“Saya Cinta Kamu”, 2005, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 130 cm x 2.
Arahmaiani’s exhibition, entitled Lecture on Painting, Part I, accompanied by photographs by Bernice Chauly, will be on display at Vallentine Willie Fine art from 24 August 2005 to Saturday 10 September 2005.
The artist will give a talk on her work on Saturday, 3rd SEPTEMBER, 2005, at 3.30 pm. Tea will be served.
Vallentin Willie Fine Art,
1st Floor, 17 Jalan Telawi 3
Bangsar Baru
59100 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
Tel: 60 3- 2284 2348
Fax: 60 3- 2282 5190
rachel@artsasia.com.my
www.artsasia.com.my
Southeast Asian Paintings & Works of Art
Gallery & resource room opening hours Monday – Friday: 12 noon – 6pm. Closed on Sundays and public holidays.
About the artist:
Coming soon to VWFA is one of Indonesia’s most outstanding contemporary artists, Arahmaiani (b. Bandung, W.Java, 1961). Working mainly in performance and installation art since the early 80s, Arahmaiani has gained an international reputation for her often provocative work. Her Indonesian
roots, Western art training and humanist concerns has bought Arahmaiani to numerous exhibitions and performances, ranging from those held directly in streets protests in Indonesia, contemporary art museums in Asia, Europe and America, and notably to events as such as the pretigious 50th Venice
Biennale 2003 and the “Breaking Words” Performance Art Expo in Nagano, Japan (2004). More recently, Arahmaini has been working on art and social projects in Kuala Lumpur and Germany.
For her first solo exhibition in Malaysia, Arahmaiani will use this private gallery as a platform to question the mechanisms and politics that govern the making and selling of art. As the artist aptly puts it “I am not against the market, but I hate market fundamentalism, exploitation, monopoly – market terrorism!” To express this delicate negotiation between her needs and personal journeys as an artist with the pressures of mass consumerism, the artist will present a series of painted diptychs and also give a performance. “I want to turn the medium of painting into performance. I want to transform the individual ‘product’ of painting for the commercial art world into a complex question of authorship and its marketability”. Photographs by Bernice Chauly of Arahmaiani’s performance ‘body/text’ will also be on view.
‘Two Women’. Oil on Canvas. 79 x 62cm ( 2 Panels). 2008. Exhibited at ArTriangle II in 2008.
Yau Bee Ling was one of the Malaysian artists of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency in 2005.
Above: From The Gardener Series – exhibited at the 2005 Art for Nature exhibition in Rimbun Dahan.
Bio
Yau Bee Ling was born in 1972, Port Klang. She graduated from Malaysian Institute of Art (1992-1995) with award of full scholarship in fine art course (painting). Since then, she has been actively practising and exhibiting in Kuala Lumpur since she graduated in 1995. She was selected by the National Art Gallery to represent Malaysia at the 9th Asian Art Biennal in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1999. In 2000, she was selected by the renowned regional curator T.K. Sabapathy to exhibit at Singapore Sculpture Square. In 2002, her paintings were chosen to exhibit at the 2nd Fukuoka Triennale, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and her paintings were collected as part of the Fukuoka Museum permanent collection. In 2004, her paintings traveled to Hokkaido Museum of Contemporary Art as part of “Soul of Asia: Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Collection”. In 2005, she was awarded as Rimbun Dahan, Malaysian – Australian Artist-in-Residence programme which was generously supported by Hijjas Kasturi Association/ Rimbun Dahan, Kuala Lumpur.
Exhibition Catalogue Essay
by Sharon Chin
If there is one thing that characterizes moving out of a home and into a new one, it is the humble cardboard box. More than being a container for objects, they also hold memories, histories and hopes for the future. Looking at Bee Ling’s previous works that paint the idiosyncrasies of home life in all its ritual complexity, and now at the new series created during the year-long Rimbun Dahan residency, I am reminded strongly of unpacking a cardboard box in a new house – the jumble of the past colliding with a heady anticipation of new independence.
