Malaysian

Yau Bee Ling

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Yau Bee Ling
two_women
‘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.

Choy Chun Wei

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Malaysian Resident Artist 2005

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.

See more of Chun Wei’s work on his blog website http://cwconstructionsite.blogspot.com/

Saiful Razman

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Saiful Razman

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.

Jasmine Kok

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Jasmine Kok
Jasmine in her studio at Rimbun Dahan.
Jasmine in her studio at Rimbun Dahan.

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.

Biography

Jasmine Kok Lee Fong

Date of birth: 28th October 1970

Nationality: Malaysian

Address: C109, Kampung Kundang, 48020 Rawang, Selangor, Malaysia.

Telephone:  0060-3-60341398 / 013- 639 9831

Email: rollingjas@hotmail.com

Education

1993: Diploma in Fine Art (Painting), Kuala Lumpur College of Art (KLCA).

1995 – 1996: Second year BA in Fine Art, University of Wolverhampton.

1996 – 1998: Diploma in Fine Art Sculpture, City and Guilds London Art School.

1998 – 1999: Stone Carving Course, City and Guilds London Art School.

1999 – 2002: MA in Fine Art, City and Guilds London Art School.

Solo Exhibition

August 2002 : Pain and Injury, Broken Spine Series, Life performance at Kennington Sovi Art Centre, London.

Mixed Exhibition

October 1984: The Second Asean Exhibition of Children’s Art at Malaysian National Art Gallery.

April 1993: Life Drawing & Oil Painting Exhibition at KLCA.

May 1993: “Earth Day” Performance Art at Central Market, Kuala Lumpur.

July 1993: Fine Art (Painting) Diploma Exhibition at KLCA.

May 1996: Sculpture Exhibition at Victoria Street Art Gallery, Wolverhampton.

May 1997: Sculpture Exhibition at Lumsden Art Gallery, Scotland.

June 1998: Find Art (Sculpture) Diploma Exhibition at City & Guilds London Art School.

September 2000: Fine Art (Sculpture) Exhibition (First Year MA) at City & Guilds London Art School.

September 2002: Fine Art (Sculpture) Exhibition (MA) at City & Guilds London Art School.

February 2004: Artist Residency Exhibition at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia.

Awards

1984: The Second Asean Exhibition of Children’s Art, Manila, Philippines.

2003-2004: Resident Artist, Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia.

Wong Perng Fey

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Wong Perng Fey

PerngFey2

Malaysian painter Wong Perng Fey was one of the Malaysian artists of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency at Rimbun Dahan in 2002.

Bio

Born in Kuala Lumpur in 1974, Wong Perng Fey is an artist who has built his reputation as an experimental and versatile painter since his graduation from the Malaysian Institute of Art under the school’s scholarship in 1998. His works are in many prominent public collections such as the National Visual Arts Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Bank Negara Malaysia Museum Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur and Galeri Petronas, Kuala Lumpur. He lives and works in Beijing.

Exhibition Opening Speech

by Angela Hijjas

Solo Exhibition
2 – 19 October 2002
Valentine Willie Fine Art, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur

Thank you all for coming this evening to see these new landscapes by Wong Perng Fey.

I would like to thank Beverly and Valentine Willie Fine Art not just for inviting me to open this show today but for having being such strong supporters of our artists’ residency programme. This gallery has suggested to us a stream of fine young artists to support, one of whom is Perng Fey, and it has provided Hijjas and I with our greatest pleasure in seeing their works develop up to this exciting exhibition stage.

Like most of us, I am neither art critic nor scholar, but I come to the new work of any artist with formed ideas about what the world is like, and inevitable expectations about how it might be portrayed. I also have a particular affinity with landscape as it illustrates to me the way we relate to the environment around us, but as in most areas where we have a little knowledge and think we know what is going on, in fact we may not.

Perng Fey’s depiction of landscapes definitely overturns any preconceived ideas of what we are likely to see. These are not pretty kampongs or rivers winding through romantic hills and forests: these landscapes portray what happens to nature and land when they are modified by man. Landscapes are not static, they change, which in itself confronts our expectations of variations caused by mere weather and light. Today, unfortunately, landscapes have been destroyed and desecrated, but it is something we rarely confront, not wanting to question the very real benefits that development has brought us.

