Resident Artist

Megan Keating

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Megan Keating
The Orchard, 2008, Oil on canvas, 122 x 153 cm.
The Orchard, 2008, Oil on canvas, 122 x 153 cm.

Dr Megan Keating was one of the Australian artists of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Artist Residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2008. At Rimbun Dahan she created Plantation Nation, a body of large-scale oil on canvas works, which explores the idea of “home” and how we cultivate an environment to ‘ manufacture’ this idea.

About the Artist

meganMegan Keating was born in Sydney, Australia where she worked in a design studio before attending the National Art School. She holds an Honours degree (first class) (1998) and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Fine Art (2002) from the University of Tasmania.

She is a multidisciplinary artist crossing installation, painting, and paper cutting. Her practice explores the nature of extremes. These extremes or conflicts can be seen as conditions and consequences of contemporary living; such divergences include tradition and modernity, beauty and terror, craft and technology, media and reality, nature and culture. Within this forum Keating often uses motifs that nudge at the edge of acceptability such as bombs, military iconography or pornography, which she renders as elegant silhouettes.

She has exhibited extensively since 1999 with recent solo projects including Different Reds, Gallery 4a, Asia- Australia Arts Centre, Sydney (2001); And then there were none… Gowlangsford Gallery, Sydney (2003); In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, 2-28 Memorial Museum (curated by Yaohua Su), Taipei (2006); The Year of the Rat, Xue Xue Institute, Taipei (2007); Deep Water Dark Water, Criterion Gallery, Hobart (2007); and Hard Love, Devonport Regional Gallery (2008). Group exhibitions include Papercuts, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2003); Love Letters to China, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney (2003); Drawn Out, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2005); Her name is Tan Hua, collaborative performance with Mei Li, Taipei (2006); This Crazy Love, Linden Gallery, Melbourne (2007); Loop, Barry Room Gallery, Taipei (2007); Under My Skin, Asialink touring exhibition to Manilla, Hanoi and Singapore (2008). Keating has also been the recipient of numerous awards including an Asialink Residency to Beijing (2000); Australia Council Residency, Tokyo (2003); Arts Tasmania Research and Development Grant (2003); Australian Council New Work Established Grant (2005); Asialink Residency, Taipei International Artists Village (2006) and Artist–in-residence, The European School, Taipei (2007). In 2008 Keating was the recipient of the year-long residency at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia. Her work is held in the collections of Artbank, BHP Billiton, Pat Corrigan Collection, Australia, Australian Embassy, Beijing, National Gallery of Australia, Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia, Taipei Artists Village, Taiwan and the University of Sydney.

Keating currently lives and works in Hobart where she lectures in painting and graphic design at the Tasmanian School of Art. In 2009 Keating will return to Tasmania to curate an exhibition of contemporary Taiwanese art for the 10 Days on the Island Festival and the University of Tasmania.

She is represented by Criterion Gallery, Hobart. www.criteriongallery.com.au.

Plantation Nation

Plantation Nation is a body of large-scale oil on canvas works, which explores the idea of “home” and how we cultivate an environment to ‘ manufacture’ this idea. Images and inspirations have been taken from observations of Malaysia, especially around the locality of Rimbun Dahan whilst concurrently thinking about the issues related to being away from home, what is a home, returning home and trying to establish a sense of home in a foreign environment.

Lauren Black

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Lauren Black

Malaysia-Australia Visual Artist Residency 2008

Lauren (right) talking to visitors at her studio.
Lauren (right) talking to visitors at her studio.

Lauren Black (b.1971) is a contemporary botanical artist from Tasmania, Australia. During her residency at Rimbun Dahan her work has focused around the theme of disappearance; exploring themes such as rare and endangered species, the relationship between human culture and botanical life and, the transient beauty of plants.

Works on exhibit will be in watercolour and pencil.

Artist’s Profile

Lauren Black is a leading figure in contemporary Australian botanical art. Her career in this specialised field commenced in 1997 with studies at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. Currently working as a freelance artist and teacher she has been involved in many projects and commissions including collaborations with botanists, artists, universities, community and government organisations. As well as exhibiting regularly as both a solo artist and as part of group exhibitions in Australia, Lauren has also curated numerous botanical exhibitions of historical and environmental importance.

In 2004 Lauren won the inaugural Margaret Flockton Award for excellence in botanical illustration, NSW, Australia. In 2005 she was awarded an Asialink visual arts residency to develop her practice further in Sri Lanka.

