a Tasmanian winter morning. I would pass him most days on my way to university. All other patrons were on the inside of the cafe window, protected behind a curtain of condensed air, their heads in newspapers. But the folded arms and casual sitting style of the outdoor patron belied the chill as Ruffels embraced the opportunity to observe and respond to the outdoor world, ‘gathering and collecting small details of the passing environment.’ [1]
This memory is five years old, and comes to me in irony as I consider the work that has evolved during 12 months in tropical Malaysia. In the heat saturated studio at Rimbun Dahan, Ruffels continues to be fuelled by the natural elements that exist in the urban environment. The images conceived there reveal that the artist’s interest in an emotional sense of place travels with him, and is not limited to, nor lost without, his home in Tasmania. Alert to the smells, sounds and sights intrinsic to the places he visits, the artist is a filter for these experiences and memories to distil, and ultimately take root in paintings and photographs.
The works in Sampled Reality simultaneously ground and throw the viewer. They form a push me – pull me map from diaristic imagery that has been snatched by the artist from its otherwise temporary moment of beauty and being. We are grounded in the panoramic and all encompassing scale of the works, and settled by the poignant aesthetic of each reflection. Ruffels’ work draws you in, offering a journey through the artist’s experience of the world around him.
Rain. Trees. Clouds. These soft aspects of nature settle almost too comfortably in the seemingly impenetrable surfaces of new cars, puddles, glass, and hard, wet ground. Reflections in such urbane, ever-present fabrics are not something we usually register consciously. We look at the object itself, rather than the image nesting within it. Reflections do not break surfaces like scratches, dents, ripples and graffiti. Instead, they briefly accommodate the shape of the object and are almost camouflaged to eyes unaccustomed to looking beyond the expected. Ruffels has trained himself to see, snaring these apparitions as they pass across the object’s skin, and revealing the world’s infinite network of reflected, subterranean passages.
The viewer experiences subtle confusion in the artist’s use of reflection, for we normally register reflection through the live, mirrored image of ourselves or our immediate environment. The artist has further evaded other mirrored references by ensuring no part of himself is captured in the photograph. Trees, sky and stone are gently altered by the blurred movement, muted colour, shifting focus, and colliding imagery characteristic of these urban reflections. These subtle transformations trigger a sense of unease as one recognises that the painted or photographed image is not taken directly from its subject. Ruffels crops the imagery so that the edge of the reflective surface is gone. The image is floating. ‘Sky, tree and stone hang suspended’ as the frameless, softly mirrored world turns the tactile world on its head. [2]
In Malaysia, after years of working with photo media, Ruffels has again taken up painting. He writes that putting paint on canvas allows for ‘prolonged sensorial engagement’ with the subject, sensing that real value of the work is in the ‘process of engagement with the world, and the processes through which [the subject] is interpreted, and brought to life in the studio’. [3]The moving brush across canvas is not unlike the reflection moving across its surface, however the brush passes back and forwards, often repeatedly over the one area, as the image materialises. As each work-in-progress develops as an archive of the reflection, the painter exists in a world divined by instinct, a ‘continuous cycle of experience, response, and expression.’ [4]
It is hard to fight romantic writing when considering Ruffels’ imagery. Descriptions of the work are easily loaded with words like ‘poignant, whimsical, ephemeral, ethereal’. This is because the work is all of these things. Ruffels makes no bones about the fact that his art is rooted in poetry and imagination, emotions, memories and histories. Each piece is a layering process of experiences and responses to the natural environment. The artist ‘takes’ natural forms to construct the images, and creates only beautiful works that trigger the human desire to experience something breathtaking. In doing so, Ruffels drives the viewer into a flip-book of emotional responses, inciting us to reflect upon the extraordinary possibilities of the world sub-surface.
