Hotel Penaga

Karyn Coxall-Leong

admin Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist ,
Karyn Coxall-Leong

Karyn Coxall-Leong (Australia) was a resident artist in the last year of Hotel Penaga’s residency program, in July 2017. During her short residency she engaged often with local residents and guests, distributing pamphlets on good photography sites, taking photos of people and giving them prints, and offering walking tours.

My photography is driven by a strong passion for people and their stories. Thus, over the years I have developed a portfolio of over thirty thousand images. I have been honored to capture special moments in the lives of others, including: weddings, portraits, expecting parents, and baby photos. Via street photography I aim to portray the raw beauty of every subject, and capture a brief glimpse into the lives of those whose paths I happen to cross.

For more of her photography, check her out on Facebook.

John Mateer

admin Asialink, Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist , ,
John Mateer

 

 

John Mateer is a poet, writer and curator. He has published books in Australia, the UK, Austria and Portugal, and the prose Semar’s Cave: an Indonesian Journal and The Quiet Slave. His most recent book of poems is Unbelievers, or ‘The Moor’. With the Cocos Malay community, he wrote an account of the settlement of the Cocos-Keeling Islands for a sound installation. During his residency at Hotel Penaga he will research the historical encounters between the Malay peoples and the Asian and European traders; focusing on the peripheral, Asian characters in the 17th century epic The Conquest of Malacca.

 

 

Following my previous projects related to European colonial encounters in Asia, foremost Southern Barbarians and Unbelievers, or ‘The Moor’, I have become interested in investigating the canonical texts of those encounters to see what understanding the explorers had of the local cultures. Often they disguised their knowledge and their
surprising sympathies. I have mostly looked to Portuguese accounts, the most famous of which are Fernão Mendes Pinto’s prose Peregrinaçam and the earlier epic poem, Os Lusiadas, by Luis vas de Camões. The latter is not only the subject of poems in Southern Barbarians, but also of The Bones of the Epic, my project with the Lisbon puppet-master Delfim Miranda and
art-noise ensemble A Favola da Madusa.

Now, after researching the slave-trade in South-east Asia as it influenced the forebears of the Cocos Malays who lived first in Malacca in the early 19th Century, I would like to write a long poem based on the Asian figures who appear in the periphery of a now largely forgotten Portuguese epic, Francisco de Sá de Meneses’ The Conquest of Malacca. These include the ‘kings’ of Sumatra, Malacca and Korea, and other characters from Cathay and Siam.

Due to my recent engagement with translation and sound production, even though the long poems will be written as in English, I aim to have it translated into both Malay and Portuguese, and produced, ultimately, either as a performance or multi-media work. I have started discussions about this with translators and others in Portugal, Singapore and Malaysia.

John was a resident artist in Hotel Penaga from December 2016 to end January 2017, supported by Asialink.

Awards:

  • Shortlisted for the Inaugural Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry, and for the Victorian and New South Wales Premier’s prizes for poetry. 2012
  • Centenary Medal for my “contribution to Australian culture and society”. 2003
  • Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry. 2001

ERYN @ Winnie Cheng

admin Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist , , ,
ERYN @ Winnie Cheng

ERYN uses a combination of pen and marker drawing, watercolour, acrylic painting and papercutting techniques to create meticulously detailed compositions filled with strange creatures in an otherworldly setting. Her use of fine lines to create form is largely inspired by book illustrations and the comic and animation industry. She focuses on themes of introversion and looking inwards to reflect on the interactions she experiences in her daily life.

These themes of introversion plays out in imaginary landscapes inspired by lush tropical rainforests, the frozen arctic plains, and even the dry unforgiving desert. Each landscape is shaped by thoughts and emotions in her mind and the process is at once aware yet unconscious. These landscapes are also removed from the mundane laws of physics, gravity, and proportion. Through this the artist creates a dreamlike quality in order to bring the viewer into an inner space to experience both the mysterious and the extraordinary.

ERYN was in residency at Hotel Penaga from September to November 2016. Her residency culminated in a one day exhibition, Strange Botanicals, in the hotel’s Reading Room. You can view photos here on Facebook.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Riel Jaramillo Hilario

admin Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist , ,
Riel Jaramillo Hilario

Riel Jaramillo Hilario (b. 1976) is a Filipino visual artist and curator, and was born in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, Philippines, which like George Town, is declared a UNESCO Heritage Site. He is a sculptor, painter and an art historian and was the curator for the Pinto Art Museum in Antipolo, Rizal.

