The exhibition Rimbun Dahan – Cultivating the Garden features the work of Australian artists who have been beneficiaries of the residency programs in Malaysia, and acknowledges and celebrates the contribution that the experience has made to their creative lives. Cross cultural pollination at its finest.
ARTISTS:
- Cathy Brooks
- Melanie Fulton
- John Foubister
- Rob Gutteridge
- Jumaadi
- Mike Ladd
- Tony Twigg
- Jessica B.Watson
28 August – 19 September 2013
Light Square Gallery, Adelaide College of the Arts, 39 Light Square, Adelaide
Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm
Presented by Adelaide Festival Centre, John Foubister and Melanie Fulton.
May I Take a Bath?
Catalogue Essay for the Exhibition, by Gina Fairley
“In a new and exotic environment there is a lot to look at, but what was I looking for?”
This diary entry of Cathy Brooks (2009) described the question faced by all residents as they arrive at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport filled with anticipation, hope, and vague thoughts of what might await. It is the answer they carry on their return, however, that best captures the ethos of Rimbun Dahan. It is a door swung wide to a raft of new questions, intrigues that continue to surface long after the journey. It is what pulls this group of artists back, through their memories, their work, and their persistent journeys north. Simply, ‘something’ was answered for each of them, be it ‘jamming with an anonymous maker through found objects’ as Tony Twigg described, or Mike Ladd falling in sync with the rhythms of pantuns, those poetic couplets that seemingly penetrate to the soul. The pulse of this residency continues to be felt.
The climate of artist residencies has changed greatly since 1994, when Adelaide artist John Foubister was the first to sign on for a year ‘in the garden’. The frequency of movement and the networks brokered by artists today – especially in this region, which has become blatantly aware of its global currency under the banner of contemporary Asian art – are highly sophisticated, expected, and somewhat viral in reach. While Rimbun Dahan has also expanded during that time, its programming more ambitious, diverse, and exponentially larger, there is one thing that remains unique to Rimbun Dahan and that is its gift of time; its stillness in all this push.
Brooks’ diary described a “looking for things to hang something on to.” Assuming the habit of bowerbirds, each artist in turn collected fragments of this new place in a ritualistic practice of nesting or courtship; patterns, objects and conversations picked over, arranged, and accumulated as a summation of self there. Rimbun provided that rare space to distill this cache of stimuli, filtered at the pace of kampong life. One is not competing with institutionally driven outcomes, bright lights, or history’s overwhelming footprint on a city, like many international residencies that seemingly insert the artist into ‘the role’ like a cut-out, only to be superseded by the next edition. “What am I looking for?” is a question answered on very individual terms.
The eight artists in this exhibition made that journey across time: John Foubister (1994 & 2011), Tony Twigg (2005), Cathy Brooks (2009), Mike Ladd (2009), Jessica B. Watson (2010), Melanie Fulton (2011), Rob Gutteridge (2011), and Jumaadi (2012). Their work is diverse and, yet, their cues are surprisingly similar. Both Brooks and Twigg collected detritus along Jalan Kuang, the street that runs as an artery through Kampong Plong to the Komuter train’s distant outpost. Twigg explained, “A lot of time was spent looking for a mark that comes from here, that is Malaysia not just KL. It turned out that mark for me was the fish box found beside a pasaraya. I started working with the ‘physical’ line of the object rather than its inspiration. 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.”
Similarly, Brooks gathered neighborhood detritus that echoed patterning in Muslim architecture and script, traditional fabric design and natural forms, fragments that became a pseudo script or alphabet. She chose “to build a language from the ground up, words straight from the street, and make meaning for myself out of it. How do you read these found ‘symbols’ if you don’t know which way up they read?” Rather than being lost in translation they assume a meaning as form. Separated from their original context they take on the vernacular of art, assemblage, and installation. It is an age-old tradition of storytelling with a contemporary inflection.
Australian-based Indonesian artist Jumaadi continued that dialogue but pushed its implication a step further. Known as a contemporary story-maker, his wall drawing made from cardboard supermarket boxes not only speaks of package goods moved between places – a metaphor for the peripatetic artist today – but acts as a frame for ‘his story’ as a cross-cultural artist. Simply, the site that the work is specific to is in fact Jumaadi’s own story – not Adelaide, not Moscow, or Penang.
Storytelling is so ingrained in him that, as viewers, we walk into that narrative and are transported. Locals in Penang had a similar experience during Jumaadi’s stay at Hotel Penaga (2012). Adding a twist to the wayang kulit, the shadow puppet tradition associated with the Malay culture, Jumaadi turned to a Chinese folk tale and performed it in Chinese. That arrival at something entirely new, yet carrying the resonance of familiarity, underscores the potency of the residency experience and its ability to cut through observations and allow a cross flow across otherwise segmented territory.
