by Angela Hijjas

A speech published in the catalogue of Beyond Contemporary Art Penang (BCAP), November 2023, in George Town, Penang.

When my husband Hijjas and I started a residency programme for artists in 1994, I had little idea what the creative process for visual artists was like. The first Australian artist who took up the 12-month residency at Rimbun Dahan was John Foubister, from Adelaide. He was thoughtful and wanted to explore his ideas by using others as his sounding board. We talked often about the ‘problems’ he had to ‘solve’ with his paintings, and he often referred to other artists who had used this or that process or solution. Not being an artist myself, I never understood exactly how he resolved the problems presented by his paintings, but certainly discussion was part of the solution. I was happy to learn about artistic practice from him, and I believe he painted some amazing works.

John Foubister’s paintings were challenging for the general public, especially in the context of his joint exhibition alongside Yuande Zheng, the Malaysian artist who was also undertaking the residency, and whose work was figurative, realistic and less unusual. Yuande’s work sold well at the exhibition, but not so John’s; for many viewers, his works struck a discordant note.

John continued to hone his artistic craft, while living on his earnings as a carer for people with disabilities. Now, 30 years later, he can make a living from his artistic practice, even if modestly, and he is recognised in Adelaide as an original thinker and a creator of beautiful paintings inspired by the South Australian landscape.

But John Foubister will never be a brand. His work is never the same; it is always changing. There are always new problems he is interested to solve with paint, and new ways that he discovers of solving them. The entire point of his artistic practice is to work at this continual art of discovery, not to pander to the art market by constantly reproducing easily legible, easily sellable copies.

My experience in the art world is not one from the perspective of commercial galleries, dealers, and auction houses, with their skyrocketing prices, and their view of art as a financial investment or a luxury collectible. Our residency at Rimbun Dahan is devoted to helping artists develop their careers by giving them the time and space to focus on their artistic practices, and then share the products of that creative period with the public.

Initially, we supported one Malaysian and one Australian artist for one year, leading to a joint exhibition. Currently we no longer offer the Australian residency, but invite artists from the ASEAN region and Malaysia instead, for shorter residencies between one and three months, concluding with informal open studio days rather than full-scale exhibitions. [Australia offers many opportunities for artists, but there are very few throughout the ASEAN region, and I feel we have more impact on not just art but also on international goodwill by developing links between our immediate neighbouring countries, through strong personal relationships forged during our residencies by artists staying in the same community and working alongside each other.]

Over three decades of leading this residency, I have learned how much artists need this kind of support: the opportunity to focus on their work alone, with less pressure from the need for, and the demands of, a day job. There is very little support available in Malaysia to give artists a boost early in their careers, and although our program is small it does provide help to some. Exhibitions – having a finished product available for sale – are not the intended result of this creative residency process. The open-ended residency, without a focus on product, allows the artist to engage deeply with the time-consuming and often difficult task of developing new work from new ideas. If artists were to merely rework the same ideas over and over, they would become bored, and viewers and collectors would find their work lacking in vigour and development.

Thus the concept of art and branding together is to me rather an alien combination. I understand branding as something that is wholly commercial, with the intention to sell a product. Branding is fixing a stamp or a style – often visual – that is readily recognised by the general public, and that guarantees a kind of consistency of experience by the consumer. The brand is coveted and protected, perhaps tweaked for different markets, but otherwise carefully and conservatively deployed by marketing teams, until the brand itself becomes desirable, something that people want to buy and be associated with, merely by choosing a product.

To me, art is much too diverse, too liable to take off in new and unrecognisable directions by leaps and bounds, to be suitable for branding. Yes, you can recruit artists to help create visuals that are incorporated into a product or brand, but this is more strictly the realm of graphic design or industrial design – of commercial art, not fine art. Here, the artist is trained to take a brief from a client, be it a tobacco corporation or a perfume house, and to develop images that favourably portray the product, possibly including a simplified image that is striking and memorable: the logo.