Lauren’s residency at Rimbun Dahan has introduced her to the rich and diverse flora of the tropics. She hopes to continue this relationship with tropical flora; developing projects that can reveal both the extraordinary beauty and precarious nature of this region for a wide audience.

Lauren’s work is held in numerous collections including:

  • HRH Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark
  • Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Tasmania, Australia
  • Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Tasmania, Australia
  • University of Tasmania Fine Art Collection
  • National Library of Australia, ACT
  • Royal Botanic Gardens Library, Melbourne, Vic. Australia
  • Private collections in Australia and Malaysia

Justin Lim

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Justin Lim

About the Artist

Justin Lim (b. 1983 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) completed his postgraduate studies in 2006 with the Master of Art (Fine Art) programme by The Open University UK conducted at Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore after obtaining a BA(Hons) Fine Art majoring in painting. He has exhibited widely in Malaysia and Singapore in various solo and group exhibitions. In 2007,he was the Artist-In-Residence at TAKSU, Kuala Lumpur and was awarded the 2008 Malaysia-Australia Visual Artist Residency at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia.

His new body of works examines the connection between existence, religion, politics and its relation in our contemporary social context. Using painting as a medium, Justin’s residency exhibition entitled Gods, Heroes & Myths represents and questions the human capability to distort the truth. Inspired and conceived between the 50th Merdeka celebrations and the 12th Malaysian General Elections, Justin uses random people and fictional characters to question various events surrounding the nation and people’s perception towards them. In relation, the works also explore subjects like manipulation, power and religion.

About the Work: Some Thoughts on Gods, Heroes and Myths

For Justin Lim’s third and latest solo exhibition, figures have literally come to the fore. In fact, they loom large on the canvasses. The interest in figuration is not a recent or sudden one. His formal training in figuration could be traced to when he was studying visual and digital arts in Malaysia from 2001 to 2003.1 This was later overshadowed by his interest in abstraction when he pursued his fine arts degree in Singapore from 2006 to 2006.

However, when Lim returned to Malaysia in 2007, he was caught up by what was happening around him, especially the political and social events of the time such as murder scandals2, the 50th Merdeka Celebrations3, the HINDRAF controversy4and the 12th Malaysian General Elections. The latter proved to be particularly momentous as popular dissatisfaction led to the loss of the ruling party’s two-thirds parliamentary majority as well as five states to the opposition. Lim recalled the almost ‘festive’ air during the election period when his neighbourhood was festooned with posters and banners, and the gripping political drama was the topic of constant conversation. This was also a period when Lim was questioning the reality of the ‘festivity’. Issues such as the role of religion, the influence of social structures and conditioning, and the relationship between power and truth were pondered upon. How much autonomy do we really have in life?  And how do we relate to and perceive the people around us? This then led Lim to reflect on the political and social changes occurring in his midst. What is the relationship between power and politics, race and religion? How does the mass media influence public perception? How much should we believe of what we read? Can we really trust what we see? And how does one make sense of this paradoxical, topsy-turvey world that we live in?

Questions like these are explored through the use of figuration in Lim’s new works. In the case of the largest painting Gods, Heroes and Myths, the figures press upon the viewer, popping to life from a pristine flat background. Using the parade of characters, Justin highlights a number of ambivalences and paradoxes. Sumo and American wrestlers are a source of entertainment but are also treated as heroes by many in their home countries. So, how seriously should they be taken by us? Two other figures strike dance-like poses with eyes half-closed. Are they dancing or going into some sort of trance – one is never quite sure. There is a man sporting a Mohawk haircut and punk clothing. As an icon of anti-establishment counterculture, he takes silent aim at the central figure in the picture. A butcher, with knife in hand, who stands amidst hanging carcasses, looks at the viewer quizzically.  He wears a white rounded cap, usually associated with the taqiyah worn by Muslim men. How do we regard this enigmatic character? In an age when terrorism-driven fears have exacerbated irrational exaggerations and stereotyping, where is the place for truth and tolerance? In the work Animal Farm, Lim takes inspiration from the book by George Orwell, a cautionary tale about power and corruption. Featuring a line-up of animal carcasses stripped of all marks of identity, the painting seems to be reminding us that regardless of our desires, convictions and achievements, this is the ultimate destiny for everyone – to become mere remnants of anonymous flesh, nothing more, nothing less.