Mike Ladd found it also. His series Book of Hours (2009) produced during his residency, explored ideas of layering, consciously, subconsciously, and sensorially. Staying in Rumah Uda Manap, a Malay kampong house decorated with Chinese fretwork and skirting the east boundary of the estate, Ladd described the stereophonic broadcast of maghrib (evening prayer) from three local mosques, overlapping and fusing into a singular, and momentary, cohesion. It was an aural imprint of this place shared by Brooks, Twigg and Watson. Watson further blended experience, architecture and histories through rubbings taken from the house. Time was both a meter for the minutiae of now and a sense of an all-encompassing timelessness.
Ladd set himself the task of writing a pantun a day; four iambic lines that paired observations of nature with introspective musings on human relationships, their ulterior motive to find maksud, purpose or connection. He added, “They are small poems, but risky.” It is this embrace of risk that is key here, not only for an artist to pack up from work and home for a year, but the inherent risk in confronting their own creativity.
It is reiterated by Rob Gutteridge, who stepped outside his academic life in Adelaide to immerse himself in this pungent, saturated landscape. His first impressions described, “…a pale milky wash over the landscape, softening the contrasts and bringing distant colours closer together.” It was the antithesis of Australia, but in a strange way nature softened the blow. He added, “If one is alert, the ambient has a character, providing a starting point and a foundation.”
Gutteridge’s found his language in clouds, billowing and morphing as a ready metaphor for the human condition, described as ‘environmental portraiture’. Reflecting on what connects rather than divides, Gutteridge asked, “What is the threshold of recognition?” He continued, “I have become interested in what constitutes the conditions for visual suggestion, or resemblance.” It is a view particularly shared by Brooks’ pictograms and this new sculpture by Twigg constructed from shipping palettes.
Jumaadi pondered similar questions of nature as Gutteridge and Foubister. Inspired by early evenings spent at the jetty, near the ferry crossing from Penang to Butterworth, he produced a body of small paintings. He recalls, “The sea and sky often merged into a mist. This mist created by so many colours reminded me of the paintings of Caravaggio and Rothko, stories hidden in the drama of flickering light and lyrical ambience.”
Is it alchemy? Foubister’s residency paintings described a vivid internal world of swirling pools, atmospheric perforations, and dark organic abstractions. He described, “In 1994 I was preoccupied with the existence of the infinite, and in response wanted to make images that were a celebration of doubt as a virtue. The ideas were broad and inclusive and I wasn’t seeking local influence or engagement. But it occurred mostly by osmosis.”
They were, as are his new gestural landscapes, about finding his own landscape. I see in them a conversation with Ken Whisson and William Robinson’s creation paintings, the sheer physicality of the landscape, its emotional and territorial navigation. To quote Robinson, “There are things all around you and you are in it. Everything is constantly moving…We don’t really have an orientation in this infinity.” [1]
Melanie Fulton sought to anchor that engagement. Turning to the writings of British and European explorers and botanists, as well as novels and poetry by Indigenous Malay and Indian writers, she approached her “residency in the spirit of those early observers and record as much as possible.” Her delicate watercolours carry that expeditionary tone, specimens both timeless and contemporary. Fulton was drawn to the cultural fusion of plant forms incorporated into decorative patterns, temple carvings, embroidered and printed fabrics, resilient both in their traditional reference but also their urban reality. It was a cue Watson also picked up on. Her screen print, Good things happen in threes (2010), inspired by a small fig tree growing out of a crack in the concrete under the kampong house, became a metaphor for cultural resilience. Combining textile techniques, motifs and images associated with Chinese, Malay and Indian traditions, she used the sensitivity and time-consuming quality of her medium – textile art – as a bridge between histories and futures. They are as painterly as Foubister’s brooding landscape or Gutteridge’s anthropomorphic clouds urging connections, and clearly as alert as Brooks’ ‘found’ pictograms and Twigg’s fish boxes in finding a spirit of connection. Is it a garden cultivated? This pantun shared with Ladd best surmises the sentiment.
Kalau ada sumur di ladang,
Boleh hamba menumpang mandi?
Kalau ada umur yang panjang,
Boleh kita berjumpa lagi?
If there’s a pond in the field
may I take a bath?
If I live long enough
can we meet again?
The intimacy of that elementary, somewhat raw, engagement of laying oneself bare to take a bath in an open field, mirrors the trust shared between artist and hosts. It also captures the deep connection such an experience affords, and continues to reside in all these artists. Ladd translated the pantun as ‘a proposal of love’ a future shared, a garden that continues to flourish.