Many artists do work in this commercial environment, as it is an area where their skills are useful – but that can only be their “day job”, which allows an artist to survive and feed his or her family. By contrast, the “night job” for an artist is exploring what he or she can do with certain materials that they find compelling, to make what they have been thinking about in every spare moment. It is not a process that can be hurried, and the final result cannot be predicted. That is why generally it takes artists several years to reach a point where their work is ready for a show.

Some artists, though, have inadvertently embraced branding. The Malaysian painter Ibrahim Hussein enjoyed amazing commercial success over his entire career, from the 1960s to his death in 2009. He had a superb sense of colour and form that resulted in beautiful works, and he pushed his boundaries, until he discovered his distinctive and recognisable lines. These works flew off the easels to collectors, who knew that these works were keepers.

Ib kept doing them through his last years, but it was clear the inquiry stage of his process was over – he had his answer. While he continued to produce wonderful works, the later works had a sameness that is similar to branding. Gone were the experiments like photo montage that he had invented and developed, and the urge to comment on social and political issues that he had pioneered in his younger years. [Few will remember his Palestinian series in the 1970s, for which he asked me to write the catalogue notes to verbalise his outrage, just in case anyone missed the point – which was hardly likely!] I’m not saying that his style was any less wonderful, but, like most of us, Ib lost the urge to explore as he got older. As we know, change is challenging, but it leads to our growth and enrichment.

In contrast to Ibrahim Hussein, I would like to mention another artist here: Penang’s own Latiff Mohidin, who actually got his start in Singapore where he attended Kota Raja Malay School with my husband Hijjas. [As youngsters, both of them sold their paintings on the street to the likes of the late Ungku Aziz – thank God for patrons!] Latiff has explored new ideas all his life; in his painting and sculpture he drew on everything he saw in his travels throughout Southeast Asia, and painted forms that cried out to be sculptures. He honed that delicate boundary for his whole life and continues to do so in his eighties.

But Latiff is not a brand, nor, I suspect, would he want to be. His initial success depended on his Pago Pago series in the 1960s, but he diverged time and again to develop new ideas. I remember the shock of his Mindscape series in the 70s and 80s – what was he doing, people wondered, and why? The answers the public was looking for did not really matter; Latiff had an insatiable desire to explore and renew. To me, that is a mark of a good artist, and Latiff’s practice is something for younger artists to emulate.

I feel all fine artists would devalue their talent and potential by even thinking about branding their work. Here, as another example, I want to discuss a more contemporary artist, this time a woman: Nadiah Bamadhaj. Her practice, too, defies the concept of branding, although she is on the A list of all serious collectors of contemporary Southeast Asian art. While her work now fetches high prices and many galleries would like her as part of their ‘stable’ of artists, she has defied the establishment galleries to forge her own path.

Nadiah studied fine arts in New Zealand where she majored in sculpture. Given the high prices of materials and the scarcity of commissions, becoming a successful sculptor is notoriously tricky. But Nadiah was nothing if not persistent and persuasive. The artworks were all in her head; she just had to make them happen. In 2001, she persuaded Galeri Petronas to give her a solo exhibition called “1965: Rebuilding its Monuments”, but she needed a studio and time to develop the work. Fortunately for us, she asked Rimbun Dahan for help.

I cannot say I was overjoyed by someone turning up at my door demanding a residency, but she reminded me of my own daughters, so I agreed to provide a studio and a place to stay for 6 months leading up to the exhibition, and a measly allowance of RM500 a month to live on. Nadiah had decided she had had enough of working for other people; she had to strike out on her own. She worked day and night to realise her vision for the exhibition, which ended up launching her career. I was fortunate enough to acquire some works from the show, so I was royally rewarded. And now with full confidence in her own work, Nadiah can explore her skills and talents as an independent artist without the imposed direction of galleries.