Hilario’s main body of work are hand-carved wood figures inspired by rebultos, a colonial art form of religious statuary that was introduced from Spain to the Philippines by way of Mexico in the 1600s to the late 1900’s. Hilario uses the rebulto depicting subjects that are “para-psychological” phenomena, such as presences, place memories, popular mythologies and dreams. For the artist this practice fulfills the need “to render visual” that which are unseen. For his residency at Hotel Penaga in the month of August, Hilario will deploy “Place Memory” – a project that attempts to collect and take note of, occluded and manifested presences and psychic histories in and around spaces in George Town.

Hilario is a Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Awardee (2012). His work has been shown in several exhibitions in Adelaide, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Basel, Delhi, New York, Paris and Berlin. He has been artist-in-residence in Paris at the Cite Internationale des Arts (2012) and in New York at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2013) as a fellow of the Asian Cultural Council.

Riel was a Hotel Penaga resident for August 2016. For more information on Riel’s work, please visit his website.

Sharon Chin

admin Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist ,
Sharon Chin

Sharon Chin (b.1980, Petaling Jaya) is an artist and writer living in Port Dickson, a seaside town two hours drive from Kuala Lumpur.

She makes all kinds of things in all kinds of places, from galleries to city sidewalks. She’s hung sails across an embassy lobby, listened to strangers’ hearts on the streets of Sydney, and gotten teargassed while wearing a costume of yellow flowers. Recently, she bathed in public with a hundred people for “Mandi Bunga/Flower Bath”, a project at Singapore Biennale 2013, and painted weeds on political party flags for the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Queensland, Australia.

During her three month 2016 residency at Hotel Penaga, Sharon will be working on a series of linocut illustrations for writer Zedeck Siew’s short story collection about fantastic animals and plants, tentatively titled ‘Local Flora, Local Fauna.’ An exhibition of the prints will be held from 23 July – 7 August 2016 at Run Amok, which is located at Hin Bus Depot Art Centre on Jalan Gurdwara in Georgetown.

For more of Sharon and her work, you can visit her website.

Photo Credit to Azrul K Abdullah for Esquire Malaysia

Arko Datto

admin Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist ,
Arko Datto

Arko Datto was in residency at Hotel Penaga from February to April 2016.

My aim with photography is two-fold. I want to push the boundaries of photography, question what it means to be a photographer in the digital age while simultaneously playing the role of observer and commentator on critical contemporary social issues. I was on my way to a doctorate in the theoretical sciences before I decided to change course and explore the burgeoning field of contemporary photography.

I have been promenading across the globe for the past few years and am presently awaiting the next adventure the four winds will carry me to. Apart from working on my own photography related projects, I enjoy playing curator too and have been associated with the Kochi Biennale and OBSCURA Festival of Photography in this role.

Exhibitions & Projections:

  • Gangetic Interludes screened at VOIES OFF, Arles. 2015.
  • CROSSINGS shown at Angkor Photo Festival. 2014.
  • CROSSINGS exhibited at Mindpirates Vereinsheim, Berlin. 2014.
  • CROSSINGS exhibited at OBSCURA Festival of Photography, Malaysia.2014.
  • Paris: La Vie des Autres shown at the Angkor Photo Festival, 2013.
  • The River shown at the Delhi Photo Festival, 2013.
  • CYBERSEX and The River shown at OBSCURA, Malaysia. 2013.
  • Solo exhibition Realms Nocturna at the Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Kolkata. 2012.

Kafayat Quadri

admin Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist , , ,
Kafayat Quadri

Kafayat Quadri is a poet (poetographer), singer-songwriter, music producer and a certified attorney. She was the first African to speak and perform at the TEDxKLwomen, Malaysia in 2013. Her music and poetry have been performed on the stages of George Town Literary Festival, KAKISENI International Arts Festival, Generation-Y Music Festival, Lake Garden Music Festival, Coffee & Fringe Art Festival, and so on.

Her first album ‘KQ the EP’ which she co-produced with Aman Junaid, a Grammy Award Recipient and her second album ‘April 16′, instrumentals in honour of her mother can both be found on iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music & VEVO. Her prose poem was recently shortlisted by the PWDC Writers Workshop by Bernice Chauly for the End Violence Against Women Campaign & GTLF 2015. She is a recipient of the Hotel Penaga Artist Residency 2016 and her first poetry collection is due to be published by Garden Bench in the same year.

In anticipation of her first collection of poems, Kafayat is working on interpreting some of the poems from the upcoming poetry collection, Aquarius, alongside her photography as printed on canvas, which would be exhibited at the Penaga Hotel at the end of her residency. The photography exhibition would be from the 30th January until the 29th of February 2016.

Also, during her residency, she would commence work on the composition of the music to be featured in her 3rd album in collaboration some Malaysian rappers and poets (especially the Penang-based ones) for her newly found music & poetry genre – RAPCOUSTICS, which comprises mainly of a single musical instrument accompanied to a rap or poetry rendition with musical choruses at intervals which would come from a direct and on-spot musical interpretation of the poem or rap as rendered by the featured artist.