Rimbun Dahan has been a transition of sorts for Bee Ling. Together with her husband and fellow artist, she has moved out of the old family home into new territories and new roles. What sort of home has Rimbun Dahan provided for the artist? It was always to be a temporary abode, but dwelling somewhere for any amount of time means that habits are developed, certain rituals invented, and time and care is devoted to one’s surroundings. This is the nature of inhabitation. No place is ever neutral, nor stays unchanged if you place someone in it.
Hence we are presented with paintings that act like windows looking in and out. In the foreground, views are framed – here by a stripe of color, there by the cheerful edge of a floor rug. We look in upon traces of life lived at Rimbun Dahan. In Celebration, for example, a multitude of empty glasses tells us light-heartedly of the consumption and chatter that accompany a heightened social occasion. Windows in the background leading to the world outside reinforce the in-between nature of these works, reminding us (and the artist) that all this must sit in context of a wider societal picture.
A period of transition is also one of negotiation. For Bee Ling, there are many roles to play as artist, wife, woman, daughter and now, daughter-in-law. In between must lie the personal search for individuality. As such, in the paintings, tables become platforms for a parliament of objects. It is not so much what is depicted, as the way they are grouped. They crowd each other, jostling for space and prominence, much as one must feel torn between fulfilling the many expectations of society, family and the self. There are quieter dialogues though, such as in Make-up set on Pink Table and Typewriter on Pink Table. These reveal a calmness that exists within the intimate private space of a person.
We could see the home as a container for all aspects of our lives – basically everything we put into a cardboard box upon moving out, as well as our very bodies. There are many symbolic containers in Bee Ling’s works, taking the form of baskets, which sit large upon the aforementioned tables. The objects that fill these containers are less defined, blurring into each other in a riot of color that threatens to overspill the confines of the basket, onto pristine table-tops and into the surrounding environment. These seem to speak of emotions and the sheer energy of living, the fruits of which are naturally a vibrant and at times chaotic harvest.
Here we see the artist pushing the potential of her medium, reveling in paint’s materiality to convey thought and feeling. In Working Hard in the Kitchen, for example, a basket is filled with a jumble of groceries. The brushstrokes overlap each other on a surface that is built and rebuilt again. These painterly gestures are almost self-contradictory – having started by making meaning, the artist proceeds to efface that meaning with other layers. This is reflective of a self-identity that is mutable and in constant change. After all, as any cook will tell you, in the kitchen one must be organizer, toiler, purchaser, and provider!
Moving out also means moving on. It takes courage to do so, to recognize the need for personal privacy, freedom and individuality. These are as important as the familial ties that bond people together. As much as we move into a new place, we carry with us that which has made us what we are. Yet if we hold on too firmly to the past, we can stifle the opportunity for growth. I see these new paintings as a transition between moving out and moving in, a record of the first brave steps into a world and a home of one’s own making.
Sharon Chin is an artist and writer. She majored in sculpture at Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia and has been living and working in Kuala Lumpur for the past year.
My garden does not exist in reality but evolved as a mental picture of those who inhabit it; a garden that oscillates between dream and reality. It changes from a site for self-discovery to a place for cultivating personal vision.The Gardener Series – exhibited at the 2005 Art for Nature exhibition.
Australian sculptor Tony Twigg was the Australian resident artist of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency in 2005.
Bio
Tony Twigg has produced over 40 solo exhibitions of wall-based objects and installations in Australia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore and the U.S.A., and has been included in group exhibitions across Asia and Europe. He received his Master of visual Arts from the City Art Institute Sydney in 1985. He lives and works in Sydney, Australia and Manila, Philippines.
Tony’s numerous exhibitions have been presented in a variety of disciplines including, performance, film/video, installation, painting and sculpture, as well as curatorial practice. He is represented in private collections and public collections in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines including: the National Gallery of Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Ateneo Art Gallery Manila and the BenCab Museum, in the Philippines.