None of Nadiah’s planning, I believe, involved constructing a brand, but she has developed herself as a formidable artist and made an indelible contribution to our contemporary culture. In “1965 – Rebuilding its Monuments”, she tackled the history of this region and its terrifying cost: how politicians manipulate the public to line their own cosy nests. Her themes were based on Indonesia’s experience, but they apply to all of us, and this is the kind of cultural development that Hijjas and I have been striving to support: looking at who we are, where we come from, and what we hope to be. Nadiah presented her ideas in an art form which realised the full power of the graven image. And now, 22 years later, thanks to her newfound financial security from the sale of her celebrated artworks, Nadiah is producing the sculptures that she dreamed of when first starting her career.

From my decades of living in proximity with working artists, who are serious about developing their professions by pursuing their own curiosity, I would say that artists are not particularly interested in branding. But I have also learned that the opinions of artists should not be taken for granted. They should be consulted about matters that relate to them and their practices. Too often arts policy schemes are implemented without any discussion with the people who will be most affected, resulting in valuable resources being channelled in the wrong direction and eventual policy failure. Consultation is critical; the first principle must be to ask artists what they need.

I have witnessed many ill-conceived ideas that purport to help artists, but end up taking advantage of them. For example, artists are invited to contribute work for free to charity exhibitions, in exchange for nebulous ‘exposure’. Or artists are offered personal loans which they are expected to pay back after a sell-out exhibition, encouraging artists to create safe sellable work rather than challenging their own boundaries. Most public arts grants are offered for performing artists or literature, with fine art left on the sidelines. Perhaps this is because some visual artists, like Nadiah Bamadhaj, do indeed succeed in supporting themselves by their artistic work, which is a dream for most performing artists. But the vast majority of arts students in Malaysia never attain a viable career. Our public universities are churning out fine arts graduates in every state, and yet the only sustainable career option for these graduates’ futures is teaching – a circular model that doesn’t lead to a thriving arts community.

A real problem in Malaysia is lumping arts with tourism – basically using the arts as picturesque advertising or colourful entertainment intended for foreigners. Sharing our culture with visitors is of course important, but it misses the point. Malaysian art is intended to enrich the lives of Malaysians, both as consumers and creators. Everyone should have access to creative practice, whether it’s playing in a drumming group or writing poetry. There must be a broader choice of cultural pursuits in schools, universities and communities that can enliven the spirits of people who otherwise spend their lives commuting to and fro, studying, working, trying to sustain their lives. We should try to make a rich cultural life a possibility for everyone.

This is where I would like to see the arts develop: ask artists what kind of support they need. Find out what young people want, because they are our future and they are the ones who need the cultural support to develop their many talents and lead fulfilling lives. Celebrate the marvellous things that Malaysian artists have already achieved, through their own hard work and strategies, often scraping and starving to share what they love with as many people as possible.

Rather than viewing the arts as just another industry designed to generate GDP, government and municipalities should shift their paradigms to view the arts as a social good, which we have a collective responsibility to understand and support.

In 2010 on an Asialink artist residency at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia, Australian artist Anthony Pelchen witnessed life in the balance and produced the foundation of a body of work titled Kuang Road Prayer.

Through reflection and continued artistic engagement with Malaysia, Pelchen has expanded this evocative body of work. Issues of change, vulnerability and resilience, at the core of Kuang Road Prayer, are explored in this exhibition through drawing, photography, video and sculpture.

The exhibition entitled Kuang Road Prayer was opened by Angela Hijjas at the Horsham Regional Arts Gallery in Horsham, Victoria, Australia, on 18 August 2013.

Opening Speech by Angela Hijjas

Thank you for this invitation to speak today at the opening of Anthony Pelchen’s show at the Horsham Gallery. This event marks the convergence of many coincidences that have brought Hijjas and me to Horsham. We have been coming here regularly for the last 16 years, working on the Southbank project, but never staying long enough to develop personal links until recently, when an amazing array of pieces fell into place.

Since 1994 we have been running a residency for Australian and Malaysian artists at our home, Rimbun Dahan, outside Kuala Lumpur. It was a way for us to “pay back” for the many advantages our family had enjoyed from both Australia and Malaysia: Hijjas had been given a Colombo Plan scholarship in the 1950s to study architecture in Australia, and it turned his life around, from a poverty of opportunity to a richness he could never have imagined; and Malaysia enabled him to develop an extremely successful professional practice.