Landscapes have shaped every culture, including Malaysia’s for generations, and yet we ignore their plight in our flurry of progress. At the same time, many of us are influenced by the cultural values of more temperate climates where open spaces are commended as ‘vistas’ and exotic gardens are the epitome of beauty. We occupy this place, but we do not know it as well as we should.

From my personal perspective Perng Fey is painting the landscapes that people would rather ignore: the ravaged and the marginal. These are the landscapes that are the closest to us but are the most neglected. Perng Fey’s are the landscapes from our peripheral vision that we really do not recognize as our own, but which are in fact our prevailing visual experience.

Despite this dark side of the work, his skills of composition and handling of his medium seduce one into looking and seeing beauty, but they are simultaneously disturbing.

PerngFey1Another area of Perng Fey’s interest lies in the remains of settlements, most of them tacked together as temporary shelters that have served out their usefulness and have since been abandoned. Like his landscapes, they are devoid of people, as if he is charting our passage across the land, tracing the trail of our transience. They are however, quite beautiful, forcing us to review something that has always been seen as a blight on the
landscape, once again transforming our usual perspective.

These paintings bring the conflicts of occupying a place to the surface: they are compelling canvases portraying something that I did not initially recognise for what they are, they are puzzling and yet beautiful, and I can assure you that a longer acquaintance with these works will not disappoint.

I have been watching Perng Fey’s works develop over the last 9 months and am intrigued by these landscapes that he is understandably reluctant to verbalise. At first viewing each piece seems simple enough, but as the series has developed so has his subject. Just the other day, we were discussing how, by seeing all his work hung together like this, we can experience the development of his ideas as body of work. Even those of us who are fortunate enough to acquire one of them might want to return to this brief opportunity to see the whole collection, because it works so well as a changing viewpoint of landscape and our human habitation.

I congratulate Perng Fey for this remarkable show, and thank you all for coming this evening. Enjoy the exhibition.

Ahmad Shukri Mohamed

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Ahmad Shukri Mohamed
Work by Ahmad Shukri at the Singapore Contemporary Arts Fair, 2002.
Work by Ahmad Shukri at the Singapore Contemporary Arts Fair, 2002.

Ahmad Shukri’s work for the Rimbun Dahan residency is as profuse and multi-layered as a tropical garden. The artist will exhibit paintings, installations and a large drawing on canvas, all in his highly decorative and richly referential style.

Shukri_eggsOut of the explosion of work in his studio he identifies four major series. Two installations of ‘incubators’, structures filled with hundreds of white and black plaster eggs, draw on the yin-yang concept to suggest the inevitably heterogeneous nature of the world. As Shukri puts it, within a hundred white eggs there will be a black egg, and vice versa.

The ‘people’s forum’ (sidang rakyat) installation consists of multiple pairs of boxing gloves cast in plaster and set atop a low table covered in a patchwork of textiles. For Shukri, the boxing gloves represent the sparring of politicians, while the textiles are the backdrop of unresolved and perhaps unresolvable situations against which their competitions take place.

A series of diskettes embedded in perspex sheets and overlaid with resin and silk-screen printing point to the irresistible spread of technology, which he sees as again neither wholly good nor bad but always composite. In the voyager series of paintings nature and culture morph into each other: the blades of a ceiling fan echo the petals of a flower and a chicken appears both as a living animal and as a child’s plastic toy. Whereas the installations illustrate socio-political conditions as Shukri sees them, he describes the paintings—featuring paper boats and planes, dragonflies, butterflies, cartoon characters, scrawled scraps of text—as diaries, eclectic personal records of memory and experience.

Many of the motifs—the eggs, the chickens, the fabrics representative of Malaysia’s main ethnic groups, the diskettes—are familiar from Shukri’s previous work, but for the artist the significance of these images is inexhaustible and ever elusive. A thread running through Shukri’s work in this exhibition is precisely this multivalent eloquence of objects: a loosely sketched rabbit in one painting alludes to the rabbit-breeding business started by a friend of the artist, whereas the origami rabbit appearing in the same work is suggestive of Japan’s influence on Malaysia.