The notorious murder of a Mongolian woman with its lurid headlines of a gruesome murder using explosives, allegations over a shady purchase of submarines, and the involvement of the police and prominent political individuals, had transfixed the public for much of late 2006 and 2007.5 In addition, the turmoil on the international front, ranging from Gulf War to the oil crisis, provided much food for thought. The use of ghosts as a metaphor by Lim is an interesting one. Ghosts are said to haunt the living, just as the excesses of Malaysian politics continue to make their presence felt throughout the past 50 years.6 Ghosts are also sometimes regarded as the repositories of our irrational fears and suspicions. One characteristic of Malaysian politics has been the periodic resurrection of the so-called ‘bogeyman’. Referring to a terrifying spectre used as a threat to misbehaving children, politicians often resort to racial issues to incite popular unease or unrest within a particular ethnic community, thereby manipulating them to behave in ways which have not been helpful in fostering greater trust and understanding within a plural society like Malaysia.7 Lim has, though his canvases, created a disturbing world where ghosts such as the Toyol (slave ghost used for stealing money), Hantu Air (water ghost), Hantu Tetek (breast ghost) and Orang Minyak (oil man) collide with the submarines, warplanes, suited businessmen, petroleum kiosks and hand grenades from our  world. The atmosphere evoked in these works is certainly nightmarish and unreal, but is it any worse than the times which we live in?

Lim is an artist who has always been curious to question and investigate the world around him. As his personal circumstances changed, so did his field of exploration, and the means of his investigation also varied accordingly. The forms may be different but his investigative and creative spirit remains the same.

Low Sze Wee (Assistant Director – Curation & Collection) Singapore Art Museum

1 Interviews with artist on 6 June and 27 December 2008.

2 This refers to the trial of a political analyst over the murder of Mongolian woman in October 2006. The case became a political scandal because the defendant had close ties to the governing party as well as Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak.

3 This refers to a series of private and public activities which celebrated Malaysia’s 50th Independence Day in 2007.

4 HINDRAF refers to the ‘Hindu Rights Action Force’ – a coalition of non-governmental Hindu organisations – which had initiated protests and rallies to preserve their community rights in late 2007. These later led to several arrests and detentions without trial by the government.

5 This refers to the same scandal mentioned in footnote 2.

6Malaysia was ranked the 47th out of 180 countries in the 2008 Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International. This was said to be its worst performance since the ranking was introduced in 1995. (refer to http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/cpi2008/cpi_2008_table and http://limkitsiang.com/archive/2008/sep08/lks4912.htm )

7There are numerous references to ‘bogeyman’ in Malaysian popular literature such as Internet blogs. (refer tohttp://educationmalaysia.blogspot.com/2006/09/bogeyman-politics.html andhttp://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/hrfeatures/HRF70.htm  where the education system and the Internal Security Act are respectively referred to as the ‘bogeyman’.)

Joey Chua & Mcebisi Bhayi

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Joey Chua & Mcebisi Bhayi

Joey Chua (Singapore) and Mcebisi Bhayi (South Africa) were resident choreographers at Rimbun Dahan in 2008. Mcebisi and Joey’s collaboration was the first recorded instance ever of a female Asian choreographer working with a male African choreographer to produce a single work.

Tracing: Dance Dialogues in Singapore and South Africa

Mcebisi, a South African Xhosa man who swears by his customs, and Joey, a Singaporean woman who can barely speak her Chinese dialect Hakka, decided to start a dialogue. After months of letter writing and intimate sharing of childhood memories, their exchange shifts to the present as they come face-to-face, finding both common ground and contrasts in each other’s dance background, personality and physicality. In tracing the minds and bodies of one another, they hope a new dance vocabulary emerges on their creative journey together.

The dance collaboration between Joey Chua and Mcebisi Bhayi continues to evolve as a work-in-progress showing in KL followed with appearances in Hong Kong and at Singapore Esplanade’s dan:s festival. The finished work will premiere at the FNB Dance Umbrella 2009, a major dance festival in South Africa. Chua, one of Singapore’s rising young dancer-choreographers, has been involved in many collaborative projects that have taken her to festivals around the world. Bhayi is a dancer, choreographer and educator who has been nominated as Most Promising Male Dancer in Contemporary Style at the FNB Dance Umbrella 2001.