We had moved out of Kuala Lumpur in 1991 to Rimbun Dahan, and as this exhibition makes clear, we live in an urban fringe area that is mainly populated by a low income Malay Muslim community, known in Malay as “kampong”, or village. 

Rimbun Dahan is fortunate in having 14 acres of garden surrounding it, but as Anthony’s experience shows, the hard lives of those around us is not so easily obscured, and it marks a significant cultural difference even from Kuala Lumpur, just 27 kilometers distant, let alone from Australia or Horsham.

Part of life in Malaysia is seeing the most awful road accidents. I see one about every 6 months in which someone must have died, and certainly the statistics bear this out, but no one is unduly concerned about this, possibly because of an inherent fatalism amongst the Malays, that whatever happens is the will of god, and that it has to be accepted without question. 

This is one of the biggest culture shocks for foreigners arriving in Malaysia: why don’t we do something about this is never really a serious question, it’s just the way things are. In Jonathan Nichols’ essay description of our junction and the school, he appropriately neglects to mention the police station right next to the school… as only once in 23 years have I ever seen a police officer emerge from his enclave not in a car.

So life on the Kuang Road is far from the galleries and studios that most people assume artists haunt, but a residency is an opportunity to explore and experience something new that is outside normal life, to expose you to a new way of looking at things, and to give you new things to look at. 
We didn’t really think about that when we started the residency programme, in fact I was a bit concerned that there was nothing in Kuang to interest anyone, let alone artists, but nothing could be further from the truth.

We have just come from Adelaide, where on Wednesday night we attended an opening of a show celebrating the Rimbun Dahan programme. Two of the artists exhibiting, who had stayed with us for a year and 3 months respectively, literally drew their material from the rubbish they found around them, either discarded fish boxes for Tony Twigg, or the residual rubbish on the ground that you never see in Australia, for Cathy Brooks. Others sometimes come with ideas already formed that they want to work on, but inevitably these preconceived plans are subverted by the environment in which they find themselves, and the experiences they have with people from a different culture, and in their space.

I remember Anthony showing me the series of photographic portraits that he had taken of people he had met in Kuang who had lost relatives and friends in road accidents. Anthony was concerned about exhibiting photographs of people without following the proper protocol of seeking their approval, and I was struck by how different this concern was from the Malaysian norm where no one’s private space is really private, and all is considered legitimate fodder for public discussion. 
Anthony did take his concerns to his subjects, and that meant they too participated in this wondrous thing where someone was asking their permission before using their image… no Malaysian would have ever thought that to be a legitimate issue; even I thought does this really matter? But I have been immersed in Malaysian culture for so long, I didn’t see the issue clearly either. So the exposure of artists in Kuang goes both ways, all of the locals who meet our artists share an experience that broadens their view too, and that’s what it’s all about, trying to break down the barriers between cultures that more often than not are based on preconceived givens, allowing us to explore common human experiences like loss and grief.

The main thing we provide our artists at the residency is time and space:  separate from the kampong, behind the fence and surrounded by trees, they have time and space to work and think about new possibilities for their practice. They emerge each day seeking food and relief, and there come into contact with the real world.
 
Currently in residence we have five artists: a Sydney couple, Sean Cordiero and Claire Healy, Asialink textile artist Julie Ryder from Canberra, Malaysian artist Sabri Idrus, and Carlo Gernale from the Philippines. Every year we probably host 8 to 10 artists for anything from 3 months to a year, and many more dancers and choreographers who come for shorter periods. All benefit from interactions with other artists from different backgrounds as well as the chance to make new friendships and professional links in the region, and of course from the experience of living in this corner of Malaysia that is far from the city’s malls and hotels.

