The Singaporeans have certainly been laying the art on. Just two months on from Art Stage, we tramped down for the year’s second art blockbuster event, the slightly delayed Singapore Biennale, and a good seven or eight shows on the side.

By all accounts, SB2011 is less of a spectacle than its predecessors – no art statements running across City Hall in bright lights, no colourful containers brightening the urban shoreline. It shies well away from big beautiful themes like 2006’s Belief, and 2008’s Wonder. This year’s Biennale, themed “Open House”, is decidedly interior in its conceptual and physical architecture.

(Broadsheet’s 40th anniversary edition gives a good preview, including a lengthy interview with Artistic Director Matthew Ngui and Curators Russell Storer and Trevor Smith: http://www.cacsa.org.au.)

Less can be more, though, and, not expecting wow (there was simply not very much build-up to the event), I really enjoyed the Biennale as an experience. I found myself getting into works I didn’t expect to like, and that there was just about enough time to cover the 63 works over a day and a bit (ideally two though) without reeling over from too much information. The curatorial emphasis on process over subject, object and in a number of cases, presentation, I think worked on me, ranging through sometimes vastly different approaches from space to space, room to room, dark corner to dark corner (of the National Museum) – the question marks and surprises, as much as the resonances did force you to engage and explore. I particularly liked the Old Kallang Airport site – moving through the succession of rooms in the East and West blocks like changing levels of a video game, or the hide-and-seek of the main building. There was an Alice-in-Wonderland effect, you were tiny among the giant rolls of Michael Beutler’s Pipeline Field, or in Sheela Gowda’s magnified bathroom of horror, but god-like peering into the unrealised utopias of Michael Lee’s Office Architect. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Frequency and Volume: Relational Architecture 9 was a big hit with visitors as our bodies tuned into radio channels tracking the large shadows we cast on the wall.

Michael Beutler, Pipeline Field

Sheela Gowda

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Frequency and Volume: Relational Architecture 9

There was a definite sense of nakedness and exposure, sometimes as a challenge, sometimes as an act of trust or intimacy, sometimes conspiratorial. There were relatively few works that were all dressed up and ready to go for the ball. For Rumah Sulaiman Belakang Kedai Ah Guat, Shooshie Sulaiman relocated the structures of two sites of personal significance– in Titiwangsa KL and Malacca, to SAM’s 8Q building, and they contextualise a video of a conversation with Ah Guat, and drawings and collages from over the span of her practice, creating a layered reading of artistic process, space, and memory through an excavation of the personal.

Shooshie Sulaiman, Rumah Sulaiman Belakang Kedai Ah Guat

Confession, identity-construction and voyeurism seemed to play a big part in the curatorial conversation, from Ruang Rupa’s hilarious and touching fantasy lives of Singaporeans to Ise’s grocery-shopping adventures with local families to Jill Magid’s Evidence Locker to the poster-child of the Biennale, Candice Breitz’s Factum which compares interviews with identical twins and a set of triplets. I particularly enjoyed Tala Mandani’s tiny animated vignettes of clumsy men doing violence to themselves, and Simon Fujiwara’s extraordinary manifold reconstruction of Hotel Mumber using eroticism as an intriguing entry-point.

Ruang Rupa, Singapura Fiction

I was surprised by the amount of sex (as parody: Tracy Moffat, Ming Wong) and violence (to inanimate structures – Lisi Raskin’s muscled reconfiguration of the mezzanine floor of Kallang West Block, Mike Nelson tearing up walls and pedestals, Superflex drowning McDonalds). I found I quite liked the violence bit.

Mike Nelson

Other personal favourites which linger in my mind are Tiffany Chung’s poetic landscape installation Floating into the Future from a Distant Past, and earlier mappings of Vietnam, and Phil Collins’ wonderful music video The Meaning of Style, carving new spaces for imagining our third-world realities.

Tiffany Chung, Floating into the Future from a Distant Past

It’s worth catching the Biennale (to 15 May 2011) if you’re in this part of the world – not so much as a great new album of contemporary art, but certainly an inspiring and interesting playlist which can help to make us think more deeply about what some artists today are trying to get at.