Tony Twigg in conversation with Gina Fairley. Rimbun Dahan December 2005
How did your journey to Rimbun Dahan, from Manila to Ho Chi Minh, up the Mekong to Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat, colour your arrival in Malaysia?
I arrived in Kuala Lumpur with certain expectations of an Asian experience built around the places I’ve gravitated to over the past decade. These are places where people quickly adapt ‘things’ – found objects – into life’s necessities, objects I see as ‘accidental art’. There’s an intuitive creativity in their making which speaks to me passionately of the human spirit. K.L. is a first world city, complete with all the accoutrements of now, where the prerequisites of “life-style” decide how things look rather than human need. Somehow, the first marks I made were ruled lines and then a lot of time was spent looking for a mark that comes from here, that is Malaysia, not just K.L.
Where did you find that Malaysian mark?
Here, along Jalan Kuang, at a demolition site, in discarded fish boxes beside a pasaraya and as crazy looking bottles of Chinese liquor from Kuang. It turned out that the Malaysian mark, for me, was the fish box. I started working with the ‘physical’ line of the object rather than its inspiration. The major impact was the surface. I found the subtle and random shifts in colour and texture of the timber aesthetically moving, so I began using thinner and thinner paint until I had the courage to use none. For me these fish boxes engaged the spirit of the original maker. There are two hands at work in my pictures.
Clearly you have a passion for the found object, but this feeling of a dialogue with the ‘original maker’ is a new development.
It occurred to me while making the works called 30 Fish Boxes. My proposition was simple: join three fish boxes together vertically to make a construction. As I worked the possibilities multiplied and I felt like I was jamming with the guy who made the boxes. The piece MT Madras was an amazing find and the most extreme relationship with the original ‘maker’. I found it in Brickfields during Deepavali and photographed it. The crate collapsed neatly enough to make it back to the studio. Not only did it not need paint, it didn’t need any carpentry either. My role as artist was limited to identifying the object, and conservator. This piece is the end point in the show and it has necessitated relinquishing certain controls over my surfaces and the arrangement of my constructions. Slowly, I’ve become aware of how subversively an object can be spirited. Accidental art has a great deal of beauty that I try to emulate by considering the making process rather than considering what beauty ‘looks’ like. The result is a set of elementary forms that have a certain universal understanding common to places like Chau Doc, Pasir Mas or Manila – the bird cages of Kelantan are a good example of this – but put them in cities like Sydney or K.L., they become exotic.
A dialogue with space is a constant in your work: architectural space, conceptual space, personal space, cultural space – it’s not static. Do you perceive an ‘Asian’ space?
I find the sensation of space physically exciting. I’ve come to realise that the way we perceive space governs our proximity to the objects we encounter. You and I might see U-shaped canyons walking through the city, but a town planner or crane driver would probably see it differently. In that sense, the way we perceive space becomes the operating system of our aesthetic. The idea of stacking space, and how that establishes illusionistic depth without referencing perspective, I think, is essentially ‘Asian’. Seeing Gao Xingjian’s recent show at Singapore Art Museum underlines this and it was also the big discovery for Ian Fairweather, an English artist who worked through Asia in the ‘30s on his way to becoming Australia’s pre-eminent Abstract Expressionist.
Do you consciously push the parameters of space outside the edges of the work to engage the gallery wall?
Yes, it is absolutely vital. It is not a question of an object surrounded by space, it’s a composition of positive and negative space. So, like a doughnut, the defining feature of the work could be an empty space. As a result my works are often multi-panelled because there are moments when the negative space is stronger than the positive space and consequently the work splits in two or perhaps fails to join. In this kind of work there are no right or wrong decisions, and the final relationship of the parts can change as they adapt to the constraints of a location or reflect the taste of a new owner. However, the drawing of the work – its lines, its spaces and its surfaces – remain unchallenged.
About the Work
Thompson Birdwing Butterfly (above), exhibited at the 2005 Art for Nature exhibition.