For us personally, the artists have enriched our lives enormously: not just in terms of friendships formed over their stay, but they have helped to shape physically Rimbun Dahan in significant ways.  We would never have considered moving heritage houses to the compound and restoring them if we had had no use for them, but the residency provided the justification that saved these beautiful old houses from decay and loss, as we use them for artists’ accommodation.  Nor would we have ever gone looking for property in Penang, except that all the artists loved the city and enthused over what a great site for a residency it would be, so we then found a property in Georgetown that we converted into a hotel that includes a residency. Although it began as a way to pay back for everything we have enjoyed, the residency continues to enrich us.

And this is where Horsham comes in. Your position midway between Melbourne and Adelaide is significant to us, Hijjas studied in both places and commuted for a while between them, so he must have driven through Horsham in the early 60s in his VW or Morris Minor, or whatever he drove in those days. 

Decades later we buy land here, and have the chance to extend something we have established in Malaysia to Australia:  Melbourne and Adelaide are already saturated with artists so there is little point going there, so why not Horsham? So as many of you are aware, we are planning to build a residency here, and with Adam’s help in running it I’m sure Horsham will benefit as much as we have done at Rimbun Dahan. 

A country town may not be where you expect artists to gravitate, same as the urban fringe of Kuala Lumpur, but if you provide the opportunity, they will come, and you don’t have to worry about them taking advantage of your generosity for anything other than doing the work that they have been itching to do for years. We have almost never been disappointed by the work ethic of our artists, they treasure the opportunity to develop their practices, and they will enrich your lives as ours have been. Artists always bring new ideas, not always the ideas you think they should bring, but certainly something that may jolt you out of the complacency of normality. 

Anthony’s experiences in Kuang are now brought to you, in Horsham. Who would have thought that a body bag from Bukit Aman, our somewhat feared police headquarters, would be a subject of artistic interest? But here it is: reconsidered, reworked, and representing a lovingly woven carapace for someone who was loved but has been lost. 

We can all share in this, it is our worst nightmare, but like a Malay funeral, where the body is bound in white cloth and laid directly in the earth, we all come to this ultimately, this is the human experience, for better or for worse, no different in Australia or Malaysia.

Thank you.

IN SIGHT: New Works by Australian Artist Lisa Roet 

Wed 4 to Sun 22 Mar, 11am to 7pm 
The Annexe Central Market
Presented by the Australian High Commission 
Admission Free   

The Australian High Commission is proud to present In Sight, a solo art exhibition featuring new works by Australian artist Lisa Roet. Inspired by her lifelong interest in primates, Lisa’s neon and LED light sculptures, audio-video works and drawings address the demise of wild orangutan populations in Borneo. Also featured are a series of 10 portraits of orangutans that Lisa has worked with in zoos and laboratories over the past 15 years. This exhibition represents an exciting cross pollination between environmental awareness and contemporary art practices. In Sight is a sequel to two previous exhibitions held at the National Art Gallery in 2000 and 2001. 

Opening Speech by Angela Hijjas

Congratulations to Lisa for creating such a challenging exhibition on such a large scale that we are forced to look at urgent issues. We think these things are peripheral to our survival, but in reality they are too big to ignore, and too big for us to escape unscathed…  

In fact it is our own future that is predicted by the fate of primates.  If they go, so ultimately do we; that may sound melodramatic but not so…  if endangered mega-fauna are lost it demonstrates our ambivalence to the issues of the state of our world. The short rationale is that if we cannot act soon on the degrading environmental situation, our habitat will be destroyed, by our own action, or inaction. Climate change is the single most threatening environmental issue in the world today, and protecting existing forests, the homes of these animals, is an essential part of a solution to that huge problem.

Recent political and economic changes that have been forced upon us may indeed lead to a new beginning of an environmental resurgence, I hope so. Because now is the time to begin to rectify the damage we have caused with our market based economics… forests must be protected and rehabilitated, poaching and hunting must be stopped, priorities on economic growth must be superseded by repairing our own environment and assessing other values apart from GDP. Health care, poverty, environmental degradation, water and food security, cultural development and many more issues are more important, they add to quality of life rather than the amount of money we have in our pockets.