She is the founder and the Managing Editor of the Poetry Digest Magazine in Nigeria and hopes to get the world reading, writing and sharing poetry everyday.

Bridie Gillman

admin Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist , ,
Bridie Gillman

Bridie Gillman’s practice is grounded in her experiences of living in Indonesia when she was younger and further experience of being ‘in-between’ places and cultures since. Her work explores ways in which experiences of awkwardness and the ‘unknown’ can be translated through found materials, installation and photography.

Gillman is an emerging artist based in Brisbane, Australia and completed her Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours at Queensland College of Art in 2013. Since graduating she has conducted a residency in Indonesia and exhibited nationally and internationally.

She was in residency at Hotel Penaga from August to October 2015, where she researched the transient space of hotels, tourism and souvenirs in our increasingly globalised and transnational world. Her residency culminated in an exhibition titled Round Island Tour, held at Run Amok Gallery in Georgetown. For more information on her work, visit her website.

left: Souvenir: Tropical Fruits of Malaysia 2015, oil on canvas. right: In Thailand I got a girl in every club 2015, oil on canvas board.

left: Souvenir: Tropical Fruits of Malaysia 2015, oil on canvas. right: In Thailand I got a girl in every club 2015, oil on canvas board.

Left: Sprite at night 2015, Batik painting. Right: Local Lingo 2015, Set of 6 digitally printed postcards, edition of 100

Left: Sprite at night 2015, Batik painting. Right: Local Lingo 2015, Set of 6 digitally printed postcards, edition of 100.

Omar Musa

admin Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist , , ,
Omar Musa

Omar bin Musa (b. 1984) is an award-winning author, poet and rapper from Queanbeyan, New South Wales, Australia. He won the Australian Poetry Slam in 2008 and the Indian Ocean Poetry Slam in 2009. He has released two solo hip hop records (The Massive EP and World Goes to Pieces), two self-published books (The Clocks and Parang) and a self-titled album with international hip hop group MoneyKat. His debut novel Here Come The Dogs was published in 2014. Here Come the Dogs received praise from novelists Irvine Welsh and Christos Tsiolkas, was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and Musa was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.

Omar is the son of Australian arts journalist Helen Musa and Malaysian poet Musa bin Masran. He studied at the Australian National University and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Omar has combined hip hop music and poetry throughout his career. He was runner up in the 2008 Australian Poetry Slam, before winning in 2009 at the Sydney Opera House. He went on to win the Indian Ocean Poetry Slam in 2010. In 2010 he also did support for Gil Scott-Heron in Munich, Germany. In 2011 he was a guest panellist on ABC’s Q&A. In 2013 he received a standing ovation at TEDxSydney at the Sydney Opera House.

He has been a guest at numerous international writers festivals, including Jaipur Literary Festival in India and the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in Indonesia, as well as touring extensively in Asia, Europe and Australia. He has collaborated with numerous musicians and hip hop artists, including Akala, Soweto Kinch, Impossible Odds, The Last Kinection, Hau Latukefu from Koolism, Candice Monique, The Tongue, Lotek, Koolta and Geoff Stanfield.

He did a split residency in Hotel Penaga and Rimbun Dahan from June to August 2015.

Nina Rupena

Angela Hijjas Hotel Penaga, Resident Artist , ,
Nina Rupena

Nina Rupena is a Bosnian born project-based artist currently located in Melbourne. She works across mediums and practices using both visual art and design as tools for communicating ideas. Painting and drawing are her passion and she has a great interest in collaborative work. Since 2008, Nina worked on numerous collaborative projects with artists, designers, filmmakers, organisations and communities.

We wrap ourselves in cotton wool and try to iron, bleach and polish our emotions. We constantly try to predict the future and ignore the uncertain and fleeting nature of our existence. But isn’t the intensity of human experience what makes that very existence beautiful? Pain is intrinsic to the human experience. Without it something of our humanity, dignity and beauty of human life is trivialized. Life without experiencing pain breeds complacency, ignorance and passivity. Beauty is all around us I look for it in human experiences such as disability, old age, displacement and tragedy.

Nina is currently in residency at Hotel Penaga in Penang from February to April 2015. While in Penang, she started a project FACE IT:

“What do you wish you had known when you were younger? For the duration of my art residency I posed this question to the guests and staff at Hotel Penaga, trishaw drivers, backpackers, food vendors, people I met on the streets and bars. Then I drew their portraits, often on the spot or later from a photo. FACE IT is an ongoing project. The aim is to create a meaningful interaction and a space where people let their guards down and show their vulnerabilities.

Portraits and answers are uploaded daily at http://ninarupena.com.au/faceit/ or follow on Facebook and Instagram. You can find out more about her and her work at her website.