Shortly after arriving in Kuala Lumpur, I found a very appealing broken wooden box in Chinatown. Back in the studio, I put it together as an ordinary looking thing that I then tried to liven up with yellow paint. A month or two later, I was on a demolition site and found two pieces of circular something in wood. Back in the studio it was a match for my yellow construction. Once it was together I started wondering if a butterfly might be a solution to the picture, inspired by the Art of Nature show. Bee Ling came to my studio and said that I had a word on my box, and it was butterfly. Next Angela was looking at this piece and said, “Look, a yellow and black butterfly,” just like my work, outside the studio, in the garden. It is Troides aeacus Thompsonii, a male Thompson Birdwing.
tree – Victoria Cattoni (in collaboration with Masnoramli Mahmud).
Victoria Cattoni spent an Asialink residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2005. She is a visual artist working in the mediums of video, installation and multimedia. Cattoni’s practice during the residency focused on dress and its cultural interpretations. The first half of the residency took place at Rimbun Dahan and culminated in the presentation of a collaborative video work TREE, at Art for Nature 2005.
TREE is a montage of image, sound, text and performance structured around a simple question: ‘if you were a tree, what kind would you be?’ The video acts as an imaginative trigger, inviting the viewer to identify with a tree that becomes a metaphor for human existence, an embodiment of ourselves in relation to others.
During this time her work was also screened at the not that balai festival and she presented a public lecture at Galeri Petronas. In the second half of her residency Cattoni completed works for a growing list of exhibition commitments in Malaysia and Indonesia. Since completing the residency Cattoni has participated in the Bali Biennale 2005 with a digital media work titled White Onion:Bali Bride and exhibited new work entitled Kedai Kebaya.
Choy Chun Wei is enjoying his time playing the “collector” and the “engineer” in Rimbun Dahan. Look around and you will find his workspace populated by jars and tubes of paint in different degrees of exhaustion, while piles of unidentifiable junk and a plethora of paraphernalia lay scattered across the floor. When I visited his studio recently, he tells me “I still return to the city to collect all this junk”. The process of collecting and constructing, or building, forms the root of Chun Wei’s artistic approach. Whether in the form of photographs, paint, ink, or other found materials, the potential in each of the artist’s materials will be stretched out, deconstructed, reconstructed and layered to present unique views of life within an urbanscape. Those familiar with Chun Wei’s body of work will recall his early photo-collage series such as Citadel and Link House from 2001. They were the result of a morning ritual whereby the artist would walk with his camera to work, photographing random exteriors of homes in Bandar Utama to relieve the monotony of this routine. The collection of photographs captured from these walks later grew into a series of musings about home within our fragmented urban environment seen through the eye of an outsider.
In his latest series, Construction Site, paint and found materials have replaced photographs to become the building blocks in the artist’s work. He tells me that every single paint mark and object is treated as an individual units, “like Lego blocks”, built layer upon layer, one over the other. Each work begins with the overlaying of paint onto the surface ground in broad sweeps. “I rarely know what is going to happen during the early stages so I just let it happen.” Once these initial sweeps have been established, ‘units’ of paint and materials are incorporated into and over the initial foundation through the use of a diverse range of tools – hands included – as well as other media to create a spectrum of marks and textures. It is clear, through this new body of work, that the artist has discovered a more instinctive and energetic process in creating image and texture; there is an obvious sense of play, as well as a newfound confidence in distilling the images to near abstraction.
The urban landscape and mapping continue to figure prominently in Chun Wei’s work. The ritual of returning to the city to collect the artist’s ‘junk’ bears poetic resonance in the artist’s dedication to his subject matter. While his mapping process may have begun within the immediate confines of Bandar Utama, his concerns have since extended into farther reaches, taking on a wider worldview beyond geography and tangible matter. Perhaps this development has been prompted by changes in the artist’s personal life. Marriage and moving out to a new home has shifted his outlook on life; he is no longer the wandering outsider looking in, but rather someone who has found hearth and home.