Tracing was performed at the Fonteyn Studio Theatre, FAB, Section 14, Petaling Jaya on 1-2 August 2008.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=M_NlOFi6cpM

The images below and the video above show Mcebisi and Joey improvising in the studio at Rimbun Dahan.

Donna Miranda

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Resident Choreographer March-June 2007

Artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan from March to June 2007, Donna created new performance piece bringing together local Malaysian dancers, video and sound artists to explore the idea of waiting, passing time, momentum and interruption in Extended Periods of Waiting, which was performed on June 8 2007 at The Annexe Central Market. The work featured live sound by SiCKL, video projection by Saiful Razman and Au Sow Yee, lighting by Roman Cruz and performance by Donna Miranda, Bilqis Hijjas, Yuka Tanaka, Louise Yow Sing-Hwa, Low Shee Hoe, Shaifuddin Mamat and Chan Seau Huvi.

 

The trio section from Extended Periods of Waiting was performed again as part of the Tari! 07 festival at ASWARA in July 2007.

During her stay, Donna also created I Will Think About It, a contribution to the 2007 Art for Nature exhibition in collaboration with visual artist Saiful Razman, and featuring Poodien. She also conducted a workshop in contemporary dance, creative process and free movement improvisation at the Annexe Central Market in June 2007.

Donna and Poodien creating I Will Think About It.
Donna and Poodien creating I Will Think About It.

Donna received dance training as national government scholar of the Philippine High School for the Arts, pursuing professional practice and further training with Ballet Philippines, Philippine Ballet Theater, Myra Beltran’s Dance Forum and specialized training in contemporary dance at the 2005 DanceWEB Europe Scholarship Programme, in Vienna, Austria. She has since been actively involved in multimedia projects that explore new possibilities through works that combine contemporary dance, new media, fashion, physical theater, spoken word and sound. In 2000, she co-founded Green Papaya Art Projects, building a research platform for contemporary dance in Manila through its Anatomy Projects (AP+). Her solo ‘Beneath Polka-dotted Skies’ recently received 2007 Jury Prize Award in the Yokohama Solo X Duo Competition in Japan.

EU & ME Dance Collective

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EU & ME Dance Collective

pond

The four-person dance collective EU & ME (European Union & a little MISTAKE and an EXCUSE) consisting of

Joey CHUA Poh Yi (Singapore, Hong Kong)
Marie CHABERT (France, UK)
Csilla NAGY (Hungary)
Rhys TURNER (Australia)

performed their work FIND.MOVE.PLAY, an interactive physical theatre performance with digital art, for the opening night of the Art for Nature Exhibition at Rimbun Dahan on Saturday 24 July 2010. [Photos below by Anthony Pelchen.]

The Collective began in 2008 in New York, in the frame of the Dance Collective programme organised by OMI international Arts Centre. Then the artists collaborated in the Czech Republic as resident artists of CESTA Festival. After four successful presentations in Hong Kong and Singapore this performance at Rimbun Dahan is the closing show of a one-month tour.

EU & ME arrived at Rimbun Dahan on Saturday 17 July, and within the space of a week created a 45-minute work tailored to the specific spaces of Rimbun Dahan as well as inspired by the artists’ own experiences of being on a residency in Southeast Asia and discovering life in Malaysia.

FIND.MOVE.PLAY was performed at 10pm on 24 July as the final event on the opening night of Art for Nature. Information about the performance was provided through an announcement during the opening ceremonies, and by flyers distributed on the dinner tables.

The performers used a number of different sites around the property, including the central space of the underground gallery, the reflective lotus pond, outdoor sculptures and herb garden. The performers invited the audience of 100-200 people to follow them from site to site, linking the vignettes with a narrative about Orpheus and searching for love.

The performance incorporated digital art, with a dance film taking a comic look at residencies at Rimbun Dahan, and an interactive soundscape in which selected audience members wearing headphones heard the accompanying music change as they moved around the space. The audience was also invited to participate in the work, manipulating the dancers, helping them with specific tasks, answering questions and holding flashlights.

FIND.MOVE.PLAY alternated impressionistic romantic moments – Joey Chua wearing a traditional Chinese cheongsam and singing a Chinese love song while paddling herself about among waterlilies, or Marie Chabert flinging herself about among towered sculptures of lit glass – with moments of slapstick comedy, as when Marie slapped Rhys Turner on the face in retaliation for his bad pickup lines, and moments of unforgettable eeriness, such as Csilla Nagy’s mysterious inhuman emergence from the darkened pool followed by her literally stalking a quivering audience member. The tone of the work transitioned easily, tracing the natural atmospheres of the various different performance sites.

