Painter

Justin Lim

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Justin Lim

About the Artist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahmad Fuad Osman

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

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

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

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

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

BY CARMEN NGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gabrielle Bates

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Gabrielle Bates

Malaysia-Australia Visual Artist Residency 2007

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

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

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

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

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

The elasticity of a golden thread

by Gina Fairley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Arahmaiani

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Arahmaiani
Saya Cinta Kamu, 2005, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 130 cm x 2.
“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.

More information on Arahmaiani please visit, http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/islamic_world/articles/2003/arahmaiani.

 

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.

Malcolm Utley

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Malcolm Utley
'Kuala Lumpur Journey with Rain', 2004, 120 x 120 cm, oil on sealed board.
‘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.

 

 

 

Troy Ruffels

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Troy Ruffels

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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.

 

Exhibition Catalogue Essay

Filtered Sky

Rimbun Dahan exhibition catalogue cover.
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

[2] RUFFELS, Troy, as above

[3] RUFFELS, as above

[4] RUFFELS, as above

[5] RUFFELS, as above

 

Above: Troy and Anne Morrison standing in the underground gallery at Rimbun Dahan.
Above: Troy and Anne Morrison standing in the underground gallery at Rimbun Dahan.