Construction Site begins with The Construction of Metaphysical Site I. While the spatial arrangement in this painting may appear conventional to the eye, it is nonetheless striking in its composition and form. It recalls the imaginary maps many of us would have drawn during childhood. Colours and simple geometric shapes are employed to demarcate different territories and densities while incidental marks may imply roads, railway tracks or borders. The Construction of Metaphysical Site II suggests a fantastical yet apocalyptic cityscape alluding to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Vertical forms, or monoliths, grow from opposite directions; they weave in and out of the dramatic foliage, moving towards each other, drawing closer to convergence.
Subsequent works such as The Changing Mindscape, Intimate Dwelling Site and Configuration l, demonstrate to the viewers that the spatial configuration in each painting has grown progressively tighter and denser through the course of development. The drama and density of this series culminates in the epic Big Dwelling Site. Impressive and intense, the painting’s expanse and tight overlapping layers of paint and found materials overwhelm the senses. The eye picks out the random details and unexpected textures as it roves through this dense forest of marks and colours; you will find bits of corrugated board here, unidentifiable slices of plastic and dried materials there, a shaved off bar code somewhere above. The painting possesses a cubistic resonance as the artist breaks up the picture plane to create multiple perspectives. They also remind us of Mondrian’s earlier paintings where grid and lines form the artist’s primary motives. Spaces move in and out, shifting from two-dimensional to three-dimensional planes, taking our eye on a manic ride through tightly wound nooks and crannies, before launching into exhausting claustrophobic areas that slowly ease off towards the edges.
Configuration lll (Breathing Space), one of the later pieces, sees the artist side-stepping his usual media employed in this series. It is perhaps the most carefree piece in this body of work, and as the title suggests, this painting provides a beguiling reprieve from the intense concentration of heavy impasto marks and texture. Here, the brush takes over from the palette knife to create a delicate yet intricate web of lines. They float evocatively in space, layered in muted neutral shades, amidst collaged drawings of furniture culled from the pages of an IKEA catalogue. The minimal treatment draws attention to the construction of the image, allowing the visual narrative and emotional content to exude its understated charm.
Adeline Ooi
December 2005, KL
Garden Objects
This is part of a series exhibited in Art for Nature 2005 that delves into the formation of mental maps to explore human dwellings within the landscape. The garden is a place for tactile and sensory engagement, where one may expand sensibility within space. Click on the thumbnails above to view larger images.
Biodata
Choy Chun Wei (b. 1973) is a graduate and full scholarship holder from the faculty of Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, majoring in Illustration. He has been actively painting and exhibiting in a number of exhibitions in Kuala Lumpur and won an Honourable Mention at the Philip Morris Malaysia/ASEAN Art Awards in 2003. In 2004, Chun Wei received the Juror’s Choice Award (2D) at the Malaysian Young Contemporaries Exhibition organized by National Art Gallery. He became the artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan Artist in Residence Programme in 2005.
Saiful Razman was the Malaysian artist of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency in 2004-05.
Bio
Saiful Razman (b.1980, Malaysia) graduated from UiTM with a bachelor degree in Fine Art in 2003. He has exhibited widely in Malaysia, Lebanon, Australia and Singapore. In 2003, he was awarded both the Honourable Mention at the Philip Morris Malaysia-Asean Arts Awards and the Incentive Award at the Open Show, Galeri Shah Alam.
Mesej. 2004. 61 x 61cm. Acrylic on canvas.
Gantunglah kami sebelum kamu digantungkan… (in collaboration with Bernice Chauly and Rahmat Haron).
This work uses Bernice’s text and Rahmat’s poetry that speak of hopes and dreams. The words have been transferred to the cloth, creating an amulet to symbolise protection against evil.
‘Kuala Lumpur Journey with Rain’, 2004, 120 x 120 cm, oil on sealed board.
Malcolm Utley, from Bellawongarah, New South Wales, Australia, was the Australian artist of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency in 2004.