For a “greatest hits” of Southeast Asian contemporary art, you can also catch Negotiating Home, History and Nation: Two Decades of Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia, 1991 – 2010 at SAM (to 26 June 2011). Do also make an effort to visit Camping and Tramping Through the Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya at NUS Museum, a wonderful exploration, both as an exhibition and a publication, or what curator Shabbir Hussain Mustafa describes as an “exhibitionary complex”, of the evolution of the museum in Malaya. Tap into some fantastic archival material including letters and recorded conversations on Malayan exhibitions in London in the 1920s, the genesis of the Raffles Museum, and the Asian Art Museum at University Malaya and their collections, Asian art objects from the NUS Museum and Asian Civilisations Museum collections, natural history artefacts from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (NUS) Collection, Dr Ivan Polunin’s remarkable Singapore film archive and the eclectic collection and paintings of artist and healer Mohammad din Mohammad, for new ways of seeing old ways of seeing.

Mella Jaarsma at SAM

Camping and Tramping Through the Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya

Bernando Pacquing, Untitled at ICA’s “Roberto Chabet : Complete & Unabridged”

Join us on Nov 30th at Yee I-Lann’s Fluid World book launch at Valentine Willie Fine Art. This is a RogueArt publication project and we are so proud to be a part of this! Early birds will get a complimentary copy of  New Malaysian Essays 2 with each purchase of I-lann’s book. Don’t miss out! See you soon!

The launch of WORKING and Tara Sosrowardoyo’s exhibition was a success!  A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who made it to Zinc Art Space last Saturday evening! Tara’s works look fantastic in the space, we love it so much we thought we’d share images of the exhibition with you.

Click here for more pictures of the opening event. And here to read a short article about the project in New Straits Times Life & Style section on Sunday, 10.10.10

Join on us on the 2nd of October to celebrate the launch of the publication WORKING, an artists initiated project in association with RogueArt. Spearheaded by Ahmad Zakii Anwar and Jalaini Abu Hassan, WORKING is the principal outcome of the WORK project which began in 2009. Some of you may recall attending the WORK exhibition held earlier in January 2010 at No. 19 Jalan Berangan? (For those who would like to find out more about the exhibition, click here if you are curious)

WORKING focuses on the creative processes of 10 leading Malaysian artists and their relationship with their respective working environments through a series of interviews and photographic documentation. The publication is a modest attempt to uncover each artist’s methodology, to try to make sense of what is often considered a wordless and emotional creative process.

An exhibition entitled 10 Malaysian Artists: Portraits from the WORK Project by Tara Sosrowardoyo will also be presented in conjunction with the book launch. Tara was invited to be the “eyes” of the project, to capture each artist’s portraits which will form the key entries of WORKING. Over a period of two months in 2009, this regionally acclaimed photographer travelled around the Klang Valley, up north to Kuala Kangsar, down south to Melaka and Johor Bahru, spending time with the artists and familiarising himself with their environments.

The exhibition is the result of this two-month shoot. A number of images from this exhibition can be found in WORKING while others are the photographer’s own selection of unpublished images from his sessions with the artists.

The artists for the WORK project are: Ahmad Fuad Osman, Ahmad Shukri Mohamed, Ahmad Zakii Anwar, Chong Siew Ying, Hamir Soib, Jalaini Abu Hassan, Kow Leong Kiang, Raja Shahriman Raja Aziddin, Ramlan Abdullah and Yee I-Lann.

WORKING launch + 10 Malaysian Artists: Portraits from the WORK Project by Tara Sosrowardoyo

will be held at Zinc Art Space
Lot 61, Jalan Maarof, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur

on 2nd October at 8pm

The exhibition will run from 2 to 12 October 2010
RSVP contact@rogueart.asia +60 16 266 7413 www.rogueart.asia

With thanks to ZINC

Opening hours Monday – Saturday 12pm – 7pm Sundays & Public Holidays open by appointment info@zinc.com.my +6 03 22825388 www.zinc.com.my

The Orang Besar Series: Empires of Privateers and their Glorious Ventures

The exhibition we’ve all been waiting for is now around the corner! RogueArt are very excited to be a part of Yee I-Lann: Boogeyman, in collaboration with Valentine Willie Fine Art. The exhibition opens at MAP. KL this Thursday 16th September – Malaysia Day. It’s been a glorious venture working with Yee I-Lann on this show, which brings together new works in batik, photomedia and pewter as well as key works from the past three years. See our Exhibitions page for more details.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to all our Muslim friends, and Selamat Hari Malaysia to all Malaysians!

(BY)

FINALLY. The fruit of our labour is finally having its long awaited coming out party! This is RogueArt’s first major publication project so you can imagine our excitement. Can’t wait to see the final product! We hear the 100 limited edition copies contain a special surprise. See you there?