I hope that Malaysians will see this exhibition and question what our government is doing for the protection of these primates and our national heritage to ensure the long term survival of our mega biodiversity… Unfortunately procrastination and corruption in the political and administrative processes have meant that the Malaysian environment has paid an awful price over recent years: illegal logging, trafficking in wildlife, fragmentation of our remaining forests, over fishing, clearing of land for indiscriminate development and plantations, unrelenting land fill… the list goes on. We must put a stop somewhere, and now that prices of our commodities have dropped may be, must be, the time to start.

To me, these strong works raise all of these questions. I remember one of Lisa’s previous shows at the Malaysian National Gallery after her residency there in 2000… she had created huge drawings of the anatomical details of orang hutan, larger than life sized hands, each hair, wrinkle of skin and torn nail exquisitely rendered in charcoal, and surrounded by Lisa’s own finger prints… small smudges that put our similarities and differences into a unique perspective. These works too link our lives to theirs, each is an individual, and we are so closely related.

When family tends to define who we help and who we don’t, I think these works make it quite clear: we are their family, they are ours, and it is our responsibility to do something about their place in the world. 

Just this week at WWF, I saw photos of a female orang hutan and her baby stranded up a dead tree in a flood. Orang hutans don’t swim, and she had been there for a week, according to estate workers who had seen her and reported her predicament to the WWF project officers, who came to see what could be done.  A rope was tied from the shore to her tree, another one was about to be pulled to reinforce it, but she decided one was enough and quickly descended, gripped the rope as she entered the water and pulled herself and baby across. Her intelligence cannot be denied, and her predicament mirrors our own. We must find the will to save her and all endanged species, and in doing so we will save ourselves, because unfortunately for us, when our environment becomes uninhabitable there won’t be anyone around to throw us a line. 

Thanks and congratulations to Lisa Roet for this timely and challenging show. 

Angela Hijjas
Rimbun Dahan 

Artriangle is a collective show that bring together artists from four different countries – Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore. With the purpose of increasing the appreciation of art in this region through a more open network of exchange and to further inculcate closer working ties amongst our artists, it aspires to energise a 4-way art dialogue between these countries and inadvertently, adds more excitement to the art scene in South East Asia.

Artriangle is a fund-raising exhibition. All the benefit from the sales will be channeled to the MATAHATI Art Fund. The Art Fund will be used for the benefits of our local artists and the art scene. It will go towards assisting in the welfare of those artists in need, which includes incidences involving natural disasters, accidents or health issues. The Art Fund also used as a grant for artists to initiating art projects and art activities.

Opening Speech by Angela Hijjas

Ladies and gentlemen, friends. 

I was flattered to be asked to open this fund raising exhibition organized by Artriangle, even though I was not quite sure what the fund raising objectives were when Bayu first approached me.  But my exposure to his art group, Matahati has always been inspiring, so I was quite sure I was going to support any initiative that they might take, and I wasn’t disappointed. 

I first got to know Matahati when Ahmad Shukri was one of our resident artists in 2002, and again last year we hosted another of the Matahati “boys”, Ahmad Fuad Osman.  They have always been very keen to share their experience and opportunities with other artists, and they have organized visits for young Malaysian artists to Jogjakarta and Manila, and as well reciprocal visits for Indonesian and Filipino artists;  they have shared their gallery and work spaces with visiting artists, and put a huge effort into introducing them to foreign places, taking them to galleries and to meet the collectors in each country. 

This is quite contrary to the self absorbed image that we usually have of artists… as it is hugely difficult to combine a creative career with looking after other people, but “the boys” have managed to do that, and to sustain it over many years.  I congratulate them all for that. 

This exhibition is another example of their initiative to support artists and to take a proactive position rather than waiting for someone else to do something.  A similar exhibition was held last year to raise money for the victims of the earthquake in central Java, but as Bayu told me, by the time it was organized and the money raised, the worst of the crisis had passed and an opportunity lost.  So that is a part of what this show is about:  to create a fund of RM20,000 that is available immediately to support artists’ communities that are affected by similar disasters, or for artists in each of the participating countries who are facing severe hardship.   