Ruffels has always responded directly to his immediate environment. In Tasmania, photographic works about reflections were printed in steel grey, cold blue, and later, a metallic pink. The rain, in its refected form, felt as if it would sting one’s skin, the waves were blackly Antarctic, and the path of the birds was ominous, as if a southern storm was brewing. Five years later, he wrote to me from Malaysia:
I have continued to work with reflections of nature in the environment. It is a meaningful motif, which I embrace. It signifies the possibility that another world exists other than the one we are able to subject to rational analysis. It gives rise to the possibility that there are other pathways we may travel in life – another level of appreciation, of understanding, of communicating with the world we inhabit – other than the one that is sold to us as being real … and subsequently finite. [5]
In the uncanny beauty that emanates from the images reflecting from duco or murky pools of water, there is a moment where one is uprooted by a feeling of wonder in the world, an awe-inspiring second of realising how small we really are, a flash where one is lifted through the clouds, or dipped beneath the molten surface of the water. The gentle manipulation of natural elements, captured reflections, the transformation of passé surfaces, and the devout attention paid to an urbane instant catch the viewer in a sensory eclipse. Brief moments of recognition are surpassed by super-real interpretations of the physicalworld. These sensations linger as the viewer moves from the work, only to come across fragments of Ruffels’ imagery all around, and ordinary experiences intensify as reality is sampled by both artist and the viewer.
Jane Stewart, 2004
Director, Devonport Regional Gallery, Tasmania
[1] RUFFELS, Troy, Artist Notes to the Author, December 2003
Immersed in the richness and complexity of nature at Rimbun Dahan, Jasmine was searching for a dialectic experience with the plants and objects around her. Obsessed with the regular pattern of the lines and textures on plants, different sizes of leaves were collected as models and cast with plaster of Paris. Slabs of soft clay were pressed against the plaster moulds to question the ephemeral nature of the objects and things around us, and render the impermanent permanent.
‘Ceramic by its nature cannot escape medium-hood’. For an artist like Jasmine ‘working in a medium so identified with craft-based procedures, her clay sculpture is immediately subject to sustained discussion on its material language’, challenging the perception of the custody of material use and the art forms in contemporary art practice today in Malaysia.
Installation, as the British writer Michael Archer described it, is ‘a kind of art making which rejects concentration on one object in favor of a consideration of the relationships between a number of elements or of the interaction between things and their contexts’. In Jasmine’s case, her works were a suggestion of scene and environment, which derived from her memories as well as from reality. The imprinted clay leaves were glazed with color and scattered on fabric, referring to the changing seasons. For instance, the imprinted lotus leaves of various sizes mimic the green summer water pond. All these pieces of work bring the connection of the scene from outside to inside, from exterior to interior. The relationship of human to nature was revealed through Jasmine’s intellectual interest, her participating in nature and sharing that experience with others.
Stone carving, like clay forming, is a slow and time consuming process. The physicality of force and the gradual changes of surface and shape were important to Jasmine and can be seen in her stone sculptures. Inspired by the curved and pointed elegance of the Jade Vine flower, Jasmine used marble to reinterpret her chosen subject through the physical process of carving. The smoothness and reflective nature of the marble was tarnished, the solid surface was opened and revealed by force. The original shape of the Jade Vine was copied, altered and magnified. The meaning of the work lies not in the work itself but in our attitude towards the art work.
Jasmine Kok’s work ‘does not reproduce what we see, it makes us see’. Her intention is not simply about recording the natural world but in transforming an object, a space and environment into something profound and intellectual. The work offers a fresh vision to her and to the viewer. The perceptual knowledge about the place around her, about things and objects she encounters and feels, are shown through her sculpture and installation works in a stage of ‘metaphysics concerned with the nature of existence’.
During her studies in London, Jasmine participated in an organization called ‘Art Express’, where she taught wood and stone carving within the community for several years. She was also involved in art therapy projects with problem children and the homeless, and the feedback was positive. She had some special experiences working with other artists from different countries while in London, and shared different culture experiences when working in the quarries and sculpture parks.
In the past, Jasmine Kok’s sculpture was primarily figurative, but since her residency in Rimbun Dahan, her art practice has embarked on a whole new journey by exploring nature and different materials. The artist in residence programme allowed her to explore new perceptions within her art, while assisting her to develop and understand the arts of her homeland.