Still Crazy After All These Years
Book Launching and Signing
Monday, May 17 at 5:00pm
Nadi Gallery, Grand Indonesia, Jakarta

Please email us contact@rogueart.asia for further information about the book or if you would like us to help you find a copy.

Asia Art Forum is back ladies and gentlemen! And yes, we are helping our friends plug their gig this coming May. I was a part of last year’s series and can honestly tell you that it is an opportunity not to be missed, if you are the sort who is interested in the ins and outs of Asia’s dynamic art scene told from an insider’s viewpoint.

This year AAF will be focusing on themes and developments in artistic practice relating to the contemporary art of China, Korea and Hong Kong. The Forum will be complimented by a trip to Hong Kong’s Fotan art district, formerly an industrial area characterised by warehouses and now home to the studios of many of Hong Kong’s most prominent artists. AAF will also be devoting a day to the examination of the art market and will be looking at the role of the collector in Asia, where the audience will have the unique opportunity to listen to personal testimonies of prominent collectors building art collections in Asia today.

Fostering direct encounters with leading members of the Asian contemporary art community, the program offers privileged access to first-hand information and invaluable insights into these developing areas of Asian art history.

The exclusivity of the Forum enables and encourages the exchange of ideas between guest lectures and participants providing a singular opportunity for art professionals, collectors and enthusiasts with an interest in these burgeoning regions currently driving a major transformation of the international art world.

The seminar will take place in Hong Kong over a three day period, 21-23 May. Limited places are available.

For more information please email info@asiaartforum.com

Asia Art Forum is an educational initiative founded and produced by Pippa Dennis in association with Asia Art Radar. 15% of all profits will go to Arthub, a non-profit art and cultural organization which promotes contemporary art creation in China and the rest of Asia.

Asia Art Forum is supported by Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong

With special thanks to The Goethe Institute and Ben Brown Fine Arts for hosting the sessions.

Programme will include:

• Bang to Boom: Chinese Art in the 1990s
Curator Karen Smith will trace the events, ideas and theories that unfolded through the 1990s to produce the backbone of China’s new art. Cynical Realism, Political Pop, performance art, photography, video, installation, and extreme conceptual expression all have their roots in this decade of tumultuous advance and experimentation, strung between the socio-political events of 1989–that began with a bang when woman artist Xiao Lu fired a gun into her work in February 1989–and the economic boom that began in 2004. The 1990s was an extraordinary incubator for art reflecting the extraordinary times that characterise the era.

• Centre and Periphery: the Dynamics of Hong Kong Contemporary Art

Eclipsed by the overwhelming attention directed at mainland China, Hong Kong artists have been free from commercial pressure to quietly develop a unique aesthetic. Compounded by the fact that Hong Kong is a place where physical platforms for visual art are curiously limited, many artists have survived by carving out private spaces far from the centres of control. This tendency towards privacy and interiority has become part of the fundamental vocabulary in the expressive content of Hong Kong contemporary art. Against this background, critic and independent curator Valerie Doran examines the quietly vibrant dynamics of Hong Kong art, past, present and future.

• Big Art in China

Philip Tinari explores the mechanisms of artistic production in contemporary China, asking how China’s unique economies of labor affect how work is made. Looking specifically at locales and situations including the studio districts of Beijing, the ceramic workshops of Jingdezhen, and the “copy” painting village of Dafen in Shenzhen, it raises questions of artistic authorship and social relations against the wider background of China’s status as “the world’s factory.”

• Asian Art Market Now

Jeremy Wingfield, Phillips de Pury’s Contemporary Art Specialist, will offer essential background and up to date information on the dynamics of the Asian Art Market today. The shift in global wealth from West to East in 2009/2010 has given rise to a new focus by Western art institutions on Asian and particularly Mainland Chinese art collectors. His candid insights into the current situation will focus on the inside players driving the Asian market forward, with special focus on the fresh opportunities available to collectors, institutions and art professionals.

• A Collectors Journey – From Hobby to Museum

Dr Oei Hong Djien, Indonesia’s foremost private art collector, will be discussing his own journey from initial fascination with his nation’s artistic culture to being the first to systematically collect modern and contemporary Indonesian art. He founded The OHD Museum of Modern and Contemporary Indonesian Art to house this unparalleled collection of 1500 pieces. As well as providing useful tools and methodologies for budding collectors Dr Oei will be looking at the role of the private collector in Asia, analysing how fundamental this position is as a preserver and promoter a nation’s artistic practise and culture in a region where governments do not necessarily support such activity.