Gina Fairley was at Rimbun Dahan in 2005 as accompanying spouse of Tony Twigg.
1. William Robinson. Sourced 27 June 2013, http://www.grafico-qld.com/content/william-robinson-transfigured-landscape.
Opening Speech by Angela Hijjas
The exhibition was opened by Angela Hijjas, Visual Arts Program Director at Rimbun Dahan, on 28 August at the Adelaide College of the Arts.
Cultivating the Garden
When we started the residency I knew it was an important idea, but really I only considered it from our own perspective: we had benefited greatly from Australian and Malaysian opportunities, and had always wanted to “pay back”. Hijjas’ choice was to start the residency for Australian and Malaysian artists, and my job was to organize it. Probably it wasn’t until Gina and Tony repeatedly mentioned what a gift a year away from normal life was, that I too appreciated what an impact it was having on people’s lives.
So while I was pre-occupied pushing round saplings in a wheelbarrow for my Southeast Asian garden, there was a lot happening in the studios. The artists had a whole year to work on ideas, and that year was long enough for us to form lasting friendships. That was a great bonus for me, having been out of Australia for so long; conversations over drinks or dinner, or on the way back from the tennis court, greatly enriched our lives. As a practical sort of person, I had seen my job as glorified housekeeper, but I had the privilege of getting to know all of our guests over their year and realized that it was more than just housekeeping: we were participating in the actual creative process.
It is now almost 20 years since John Foubister was persuaded to take the gamble on a trip to Malaysia. He was “found” at very short notice by the son-in-law of a friend, Keith Neighbour. John was paired with a Malaysian artist, Yuande Zheng, who had presented himself as the answer to our search for a Malaysian artist. I didn’t know how to consider the talents or the pairing, but we learned a lot along the way! Definitely one has to provide separate accommodation and studios for each artist, and never get involved in personalities or disputes! Keep a professional distance, and just make sure they have everything they need to do what they are there to do. I learned that quite quickly after a particularly difficult year early on, and although Hijjas’ advice was to drop the residency if it was too much trouble, by then I had realized that it was important.
Now fortunately we have daughter Bilqis taking an active role, and as her expertise is in contemporary dance the programme now includes lots of that, and the dance studio is in constant demand.
The renovated heritage houses have been an added bonus, as without the residency there would have been no use for them, and no incentive to buy and restore them, so it’s thanks to the programme that they too have been saved.
Another direct result of the residency has been our interest in Georgetown, Penang. It was because of the hugely positive response to the city from all the artists who went there that I started looking for a house there to use for a residency extension. It was Hijjas who eventually found the site of what would become Hotel Penaga, but had the artists’ interest not been so intense, I probably would have overlooked the possibility of having anything there at all…. So the entire process has been a very reciprocal engagement: a Colombo Plan scholarship for Hijjas in the 50s enabled his career, he then contributed to the careers of artists in both Australia and Malaysia, the artists enriched our lives in huge ways, enabling the development of Rimbun Dahan with the old houses, and the hotel in Penang, quite apart from the personal links, like Gina helping us with the book for Hijjas’ 70th birthday, or this exhibition in Australia!
Now after 20 years, we have to make a few changes. Unfortunately we won’t be funding Australian residencies as before, and we will concentrate more on inviting and funding Southeast Asian artists who wouldn’t have the chance to travel otherwise.
The most exciting development recently is in Horsham, Victoria. Many of you know that we have had a project going there since the Asian Currency Crisis in 1997… again it was a stroke of luck to invest there, and we have since bought a beautiful paddock on the Wimmera River where Hijjas had the idea of building a residency. We have commissioned Glenn Murcutt as architect, and it will accommodate Australian and Asian artists. It is just a small programme, only for two, just as Rimbun Dahan was at the beginning, but the idea developed with the input of one of Asialink’s artists, Anthony Pelchen, who lives near Horsham and who assures me it’s not the artistic wilderness that it may appear to be! In fact his work from his Malaysian residency opens at the Horsham Regional Gallery on Friday, and the Horsham Regional Gallery will manage the residency for us. Hijjas has visions too of architecture camps in Horsham where students can connect with landscape and design.
So the garden has grown, and I always knew that the key would be diversity: plant as much as you can, as many species as possible, and see how it turns out. That has been my modus operandi for our 14 acres at Rimbun Dahan, and it seems to have worked for the residency as well: it may have been a trifle disorganized, and certainly random, but what an exciting 20 years it has turned out to be, and for that I cannot thank our artists enough, in particular Melanie and John who had the idea of doing this show, and Allison Carroll who has encouraged us from very early days. And thank you all too for coming this evening, I just wish we could stay a bit longer.
Thanks for your support and encouragement.