An interest in texture and textiles and the play of surfaces also underlies Shukri’s work. His canvases are layered with squares of fabric or cut-out numbers, reflecting, he says, the multi-layered nature of the world. Several of the paintings feature scraps of fabric machine-embroidered with bands of thread in subtle gradations of colour. The use of techniques such as these, from outside the strictly traditional artist’s repertoire, as well as the incorporation of images of found objects like coconut husks and flowers, spring from Shukri’s belief that art is embedded in everyday life. The everyday world revealed in Shukri’s work is one of vibrant, chaotic and constantly changing multiplicity.

 

Abdul Multhalib Musa

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Abdul Multhalib Musa

'Sixty Turns', by Abdul Multhalib Musa, commissioned by Rimbun Dahan for Angela Hijjas' 60th birthday, and now part of the permanent collection.

‘Sixty Turns’, by Abdul Multhalib Musa, commissioned by Rimbun Dahan for Angela Hijjas’ 60th birthday, and now part of the permanent collection.

Artist’s Statement for Rimbun Dahan Exhibition

INTRODUCTION It is my intention to highlight in my work some of the issues related to

affecting everything that we perceive as tangible and implied, in an attempt to establish a complex relationship between art and architecture. When considering my work, it is necessary to be aware that current thinking suggests that each domain may be addressed in isolation from one another, and that academically there are perceptible similarities and differences between art and architecture. However, for me any distinctions are becoming more difficult to distinguish from what was preconceived. It is at this initially conceptual level that an intangible idea (re)shuffles between what can be classified as art and what architecture, and thus is materialized into the final body of work.

CONCEPTION Most of my work is derived from a sort of spontaneous, nonlinear, seemingly non-sequential contemplation between what could be and what exists, what is meant to be experienced and what is actually felt. It is from our surrounding natural and built environment, and consequently the interactions or lack of them, that we acquire knowledge and inform our thinking, and it is from others that we learn about the self and how to nurture any talent that God has given us. At this stage, I have come to perceive the self as a composite that is often contradictory and internally incomplete. Perhaps this is one way to relate to my work, in a sense that it is conceptualized and manifested in fragments and aggregates to reveal a certain personal characteristic that challenges the reader to engage with the work at various levels of interpretation.

CONFLICT It has been a struggle for me to envisage a three-dimensional non-planar composition such as a non-Euclidean design for a sculpture, which is represented on the two-dimensional plane in terms of plans, sections, and elevations. Even more difficult perhaps, is the need to acquire a sort of paradigm shift from thinking in terms of large-scale projects such as buildings, to a more subtle language that is better suited for a sculptural undertaking, much smaller in scale by comparison. Hence, the problem with physical models is that you can only do so many and while computer-aided designs are better for the diversified repetitive tasks, the form is only virtual and lacks the inherent property of the finished material to create a spatial-temporal relationship between the viewer and the work. These concerns have been an ongoing personal conflict and the result, whether successful or not, is apparent in the work. My undergraduate studies in architecture have undoubtedly molded a certain way of thinking in conceptualizing the physical body of the work.

PROCESS As a result of this particular way of thinking, the process of realizing an idea can be scrutinized as rather architectural in its approach, yet does not have the constraint architects normally face. It is said that one way of differentiating art and architecture is their different responses to objective requirements. Hence, if art is seen as speculative thinking, then what I am doing must be art by default since everything I do is conjectural and self-directed – though I am not implying that architecture is already art, or vice-versa. Consequently, I do not design the final works themselves, but am more oriented towards conceiving the possible relationship between solids and voids, which is more analogous to the notion of suggestive space. I prefer to consider this process as parallel to generating a conceptual system in order for the tectonic idea to be realized. This would result in the actual fabrication
being more feasible and practical in a sense that wastage of material is minimized and ease of fabrication is achieved, while still maintaining the desired result that was originally conceived.

DO-UNDO-REDO All of the possible generative sources are given adequate consideration during inception and this develops into a wide spectrum of architectural and artistic interpretation. Although difficult to describe, the work often begins from this infinite and productive intuition which is challenged and tested both physically and mentally. It then matures from the intangible realm of thought, propelled by its own internal energy, in an effort to consciously make something out of nothing. This is an iterative methodology of working and reworking an idea at various stages of the design development, and perhaps a feasible justification on the continuity of form that is apparent from one work to another. In a way, the coherence is a result of the consistent use of this repetitive method, which evidently is carried throughout the physical aspect of the work itself.