Malcolm Utley has a varied art practice encompassing architecture, film, installations, painting and sculpture. He graduated with 1st Class Honours in Architecture from the University of Sydney in 1990 and was awarded the Elizabeth Munro Prize for Design and the Ruskin Rowe Prize for History. In 1993 he studied film at FAMU, the national film school in Prague, Czech Republic. From 1998 he studied painting in the 3-year course at the Charlie Sheard Painting School in Sydney.
In 2002, Utley traveled to Paris, France to work as assistant to the Australian painter Tim Maguire. Upon returning to Australia, he enjoyed a brief contract as a visiting artist teaching sculpture at four Aboriginal community schools in the central lands of South Australia, before taking up his residency at Rimbun Dahan.
In 2004, Australian illustrator Sally Heinrich spent an Asialink residency at Rimbun Dahan.
Sally Heinrich has worked as a freelance illustrator for twenty years. As well as writing and illustrating children’s books, her clients have included ad agencies, design studios and government departments. During her residency at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia, and during side trips to Singapore, Heinrich produced an impressive volume of work, including the completion of the final draft of a YA novel Hungry Ghosts. She also collected much valuable reference material which will aid in polishing the illustrations for another forthcoming book The Most Beautiful Lantern.
She also made the work Princess Wonky in the Painted Castle, an illustration of the Rumah Uda Manap at Rimbun Dahan where Sally lived with her family, their adopted cat Wonky, and other birds and animals. The work currently hands in the Rumah Uda Manap.
Sally’s residency at Rimbun Dahan was also supported by Arts SA and the Australian High Commission, Kuala Lumpur.
Troy Ruffels was the Australian resident artist of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2003.
Biography
Troy Ruffels was born in Devonport, Tasmania in 1972. Upon completion of the 12 month Rimbun Dahan Art’s Residency in Malaysia he will return to Tasmania where he works and resides – overlooking the Forth Valley and farmlands of the Tasmania’s North West Coastline. Ruffels graduated from the Tasmanian School of Art @ Hobart, University of Tasmania (UTAS) with a Bachelor of Fine Art in 1994, where he was also awarded the degree BFA (1st Class Honours) in 1996. He obtained a Postgraduate Diploma ( with Distinction) from the Glasgow School of Art, 2001, and was in 2002 admitted to the degree Doctor of Philosophy ( Fine Art), University of Tasmania.
Ruffels’ work has been featured in numerous Australian and international curated exhibitions, with work exhibited in New York, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Alicante, Lisbon, Lubjjana, the Canary islands, Glasgow, Berlin, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth and Hobart. His work is held in numerous collections including the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, The Devonport Regional Gallery, and Artbank.
Above: ‘Bonnet’ 58cm x 58cm Digital Print 2003
Above: Sampled Reality: Pool 1.9m x 1.9m oil on canvas 2003
Above: Sampled Reality: Cloud Gazing 1.9m x 1.9m oil on canvas 2003
Exhibition Catalogue Essay
Filtered Sky
Rimbun Dahan exhibition catalogue cover.
I have a memory of Troy Ruffels as the only outdoor coffee drinker in the hair-raising cold of a Tasmanian winter morning. I would pass him most days on my way to university. All other patrons were on the inside of the cafe window, protected behind a curtain of condensed air, their heads in newspapers. But the folded arms and casual sitting style of the outdoor patron belied the chill as Ruffels embraced the opportunity to observe and respond to the outdoor world, ‘gathering and collecting small details of the passing environment.’ [1]
This memory is five years old, and comes to me in irony as I consider the work that has evolved during 12 months in tropical Malaysia. In the heat saturated studio at Rimbun Dahan, Ruffels continues to be fuelled by the natural elements that exist in the urban environment. The images conceived there reveal that the artist’s interest in an emotional sense of place travels with him, and is not limited to, nor lost without, his home in Tasmania. Alert to the smells, sounds and sights intrinsic to the places he visits, the artist is a filter for these experiences and memories to distil, and ultimately take root in paintings and photographs.