Course
21-23 May 2010
3 day course, daily, 10-12.30am and 2-5pm

Price
5,200 Hong Kong Dollars (due on registration)
15% of all profits donated to Arthub, a non profit art and cultural organisation that promotes contemporary art creation in China and Asia.

For more information please contact:

Pippa Dennis
M (UK) +44 7786 110 561

Kate Cary Evans
M (Hong Kong) + 852 6103 0470

info@asiaartforum.com

www.asiaartforum.com

http://artradarasia.wordpress.com

(AO)

Rogue-ish hosted a special weekend presentation by Flowerdrum Bags founder Rina Matsui-Houghton on Dec 11th at No. 19 Jalan Berangan. This exhibition of one-off pieces was inspired by 6-word memoirs of 30-something Malaysian women written by Suhana Dewi Selamat. Rina interpreted the essays in visual and textural form on everyday things that women see and touch, wear and use in the home.

Inspired by the nostalgic whimsy of Rina’s vintage materials and the charming furniture borrowed from our neighbour, The Curiousity Shop, we decided to host a retro afternoon tea party resplendent with cupcakes, shortbread fingers, chiffon cakes, cocktail sausages and pineapples on sticks, iced lemon tea and good ol’ Pimms No. 1. The weekend would not have been complete without a small sale of Flowerdrum Bags with vintage prints and designs that made the ladies go weak.

We were so chuffed with the set up the show that we thought we’d share a few pictures of the afternoon with you. (It’s may not be Betty Drabble’s perfectly put together home but it is good enough for some of us to live the fantasy for a minute or two.)

Check out our Rogue-ish website here for further details about Rina’s one-off pieces.

It was a busy June for RogueArt. We’ve been meaning to put up these pictures from our Where Art Happens talks series but the three of us seem to be running relay in and out of KL.

Our series of three Saturday talks was all in all a great success thanks to our wonderful speakers from both Malaysia and abroad, our sponsor Yayasan Sime Darby, media partner Off The Edge, as well as to the fantastic audience, especially those who faithfully came for the full whack. We ourselves were impressed with the turnout, and salute all those who came for their dedication to the issues surrounding art in our community.

Session 1 – Art Spaces: Policies, Agendas and Ways Forward got off the ground with a most venerable panel of speakers – Dr Najib Dawa, Director-General of our National Art Gallery, Ahmad Mashadi, Head of Singapore’s NUS Museum, Hasnul J Saidon, Director of Muzium & Galeri Tuanku Fauziah at USM in Penang, and Iqbal Abdul Rahim, Creative Producer for Bank Negara Malaysia Museum and Art Gallery. It was a lesson in the challenges facing institutions dealing with art today, but it would seem that there is a general recognition of changing contexts and a sense of investment, particularly for the university museum-galleries, in developing future generations of audiences. It was particularly exciting to get a peek at the plans for the new Bank Negara museum and gallery which looks extremely impressive, and while it is very much a multi-faceted institution dedicated to more than just art, we’re sure it will make a big impact on our corner of local civilisation.

L-R : Dr Najib Dawa, Hasnul Saidon, Ahmad Mashadi, Iqbal Abdul Rahim & Beverly during a floor discussion

In the afternoon Rifky Effendy an indendent curator from Indonesia who took us on a quick tour of the Indonesian art scene which has changed dramatically since the regional market began to boom a few years ago. Pang Khee Teik, Programme Director of the Annexe Gallery waxed political and philosophical on the dangers of art policy, and the advantages of organic development (complete with arm movements). Simon Soon, a local independent curator, made a sweep of independent and alternative spaces in the region, showing us the breadth and depth of bold and exciting artists’ intitiatives from Malaysia to Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. Syed Nabil represented the largest sector of non-institutional spaces in Malaysia – private galleries, telling the story of his own space NN Gallery.

Surprisingly there weren’t many challenges from the floor, although one attendee did comment that it was all a lot to take in….

L-R: Syed Nabil, Simon Soon, Pang Khee Teik, Rifky Effendy & Beverly

Session 2 – Getting Out There: Art in the Community attracted the biggest crowd. It was a pretty international event, with artists Amanda Heng from Singapore and Tran Luong from Hanoi, Reza Asung Afisina & Ardi Yunanto from ruangrupa Jakarta, and Defne Ayas of ArtHub and Performa from Shanghai. From our home corner Hari Azizan talked about various Five Arts projects in the community such as Asian Youths ArtsMall, Lim Kok Yoong talked about the Let Arts Move You project on KTM trains and at KL Sentral Station in 2007, and Yap Sau Bin showed off the brilliant just released DVD of the Contemporary Art in Schools Project at Stella Maris school last year, managing to sell a few copies that day. This session was moderated by Eva McGovern. It was all very inspiring, and we had lots of audience feedback (with some pondering on the age-old question of the role and identity of art), and we hope to see more beautiful art-in-public/public art initiatives in our back yard soon.