TECTONIC The works themselves are certainly ‘end products’ in their own respect. Basically, the final built objects are finite, well-defined, and are more or less free from the imperfections of the production process. Nevertheless, I still consider the works to be incomplete, schematic, trapped in the midst of their production, with potential to be further developed. Seen from this perspective, the work is left as if merely to engage other students and professionals within the field of art and architecture. However, as built and finished works they also have the opportunity to engage the public for whom they were meant and any subsequent unanticipated public. Therefore, the work is indeed offered with the intention of being read while addressing the reader with a multitude of interpretations, and to personally sustain the intellectual animation of the design process.

Multhalib_

Biography

1976  Born in Pulau Pinang.

As a child, I was interested in drawing and won several competitions in Malaysia and overseas. The most recent and important being the Malaysian nominee and Asian finalist for the prestigious Oita Asian Sculpture Exhibition and Open Competition at the Fumio Asakura Memorial Park in Oita, Japan to be held in June 2002.

After secondary school, my interests broadened to theoretical thinking, science and engineering.  I studied architecture at the University of Adelaide, Australia and obtained a Bachelor Degree in Design Studies in 1996. I later obtained the Bachelor of Architecture with Honours at UiTM. I always longed to do fine arts while studying architecture and fortuitously an opportunity arose. I applied for the 2001 Rimbun Dahan Residency Program organized by Angela and Hijjas Kasturi at their residence at Kuang and was accepted as the Malaysian resident artist.

The year-long residency has revived my interest in fine arts and again in architecture, with a more serious conviction and undertaking. In my work, I attempt to highlight some of the issues related to space and temporality, the integration of technology and inspiration, truth and delusion, affecting everything that we perceive as tangible and implied, in an attempt to establish a complex relationship between art and architecture.

Background
Education
 1999-2000  Bachelor of Architecture (Hons.), MARA University of Technology, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
 1996-1998  Bachelor Degree in Design Studies, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
 Selected Group Exhibitions and Awards:
 2001  Artist in Residence Rimbun Dahan, MalaysiaMalaysian Nominee and Finalist ‘6th Oita Asian Sculpture Exhibition’ Open Competition, Fumio Asakura Memorial Park, Japan

‘Open Show’ National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur

‘Rimba Ilmu Nature Art Week’ University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur

‘Manusia’ NN Gallery, Kuala Lumpur
 1999  ‘Creative Craft Design’ Mid Point Shopping Centre, Kuala Lumpur’Tasik Kenyir’ Pengkalan Gawi Tourist Information Centre, Tasik Kenyir, Terengganu

Special Mention Prize ‘World-Wide Millennium’ Painting Competition, Winsor & Newton with Nanyang Art Supplies Sdn. Bhd., Kuala Lumpur
 1994  ‘Malaysian Wildlife’ Plaza Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur; Consolation Prize
 1993  ‘Old Kuala Lumpur’ Plaza Putra, Kuala Lumpur; Consolation Prize’Watercolour Competition & Exhibition’ Creative Art Centre, The National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur; Second Prize
 1991  ‘One World – No War’ City Hall, Kuala Lumpur; Consolation Prize’National Fire Prevention Week’ Galeri Shah Alam, Selangor; First Prize
 1990  ‘National Children’s Day Festival’Institut Bahasa, Kuala Lumpur1999 ‘Creative Craft Design’ Competition & Exhibition

gunnery_residency

Former Resident Artist Wins Gunnery Residency

Above: Abdul Multhalib Musa has been awarded a 3 month residency at the Gunnery Studios in Sydney from June to August, 2004, sponsored by the Australian High Commmission in Kuala Lumpur. Here Talib receives the award from H.E. Mr. James Wise, the Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia, at the Australian High Commmission on Friday 23rd April. The announcement of the award coincided with the posters from the urbanart2003 project being placed in the lobby of the High Commission for exhibition. All five artists on display have been resident at Rimbun Dahan: Chong Siew Ying, Noor Mahnun Mohamed, Wong Perng Fey, Ahmad Shukri Mohamed and Abdul Multhalib Musa. The website for this Melbourne Tram Shelter exhibition is www.vicnet.net.au/~urbanart/

Noor Mahnun Mohamed

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Noor Mahnun Mohamed

Noor Mahnun Mohamed (Anum) was the Malaysian artist of the year-long Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency in 2000. The works from her exhibition were presented in the Underground Gallery at Rimbun Dahan from 16 February to 14 March 2001.