The works in Sampled Reality simultaneously ground and throw the viewer. They form a push me – pull me map from diaristic imagery that has been snatched by the artist from its otherwise temporary moment of beauty and being. We are grounded in the panoramic and all encompassing scale of the works, and settled by the poignant aesthetic of each reflection. Ruffels’ work draws you in, offering a journey through the artist’s experience of the world around him.
Rain. Trees. Clouds. These soft aspects of nature settle almost too comfortably in the seemingly impenetrable surfaces of new cars, puddles, glass, and hard, wet ground. Reflections in such urbane, ever-present fabrics are not something we usually register consciously. We look at the object itself, rather than the image nesting within it. Reflections do not break surfaces like scratches, dents, ripples and graffiti. Instead, they briefly accommodate the shape of the object and are almost camouflaged to eyes unaccustomed to looking beyond the expected. Ruffels has trained himself to see, snaring these apparitions as they pass across the object’s skin, and revealing the world’s infinite network of reflected, subterranean passages.
The viewer experiences subtle confusion in the artist’s use of reflection, for we normally register reflection through the live, mirrored image of ourselves or our immediate environment. The artist has further evaded other mirrored references by ensuring no part of himself is captured in the photograph. Trees, sky and stone are gently altered by the blurred movement, muted colour, shifting focus, and colliding imagery characteristic of these urban reflections. These subtle transformations trigger a sense of unease as one recognises that the painted or photographed image is not taken directly from its subject. Ruffels crops the imagery so that the edge of the reflective surface is gone. The image is floating. ‘Sky, tree and stone hang suspended’ as the frameless, softly mirrored world turns the tactile world on its head. [2]
In Malaysia, after years of working with photo media, Ruffels has again taken up painting. He writes that putting paint on canvas allows for ‘prolonged sensorial engagement’ with the subject, sensing that real value of the work is in the ‘process of engagement with the world, and the processes through which [the subject] is interpreted, and brought to life in the studio’. [3]The moving brush across canvas is not unlike the reflection moving across its surface, however the brush passes back and forwards, often repeatedly over the one area, as the image materialises. As each work-in-progress develops as an archive of the reflection, the painter exists in a world divined by instinct, a ‘continuous cycle of experience, response, and expression.’ [4]
It is hard to fight romantic writing when considering Ruffels’ imagery. Descriptions of the work are easily loaded with words like ‘poignant, whimsical, ephemeral, ethereal’. This is because the work is all of these things. Ruffels makes no bones about the fact that his art is rooted in poetry and imagination, emotions, memories and histories. Each piece is a layering process of experiences and responses to the natural environment. The artist ‘takes’ natural forms to construct the images, and creates only beautiful works that trigger the human desire to experience something breathtaking. In doing so, Ruffels drives the viewer into a flip-book of emotional responses, inciting us to reflect upon the extraordinary possibilities of the world sub-surface.
Ruffels has always responded directly to his immediate environment. In Tasmania, photographic works about reflections were printed in steel grey, cold blue, and later, a metallic pink. The rain, in its refected form, felt as if it would sting one’s skin, the waves were blackly Antarctic, and the path of the birds was ominous, as if a southern storm was brewing. Five years later, he wrote to me from Malaysia:
I have continued to work with reflections of nature in the environment. It is a meaningful motif, which I embrace. It signifies the possibility that another world exists other than the one we are able to subject to rational analysis. It gives rise to the possibility that there are other pathways we may travel in life – another level of appreciation, of understanding, of communicating with the world we inhabit – other than the one that is sold to us as being real … and subsequently finite. [5]
In the uncanny beauty that emanates from the images reflecting from duco or murky pools of water, there is a moment where one is uprooted by a feeling of wonder in the world, an awe-inspiring second of realising how small we really are, a flash where one is lifted through the clouds, or dipped beneath the molten surface of the water. The gentle manipulation of natural elements, captured reflections, the transformation of passé surfaces, and the devout attention paid to an urbane instant catch the viewer in a sensory eclipse. Brief moments of recognition are surpassed by super-real interpretations of the physicalworld. These sensations linger as the viewer moves from the work, only to come across fragments of Ruffels’ imagery all around, and ordinary experiences intensify as reality is sampled by both artist and the viewer.