In addition to being a fun, funny and thought-provoking work in its own right, FIND.MOVE.PLAY also functioned perfectly as a teaser for Dancing in Place, a weekend of site-specific contemporary dance performances that will take place at Rimbun Dahan during the final week of the Art for Nature exhibition. By using multiple venues in very different ways, the audience was able to appreciate the potential for site-specific work at Rimbun Dahan. For many members of the audience more used to visual art, it served as an accessible introduction to contemporary dance and audience participation.

This performance was supported by nka and National Arts Council (Singapore).

DSC_0409_JPG

Ahmad Fuad Osman

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Ahmad Fuad Osman
Above: title: 'Samson', acrylic and charcoal on paper, 152x183cm, 2007. Collection: Dr. Steve Wong.
Above: title: ‘Samson’, acrylic and charcoal on paper, 152x183cm, 2007. Collection: Dr. Steve Wong.

As an artist, Ahmad Fuad Osman (b. 1969) is not limited by the restrictions of medium or mode of expressions which is evident in his drawings, paintings, digital prints, video, multimedia installations and performances. He graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the School of Fine Arts, Institut Teknologi MARA Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia in 1991. He has had five solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows locally and internationally and recipient of numerous awards and grants. He lives and works in Kuala Lumpur and Melaka.

Ahmad Fuad Osman’s new body of works of paintings and slide projection for residency exhibition titled ‘Recollections of Long Lost Memories’ is initially inspired by the 50th Merdeka celebration. Large oil on canvas paintings deal with the lack of historical awareness especially with the younger generation in their discounted version of Malaysia’s history, current and topical issues, as they all are too caught up with latest gadget or trend. By selecting certain important occasions or moments in the nation’s history and using old archival photos related to the event as reference, Ahmad Fuad painted them larger than life in black & white and inserted an anonymous but contemporary person into the composition, juxtaposing the past with the present, creating a dialogue.

Fuad presented his new body of work at the 13th Rimbun Dahan Residency Exhibition, alongside the work of Australian resident artist Gabrielle Bates, 13 to 27 January 2008, at the Rimbun Dahan gallery.

Above: A still from 'Dreaming of Being a Somebody, Afraid of Being a Nobody (Malaysian Version)', single channel video, 16 mins 37 sec, colour sound, 2007. This work was created for the Art for Nature 2007 exhibition at Rimbun Dahan.
Above: A still from ‘Dreaming of Being a Somebody, Afraid of Being a Nobody (Malaysian Version)’, single channel video, 16 mins 37 sec, colour sound, 2007. This work was created for the Art for Nature 2007 exhibition at Rimbun Dahan.

BY CARMEN NGE

The occasion of our nation’s 50th Merdeka this year has been a convenient excuse to excavate the past. To celebrate our coming of age, art galleries respectfully mount exhibitions that reference the historic occasion or that unearth artifacts from a (not so) distant past. It was at such an exhibition that the idea for his “Recollections of the Long Lost Memories” series came to Ahmad Fuad Osman.

As he gazed upon an old picture of Tunku Abdul Rahman crossing a river, Fuad kept seeing another person standing in front of the Tunku. In his mind’s eye, this someone was distinctly from the present and as Fuad pored over other pictures, more figures from the present began to people the blank spaces in the photographs.

“History is false memory,” Fuad muses as we chat in his residency studio. “We don’t get to influence history thus we don’t care about it that much.” Certainly, most young Malaysians’ marginal contact with history occurs in the classroom in the form of dry textbooks and uninspired teaching.

History is false memory because history is selective; the saying that history is written by the victors is certainly true in our own nation. Why do we remember Tunku’s “Merdeka” cry but not the bombing of the Tugu Negara in 1975? What deal did the ruling elites strike with the British to gain independence? Those of us who lived through the events of 1957 remember it very differently from those of us yet to be born. But discrepancies exist, even among those who experienced similar events. Humans are adroit at forgetting details they’d rather not remember. Who preserves our nation’s memories and to what end? And do younger Malaysians really care?