I’m sure you will all agree that this is greatly needed… artists frequently lack the financial security that others strive for, and it is perhaps their sense of freedom from this constraint that allows them to be creative, but it often comes at a huge personal cost to themselves and their families. 

This welfare fund will be used not just for natural disasters, but to help artists cover health care expenses and emergencies.  It will be topped up with the money raised by this annual show as it is used. Last year it assisted two Malaysian and two Indonesian artists who were facing personal difficulties. 

The second objective of today’s show is to create another fund for artists’ projects.  Unfortunately in Malaysia, there are not many agencies that give money to make new work. A few years ago our Ministry allocated RM20 million for artists, but no one seems to know what happened to that… suffice it to say that there is a severe shortage of funding for art projects.  The good news is that Artriangle has stepped into the gap.  Last year, money from the previous exhibition was used to fund nine art projects, so at last there is somewhere for artists to get this kind of support, and I congratulate Artriangle for this great initiative. 

The project funding is only for Malaysian artists, while the relief funding is for all member countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and now including Singapore.  But Artriangle is also helping each of the participating countries to set up their own funding mechanisms to support artists’ projects in each country. 

And that brings us to today’s show.  As you can see, it has wide support from artists of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore.  An important aspect of this charity show is that the artist whose work sells, does get 50% of the selling price.  Too many charities ask artists to contribute their work for free… no one seems to think that this is a hard ask… the work is there sitting in the studio, why not give it away?  Which businessman would think of his stock in this way?  But enthusiastic charities are sometimes extremely naïve…  

Just as financial reward is important, so too the work must be good; we expect the work to be fresh, something we haven’t seen before, and indeed this show is successful in that regard.  The criteria for selection is that the work must be the best, and I’m sure you will find many impressive pieces here. Last year Artriangle raised $90,000 after the costs of the show were deducted, and with your support this year I’m sure it will be more.   

When I came for a preview last week, I walked around, looking particularly for the artists whose work I know; there were no labels on at that stage and I couldn’t find Shukri… until I did another round and did indeed find him and his work is a completely new take on his practice to date.  A show like this is an opportunity for artists to explore new ideas that might not fit into their current focus, but it could well be the direction for a later body of work, so each of the works here today could be seminal to an artists’ future development. 

And at the end of 2008, Matahati goes to Jogja, taking more Malaysian artists with them, for a show hosted by Putu Sutawijaya’s new gallery. Another project this year for Artriangle is to take three artists each from Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, to Liverpool, to develop links between artists and to promote the region’s work in the UK.  To get such international exposure is a great experience for the artists, but most could not do it alone, no matter how beneficial it might be to their practice. 

It is these initiatives that will make a creative industry for Malaysia.  I congratulate Matahati for developing and acting on so many of their good ideas.   

I’m sure you will enjoy the show and encourage you to support artists, and support their ideas.  We may not have the time or, more importantly, the talent to do what they do, but by being here today and buying their work, we can be an essential part of their projects. Thank you.

Gabrielle Bates exhibited work she had made during her residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2007 in an exhibition at Trocadero Art Space in Footscray, Melbourne. Angela Hijjas was invited to give the opening speech.

Opening Speech by Angela Hijjas

I am delighted to be here at Trocadero Art Space, Footscray, Melbourne for Gabrielle Bates’ opening, and honoured to have the chance to say a few words about her practice in Malaysia and the immense pleasure we had in hosting her.

Gabrielle was Rimbun Dahan’s Australian resident artist for 2007, and she created this body of work in our Malaysian compound. She is an honours graduate from the University of Sydney and has been exhibiting since ’93. Early in her career, she experimented with conceptual video and mass media work, but she re-discovered that an important medium for her is painting, to which she returned when she had a residency at Hill End in 2000. From then on, she started developing her own style of layering, colour and form, highlighted by an echoing effect that reinforces the themes of her paintings, but at the same time seems to place her subjects in a different dimension.