Anum was also the Visual Arts Residency Manager at Rimbun Dahan for several years, and curated the annual fundraising Art for Nature exhibition.

Conversation with the artist

Laura Fan talks to Noor Mahnum Mohamed about the body of work produced during her residency at Rimbun Dahan. This is an excerpt of their conversation.

How has your time in Rimbun Dahan influenced your work?

Being at Rimbun Dahan settled me down and got me back on the track of working as a painter again. I returned from Germany to Malaysia at the end of 1997 and stayed in Kelantan for a year to be with my family. There I had a studio but I did not produce any significant work – only one small oil portrait of my dad’s goat. In my second year I moved to Kuala Lumpur, bunked in at a friend’s apartment, didn’t have a studio and didn’t paint much that year either. By the time I moved to Rimbun Dahan for the residency program, I was eager to work again, to smell oil and turpentine.

Rimbun Dahan provides me with just the right environment and facilities. Here I find myself getting back into my usual work habits. I feel at home here and I’m at peace which is necessary for me to paint, be productive, and develop my ideas.

These paintings are a continuation of what I have done before. For example the Karaoke singers are figures in a room, isolated and dominant, in a composition using flat perspective. On the other hand, being in a tropical climate there is much more human activity happening outdoors, in the open. And being at Rimbun Dahan I am surrounded by nature so I become interested in going ‘back to nature’ and landscapes, such as the painting of a lady looking out the window. Nature or landscape is reflected in the window pane. She wants to be in the landscape, but not yet. The painting is self referential because that is how I feel.

In what other ways has that outdoor shift influenced your work?

At the moment, the landscape appears only as a detail or as a background to a painting (for example the lady by the window), or the three faces. I put each face in a different location, one in a room, one outside by the pool and one underneath the trees in the orchard. I am still getting to know the landscape in itself: the horizon, the sky and the ‘geological drama’ of the ground. At the moment I feel it is much more comfortable to look at a landscape through a frame, a window view.

But if you look at it through the window you’re always looking at a framed view and not the entire scene. Isn’t that limiting?

I am interested in window views because frames have a relationship to the framed structure of a painting. The window is like a viewfinder where I can analyze a scene. It’s a controlled image with different qualities of light and colour depending on which time of the day I look at it, from the glaring to the sublime. And I sometimes find so much visual sensation that I have to close the folding doors of my apartment or studio.

This aspect of control is very interesting, especially in relation to your figurative paintings. Looking at your preliminary sketches, I can see that your initial figures re much more emotive, but in the final work the emotion disappears and the figures are very controlled – event though sometimes there’s a sense that the emotion still exists under the visible surface. Your work creates a relationship between coldness and emotion.

The figures in my work are in their own world and they do not need to communicate with the audience. The emotional distance creates a space between the painted figures and the viewer; it is deliberate, so the emotion is a tension beneath the surface. I prefer these undercurrents rather than a direct emotional confrontation.

To create this distance I manipulate shapes and colours. Using flat perspective as a structure in my composition, the choice of colours applied becomes important to convey the pictorial space. A wall can look as it if has no depth or is very solid depending on my intention as I use layers of colours to get to the right hue.

Why is it so important for you to create distance?

Because I find buffer zones necessary.

Is there a relationship between your desire to create distance and your interest in still life paintings?

When I do figures, they tend to be narrative. With figurative themes, I will be distracted by other concerns such as the expression of the figure in relation to the whole colour compostiion. Still life is much more neutral as a subject, it can tell a story, but while painting a still life, my main concern is the painting process and how painterly I want the work to be. In my still life, I just focus on how it is presented through colour, texture, shadow, luminosity, shape and brushstroke.

For me painting is about exploring things. It is like being a traveler, where covering distance is more important than the destination. I feel like a traveler all the time.

Mutalib Mann

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Mutalib Mann

mutalibMutalib Mann was the Malaysian resident artist of the Malaysia-Australia Visual Arts Residency at Rimbun Dahan in 1998. The exhibition of his works took place in the Underground Gallery at Rimbun Dahan from 28 August to 27 September 1998.

Mutalib Mann is an artist based in London, born in Alor Setar, Malaysia. He was trained at The MARA University of Technology, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and The London College of Printing in Graphic Design.