Fuad’s paintings and slides for “Recollections of the Long Lost Memories” are, in part, a response to our nostalgia-steeped 50th anniversary celebrations. His huge canvases juxtapose past and present by constructing a collision between the older and younger generations, who are clearly differentiated by the former’s sepia, monochromatic tones and the latter’s brighter colours. Fuad’s portraits of Tunku are confidently rendered in strong brushstrokes—Malaysia’s most revered Prime Minister is, unsurprisingly, clearly remembered and his aura, intense and palpable.

The ‘intruders’ from the present, however, add a layer to Fuad’s work never before seen. They inject themselves into archived history and Tunku’s time-space with irreverent gusto and youthful exuberance; the hippie-like character in Fuad’s slide projections makes us smile. Here is an updated, post-reality TV and retro cool version of John Lennon’s doppelgänger—complete with round sunglasses and a peacenik vibe but who is also an ardent Manchester United fan. Is this the overseas-educated, postmodern Melayu Baru in search of his roots or is he merely soaking in the historical sights to feed his cam-whoring?

For the first time in the artist’s oeuvre, humour surfaces. From his salad days at UiTM and subsequent first few exhibitions as part of the Matahati art group in the early 90s, Fuad has always expressed a penchant for the philosophical and the serious. From early abstract pieces to later figurative ones, as well as occasional installation and performance art, Fuad is best described as a heady artist. He has experimented with irony and visual satire but never humour and whimsy.

Perhaps his year long residency in Korea and a previous shorter stint in Vermont, USA has allowed Fuad new vistas of expression. It is a risk to be sure for audiences rarely expect to see humour in art. Yet it is a fitting tool with which to interrogate our nation’s history because as we look back on the last 50 years and consider the antics of our politicians, the deplorable state of our leaky infrastructure, the shenanigans of our police force and the lackadaisical attitude of the populace, how can we not laugh at ourselves?

Gabrielle Bates

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Gabrielle Bates

Malaysia-Australia Visual Artist Residency 2007

BatesG1The 2007 Australian artist in residence at Rimbun Dahan is Gabrielle Bates (6. 1967). An honors graduate from the University of Sydney, New South Wales, she has exhibited professionally since 1993 and is the recipient of a number of awards, grants and residency placements. Gabrielle’s works have been acquired for corporate, institutional and private collections in Australia, UK, USA and Malaysia.

‘Mouth of flowers’ is Gabrielle’s new body of experimental paintings, objects and video work produced this year while in residence at Rimbun Dahan, Kuala Lumpur. Gabrielle’s exploration of patterns and figuration has produced a series of canvas-based works that combine water colour, Rimbun Dahan pond water, hand-embroidered nylon thread, Chinese ink and synthetic polymer paint. The works combine Southeast Asian motifs, signage and local media with figuration to explore the political and poetic subtleties of life for artists in Malaysia and southeast Asia.

Artists such as Saiful Razman, Noor Mahnun Mohamed, Husin Hourmain, Donna Miranda, Ahmad Fuad Osman, Shaffudin Mamat, Low Shee Hoe, Lau Mun Leng and Bilqis Hijjas have all posed for Bates during her residency. In turn, she has transformed them into players within a fictional narrative that circles the conflicts, anxieties, insights and advantages of (self) censorship.

Her objects, collected from the ordinary Kelompang jari (Sterculia foetida) pods, have been reconfigured with nylon thread and decorative elements such as sequins and velvet appliqué, morphing the pods into a collection of anthropomorphous objects.

Gabrielle presented ‘Mouth of flowers’ at the 13th Rimbun Dahan Residency Exhibition, alongside the work of Malaysian resident artist Ahmad Fuad Osman, 13 to 27 January 2008, at the Rimbun Dahan gallery.

The elasticity of a golden thread

by Gina Fairley

Our lives are filled with pattern: The patterned regimentation of our actions; our personal ‘style’; the family that frames us; our cultural fabric; conservatisms and beliefs. We wear an invisible code that defines who we are, our DNA. Collectively, this is ourpattern.

Gabrielle Bates has long used quasi-ethnographic motifs as a device to transfer information about the people she paints. In her earlier portraits the sitter reverberated across the canvas, floating on a flat colour field. Like a print slightly out of register, their ghost-like repetition, or flaw, reaffirmed their humanity. Bold black outlines held their pattern allowing us to decode who they might be.