Gabrielle’s experience at our residency in Malaysia has, I hope, had a similarly seminal effect on her art practice as did Hill End, certainly when she first arrived in Kuala Lumpur there was much to experience in S E Asia that was new to her, not least our political and cultural climate. She started out with a series of three small works for an annual charity show that we do each year for WWF Malaysia. The show was entitled ‘Superstar!’, and was about the cult of celebrities and how it now shapes so much in popular culture. Gabrielle was thinking about how we make gods of celebrities, so she decided to create some celebrities out of gods… She took religious figures from Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism, and transposed them into tabloid front page bad boys, and girls… Gabrielle herself has said that such an approach would not have raised an eyebrow in Australia, but she hadn’t counted on Malaysian “sensitivities”! Portraying a god as a rock star, giving the finger to the paparazzi, was shocking – people in India might have rioted over less, I was told – so the curator decided to pull the work from the show.

This could have been a very disturbing introduction to a residency in a new country, but Gabrielle turned it to her positive advantage as she thought about boundaries and freedom of expression, and she recognized that the issues of censorship, in particular self censorship, are everywhere, even entwined in her own life pattern. Despite these concerns, Gabrielle isn’t delivering any judgements about our cultural paraphernalia, and yet she still manages to create works with a mesmerising impact that is due entirely to their rhythm and sheer beauty.

Pattern making had already become an important element of her work, and she began to investigate Malaysia’s symbolism, its fabrics, wood carvings and plants. These cultural symbols, woven into patterns that embellish her figures, emphasise how a particular culture can consume us and be a sole reflection of who we are if we allow that to happen, rather than enabling us to express ourselves individually.

As well, Gabrielle used new materials in her Malaysian work: Chinese ink, water colour, even pond water, and finally piercing her works with needle and thread, superimposing yet another layer of meaning onto her subjects. She attached bells to some of these embellishments, influenced I think by a more Malaysian aesthetic, and symbolically enlivening the work and calling the figures back to life and action.

Gabrielle’s subjects were people she met over her year in Malaysia, many of them other resident artists or performers who stayed at Rimbun Dahan. Donna Miranda is a choreographer with whom she had a close daily relationship, and Donna appears in many of these works, with the slackness and tension of her dancer’s body patterned, echoed and stitched, to bring out the dynamic and multi-faceted nature of her life, distorting the familiar and transforming it to the curious.

In addition to the works here today, there were several more of Gabrielle’s works that I’m pleased have stayed in Malaysia. We have kept two of her pieces, one of my daughter Bilqis, who co-ordinates the choreography residency that we host, and another of Donna Miranda. Amongst others, the piece that is featured on the cover of her catalogue was acquired for an important Malaysian collection. And there is yet another work that she has made for the next Art for Nature exhibition that came out of her year with us at Rimbun Dahan. It is an extension of her embroidery that evolved into a community project, in which she recruited all her Malaysian friends to work on a grid she devised… this work will be assembled for our next exhibition in May, and I’m sure this time that it won’t be pulled from the show!

We have been running our programme since ’94, and have hosted about 60 artists, sculptors, writers, dancers, choreographers and performance artists, some of whom are here this afternoon, and I must express my appreciation to Gabrielle and all the others, who have enlivened our programme with their energy and imagination, as they have developed their practices. It is never an easy option, being an artist, and I hope that our small effort helps to encourage greater creativity and awareness of each other in our respective communities in Australia and Malaysia.

As I see it, Gabrielle has coped with the initial strangeness of it all, adapted to it, and taken elements of her Malaysian experience and utilized them for her own expression. She has given us all we could wish for in her year at Rimbun Dahan, and I know she will most likely be developing these ideas in her next residency, in Penang at Malihom later this year, so I look forward to welcoming her back to Malaysia, and congratulate her on combining her Australian and Malaysian experiences in such a significant manner.

I would also like to thank the organizers here at Trocadero, for giving her the opportunity to show this body of Malaysian works, and hope that you will all enjoy the exhibition as much as I have enjoyed seeing these works evolve over the past year. Thank you.