L-R: Hari Azizan, Amanda Heng, Eva McGovern & Tran Luong

The crowd catching up with friends during lunch break

L-R: Eva McGovern, Yap Sau Bin, Lim Kok Yoong, Defne Ayas, Reza Asung Afisina & Ardi Yunanto

Session 3 – Feeding Creativity: Art Residencies and Grants had givers (in the morning) and takers (in the afternoon) give their viewpoints on the worthy practice of funding fine art.  Rahel Joseph talked about the two residency programmes she had initiated, for the Australian High Commission (Sydney) and for Galeri Petronas (Beijing), while Angela Hijjas described the RImbun Dahan residency programme(s) updated us on its latest developments, hinting at possible new programmes in Penang and Yogyakarta. Stephanie Yeap talked about the RBS-Malihom AIR programme in Balik Pulau while HOM (House of Matahati) was represented by Bayu Utomo Radjikin who told off many great initiatives by HOM including their residency programme, art competition, artists’ fund and fundraising events. Mella Jaarsma, co-founder of Cemeti Art House came to share her experiences from their Landing Soon residency programme and how Cemeti will expand on this to be a residency-based project space from next year onwards. Marion d’Cruz talked of the good work of the Krsihen Jit-ASTRO fund, and her experience with Artists’ Network Asia (ANA), and noted how there was a positive increasing trend of artists giving to artists.

Marion d’Cruz speaking about 5 Arts Centre

L-R : Angela Hijjas, Mella Jaarsma, Marion d’Cruz, Rahel Joseph, Bayu Utomo Radjikin, Sharon Lai & Stephanie Yeap

By the afternoon, things had got pretty relaxed. The last panel of the series included residency/grant veterans Malaysian artists Ahmad Fuad Osman, Chang Yoong Chia, Ise and Vincent Leong, a handsome young crew who gave eloquent presentations on the ups and downs of residency experiences (80% ups) – not being able to speak Korean, bureaucratic issues in the land under JB, the efficiency of the Taiwanese, the luxury of time and of Rimbun Dahan,freezing in Vermont, partying in Oz. We saw some of the work they did out there, too.

L-R: Roslisham Hashim (Ise), Vincent Leong, Ahmad Fuad Osman & Chang Yoong Chia

We’d just like to say thank you once again to our speakers, our sponsor Yayasan Sime Darby, media partner Off The Edge, and everyone who came and made the talks a worthwhile initiative. We hope to make this a yearly event, addressing different pressing issues for the art community.

We are preparing a fuller report on the talks which we will publish on our Projects page in the near future, so please do post here any comments or feedback on the talks series you feel may be of interest.

Meanwhile, check out our Where Art Happens art map, published in the June edition of Off The Edge, reproduced here.

Opening night

The opening of Personal Effects, our first exhibition project for 2009, on 30 May was a roaring success. We were really happy to see so many of our friends from the art world and beyond come to the show. Thanks all for your support. Thank you especially to the exhibitors for being so forthcoming. I hope in the end they rather enjoyed having their prized possessions on display.

Jalaini Abu Hasan & Jaslena Amir setting up

Hayati Mokhtar, with Attachments

The first floor was a great crowd-pleaser, especially with the younger guests – they really took to Su Ann Wong’s shrine “The Dolphin is My Goddess” and Chang Yoong Chia’s clever shadow play “Shadow of Flora and Fauna”. Wong Hoy Cheong’s “Free Coffee” was also very popular, attracting such luminaries as Datuk Syed Ahmad Jamal and his wife Datin Hamidah.

Free Coffee, served in person by Wong Hoy Cheong

Su Ann Wong, The Dolphin is My Goddess

Iqbal Pakhruddin with Shadow of Flora & Fauna

We apologise now for not having many photos of the night – sadly, while the crowd was wonderfully respectful of the fragility and preciousness of the exhibits, my camera went missing at the end of the night. If you came for the opening, please do post any nice images you may have!

For more about the show, and to download the PDF catalogue, go to our Exhibitions Page.

BY