While these early portraits offer a clear trajectory to these new works, the “Mouth of Flowers” series comes from a very different position: psychologically, emotionally and culturally. Their patterning goes beyond a descriptor to physically consume the form. The body and pattern have fused as one.

Malaysia’s hybridity makes an indelible impression on every artist visiting Rimbun Dahan. For Bates that engagement was filled with multiplicity: it offered an organic tangibility to the work spawned from its bounty of pods, natural patterns and pond water; it provided the solitude to rediscover embroidery, sewing a personal and emotional narrative; and it offered the gift of insight, journeying beyond perceptions.

Finding Malaysia’s pattern is complex. At an elementary level it lies in its graphic traditions of batik, henna decoration and Islamic geometry. At a cerebral level it is the patterning of socio-political / religious striations of a nation at a time when it is asking ‘what is its contemporary identity?’ Bates’ work traces a thread across these ideas, oscillating between reverie and bounce. Remove the exotic ‘pattern’ and it is a narrative caught in a web of time, territory and transition.

Bates found this narrative in a coterie of artists, dancers and musicians who explore the peripheral through their creativity. The narratives are dense but less self-effacing; the ‘outlines’ have become diffused. She replaces ethnographic patterning with a floral fragility, caught between romantic apparition and an earthy reality. Often clothed in little more than an organic epidermis, her players are exposed. But these characters are not vulnerable. If we look at the painting “Armour”, banana flowers (bunga pisang) rise up like a noxious weed, beautiful but threatening, clutching at a woman’s neck rendering her speechless. But she does not turn away; her gaze does not flare in distress – it is a knowing censure.

In “Stir” she sleeps enveloped by the same flowers. Is it the peace of submission, death or sleep? Is she weightless or weighted by her floral shroud? Paired with a mirror-image caught between cartoon and apparition, it sits against a brave white ground acting as a stark alter-ego to the velvety, painterly background of the sleeping figure. It is a kind of intermezzo between figuration and the ephemeral.

“KL-ing me softly” is equally charged from the outset, challenging protocols and permissions. But there is an inherent softness that sits counter to any overt act or statement. It mixes memory and ambivalence with a restless exoticism. These works are about a visual psychology. Just as a Rorschach drawing triggers association but has no one reading, Bates has moved beyond the clarity of descriptors to an elasticity of meaning. She pushes us beyond the desire to translate and give over to poetic nuance.

The materials of these new works take on a symbolism we have not seen before. Her stitched portraits have a latent violence or emotional trigger. The act of piercing the surface of a painting has that same duality as a tattoo; it is branding and an aesthetic expression. “First cut” captures this tension, the thread’s assertive lines slashing the canvas. The figure turns from himself but is denied a freedom, anchored by his own voice. Rendered speechless, we ask who has the power of censure over this voice? Caught in the strain between a sewn and brushed mark, it is a courageous embrace of new materials.

Bates similarly plays off the organic purity of seed pods against lurid plastic flowers and synthetic thread. The pods disgorge their floral centres, over-ripe with fleshy fertility. These are incredibly sensual objects that Bates lashes into control. The synthetic materiality of the flowers beg the question, are we fooled by beauty? It is another veil seemingly ‘natural’ yet contrived, controlled and plastic?

Many of these works teeter on the edge where things are raw and flirt with the unknown. To quote writer John Barrett-Lennard, “Accent can be thought of as a kind of excess, a disturbance in the smoothness of sound and communication.” (1.) An accent, like a pattern, has a personal intonation. It is about reading between the lines; it is the place of hyphens. Sometimes it is barely audible; sometimes it has the gentleness of a lover and at others the affirmation of belief. “Mouth of Flowers” is a place to hear things.
Gina Fairley

1. John Barrett-Lennard “Here and Now” catalogue essay for Simryn Gill, PICA exhibition, Perth 2001.

 

Patricia Sykes

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Patricia Sykes

Australian poet and librettist Patricia Sykes spent her 2006 residency at Rimbun Dahan working on the libretto for a full-length opera, The Navigator, a collaborative work with composer Liza Lim. Sykes travelled through Malaysia and to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat researching culture and society in order to enrich her libretto and develop the theatrical aspects of the opera. Sykes is the author of two poetry collections and has edited four books of poetry.  Her work focuses strongly on the interactions between people and their contexts and her residency helped explore how a host culture nurtures itself, its people and the environment.

Supported by the Australia Council.