‘Blue Symphony,’ 110 x 110 x 3 cm, ceramic clay, glaze, glue, perspex and velvet, 2004.
‘Green Summer Dream 1,’ 46x 46 x 4 cm, ceramic clay, glaze, glue and velvet, 2004.
‘Green Summer Dream 5,’ 150 x 80 x 4 cm, ceramic clay, glaze, glue and velvet, 2004.
‘Peace,’ carved from a single block of Langkawi limestone.
‘Transformation (detail),’ 145 x 52 x 63 cm, marble, 2004.
‘Transformation,’ 145 x 52 x 63 cm, marble, 2004.
‘Transformation’ being lowered into the Rimbun Dahan underground gallery.
Biography
Jasmine Kok Lee Fong
Date of birth: 28th October 1970
Nationality: Malaysian
Address: C109, Kampung Kundang, 48020 Rawang, Selangor, Malaysia.
Anne standing in the underground gallery at Rimbun Dahan, surrounded by her work.
Rimbun Dahan Exhibition Catalogue Essay
HAVEN
Anne Morrison beckons you to hover over crevices, lie beneath canopies, bury beneath undergrowth. Slip behind membranes. Peel back foliage. Slide against cell walls.
The painted environments in Haven are both macro and microscopic, bodily and earthly, scientific and sensory. The artist asks that you peer deeper into the shadowy spaces that haunt the leaves, spores, and parasites inhabiting the canvas. The surface of each work is similar to a forest floor, where decaying leaves, peat, feathers, skeletons, and twigs collide so that elements of each are only partially exposed. It is this fragmented imagery that reflects her unique approach to representing the land: ‘the layering experiences of place, relating to memories and to the movement through the landscape.’1
During the 12 months at Rimbun Dahan, Morrison has dug into and reinterpreted the organic fabric making up the vast garden that surrounds the studio. At the beginning of the residency, Malaysia’s tropical forms were unknown, and responses were acute and overwhelming. But time has allowed the artist to study the foreign land through its flora, her perceptions and understanding building with accelerating intensity. She has been able to track the seasonal transformation of the plants so that smells and textures have become vividly and evocatively familiar. The initial razor-sharp responses to the strangeness of a new environment have matured into a complex series of observations that compound with each painting, nourishing and anchoring both the artist and her work in this place.
Morrison’s practice is a continuous process of inspecting and translating the interface of tree, plant and grass forms. Cataloguing the extraordinary colour, texture, and shape of tropical growth, she is a world away from the Tasmanian seeds and grasses that triggered the preceding body of work. These were fine, weightless structures, ‘simple forms, light and ephemeral, carrying a multitude of possibilities upon a breath of air… seeds flying, dancing in the wind, settling, perhaps seeding.’2 In contrast, the moisture-congested air in Malaysia leans on equivalent biology, preventing flight and suppressing movement.
In Haven, colours are saturated, almost garish: turquoise, orange, yellow and white, unlike the muted reds, blues and greys intrinsic to Tasmania. Tropical patterns are webbed, not podded. Forms are plastic, as if slackened by the heat, not taut like those plucked from a colder climate. Paint is thinner and more viscous. Imagery is created through spilling, dripping and pouring paint on canvas, and at other times by employing methodical, repetitive brush marks. The artist’s visual language is constructed from these diverse methods of paint application, and from the ever-changing forms that surround her. Within this painted lexicon, evolving and existing dialects are employed to reflect both newly-discovered and reinterpreted forms.
Morrison’s more recent investigation of plants and landscape stems directly from an earlier emphasis on the body. During the 1990s, she fused imagery related to medical scans, diagrams, and x-rays, with maps of the land. These works were also about the unfamiliar, but probed the darker regions of the human body rather than the surface patterns of plants. They referred to the vulnerability of the body, and our inability to understand the path of foreign bodies and invasive cells. Red, pink, orange, and white paint was spilled onto the canvas, staining and penetrating its surface rather than resting with the modulated control of brush strokes. Veins, sinew, plasma, and cells were manipulated to create trails that alluded to mapping and the exploration of the unknown. Gradually, these paintings have lead to the artist’s subtle inversion of imagery: from inner body shapes that are suggestive of land, to land forms that allude to body. Though perspectives shift from looking in, to looking out, each work continues to be a highly personal landscape capturing the osmotic relationship between body and land.