Jane Stewart, 2004
Director, Devonport Regional Gallery, Tasmania
[1] RUFFELS, Troy, Artist Notes to the Author, December 2003
Immersed in the richness and complexity of nature at Rimbun Dahan, Jasmine was searching for a dialectic experience with the plants and objects around her. Obsessed with the regular pattern of the lines and textures on plants, different sizes of leaves were collected as models and cast with plaster of Paris. Slabs of soft clay were pressed against the plaster moulds to question the ephemeral nature of the objects and things around us, and render the impermanent permanent.
‘Ceramic by its nature cannot escape medium-hood’. For an artist like Jasmine ‘working in a medium so identified with craft-based procedures, her clay sculpture is immediately subject to sustained discussion on its material language’, challenging the perception of the custody of material use and the art forms in contemporary art practice today in Malaysia.
Installation, as the British writer Michael Archer described it, is ‘a kind of art making which rejects concentration on one object in favor of a consideration of the relationships between a number of elements or of the interaction between things and their contexts’. In Jasmine’s case, her works were a suggestion of scene and environment, which derived from her memories as well as from reality. The imprinted clay leaves were glazed with color and scattered on fabric, referring to the changing seasons. For instance, the imprinted lotus leaves of various sizes mimic the green summer water pond. All these pieces of work bring the connection of the scene from outside to inside, from exterior to interior. The relationship of human to nature was revealed through Jasmine’s intellectual interest, her participating in nature and sharing that experience with others.
Stone carving, like clay forming, is a slow and time consuming process. The physicality of force and the gradual changes of surface and shape were important to Jasmine and can be seen in her stone sculptures. Inspired by the curved and pointed elegance of the Jade Vine flower, Jasmine used marble to reinterpret her chosen subject through the physical process of carving. The smoothness and reflective nature of the marble was tarnished, the solid surface was opened and revealed by force. The original shape of the Jade Vine was copied, altered and magnified. The meaning of the work lies not in the work itself but in our attitude towards the art work.
Jasmine Kok’s work ‘does not reproduce what we see, it makes us see’. Her intention is not simply about recording the natural world but in transforming an object, a space and environment into something profound and intellectual. The work offers a fresh vision to her and to the viewer. The perceptual knowledge about the place around her, about things and objects she encounters and feels, are shown through her sculpture and installation works in a stage of ‘metaphysics concerned with the nature of existence’.
During her studies in London, Jasmine participated in an organization called ‘Art Express’, where she taught wood and stone carving within the community for several years. She was also involved in art therapy projects with problem children and the homeless, and the feedback was positive. She had some special experiences working with other artists from different countries while in London, and shared different culture experiences when working in the quarries and sculpture parks.
In the past, Jasmine Kok’s sculpture was primarily figurative, but since her residency in Rimbun Dahan, her art practice has embarked on a whole new journey by exploring nature and different materials. The artist in residence programme allowed her to explore new perceptions within her art, while assisting her to develop and understand the arts of her homeland.
‘Blue Symphony,’ 110 x 110 x 3 cm, ceramic clay, glaze, glue, perspex and velvet, 2004.
‘Green Summer Dream 1,’ 46x 46 x 4 cm, ceramic clay, glaze, glue and velvet, 2004.
‘Green Summer Dream 5,’ 150 x 80 x 4 cm, ceramic clay, glaze, glue and velvet, 2004.
‘Peace,’ carved from a single block of Langkawi limestone.
‘Transformation (detail),’ 145 x 52 x 63 cm, marble, 2004.
‘Transformation,’ 145 x 52 x 63 cm, marble, 2004.
‘Transformation’ being lowered into the Rimbun Dahan underground gallery.
Biography
Jasmine Kok Lee Fong
Date of birth: 28th October 1970
Nationality: Malaysian
Address: C109, Kampung Kundang, 48020 Rawang, Selangor, Malaysia.