Weave, Scatter, Envelop, Lattice, Storm. These are titles of earlier paintings that evoke strong imagery as words alone. They encourage bodily engagement with the work: pulling, hugging, whispering. Like these previous works, the images in Haven call the viewer towards Morrison’s unfolding interpretations of dense tropical landscape. Plants resemble the hairs, bones, veins of the body, and the heated colours mimic the effect of humidity. ‘The air is palpable … moisture is thick … beads of sweat gather on the skin … one is continuously aware of one’s body….’3 As a personal catalogue of responses to a foreign environment, each work is familiar yet strange. Lines are both sharp and blurred. Foreground and background are combined. Fleeting forms are nearly recognisable, but impossible to pinpoint. We are netted in pattern and movement, grasping and sliding, aware only of our emotions and response to the landscape before us. A haven.
Jane Stewart 2004.
Director, Devonport Regional Art Gallery, Tasmania.
1MORRISON, Anne, Notes to the author, December 2003.
2MORRISON, Anne, as above.
3MORRISON, Anne, as above.
Cluster (hybrid series Malaysia), 2003, oil on canvas 153x122cm.
Spore II, 2003, oil on canvas 190x150cm.
“Murmur”, 2004, oil on canvas, 170 x 140 cm.
From ‘Hybrid series’1. Hive 2. Pod 3. Spore 4. Scale Size: 71.5 x 71.5cm (each work) Medium: oil on canvas.
Biography
Born Glasgow, Scotland in 1966.
Morrison graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with Honours at Glasgow School of Art in 1988 before relocating to London to undertake a Master of Fine Arts at The Royal College of Art, graduating in 1990. In 1995 she was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to undertake research in Australia and in 1999 she was among the first to successfully complete a practice-based Doctorate in Fine Art at The University of Tasmania.
Morrison has had 11 solo exhibitions in the UK and Australia since 1989. Recent exhibitions include Cluster at Despard Gallery Hobart Tasmania and Body and Land at Devonport Regional Art Gallery Tasmania 2003, Weave of Nature at Essoign Club Melbourne 2002, The Sentient Body at Plimsoll Gallery Hobart 1999 and Intermediate Groundat The Bond Store, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Hobart 1997.
Curated group exhibitions in 2003 include Love letter to China: Drawings by 35 Australian Artists at Ivan Doherty Gallery Sydney (Touring China 2004), Painting Tasmanian Landscape at Plimsoll Gallery Hobart, Future Perfect at Bett Gallery Hobart. Synergy at (Artist/Scientist collaboration), CSIRO Hobart and My Father is the Wise Man of the Village at Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh, Scotland 2002, Zero Horizon at CAST Gallery, Hobart 1999.
Arts awards and arts residencies include The Fusion Arts Commission Edinburgh, 2001, The Scottish Arts Council Small Assistance Award 1999, The Scottish Arts Councils One Year Australian Arts Residency 1994-95, The Ensign Prize, Painting, Royal College of Art, London 1990, The British Institution Fund (1st prize Painting), Royal Academy, London and The John Minton Travel Award RCA 1989, The Elizabeth Greenshields Award, Canada and The Jock Macfie Award, Glasgow School of Art, 1988.
Work in art collections include The Derwent Art Collection, Tasmania, The Scottish Arts Council, The Royal College of Art London, The University of Tasmania, Ensign Trust London, Devonport Regional Art Gallery, Aberdeen Hospital and Northfield Academy, Aberdeen, Scotland and Hijjas Kasturi Associates/ Rimbun Dahan, Kuala Lumpur.
Morrison is a Permanent Australian Resident who works and resides in Forth, Tasmania.
