peripheries
introduction Peripheries is a group exhibition featuring ten international artists all concerned with investigating and interpreting the social, cultural and political aspects of Asia. Each artist has cast a unique view on the intricate situation of this wide region and provided their audience with rich visual narratives. Their works touch upon a wide range of topics: on natural disaster (Merapl), on social and political perspectives (Crescendo, Illustrations, Pua Rug of Politics, Automatic Arms and Rise of the 20th Century), on spiritual and religious beliefs (Songlines and Live Longer, Die Faster), on cultural impacts (The Foaming Weariness), on family history and personal identity (Family Album), and on social and economic situations (Landfill). Various media, from video, installation to illustration and digital prints, provide the viewer with a diversity of experiences. Three contrasting works highlight some of themes of the exhibition. Automatic Arms by Chinese artist Xinyi Liu shows a phalanx of waving arms of the ‘Lucky cat’ - an auspicious ornament often seen in the oriental stores and restaurants in Britain, expresses the idea of marrying mass
demonstration to mass production, these phenomena are humorously rolled into one ‘toy-play’. Joe Duffy, a lecturer in filmmaking at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), has produced two video pieces from his research project in Indonesia. One is about the largest landfill site in Jakarta, and the other the aftermath of the volcanic eruption at Mount Merapi in Java - the sites of devastation made by nature and man. Duffy has given a British artist’s reading and reflection. Indonesian artists Tio Meng Samantha and Budi Agung Kuswara show their ongoing work Songlines, catching the fleeting beauty of the lights of fireflies in transparent plastic Buddha statues with photography and video, encapsulating the delicate relationship between man and religion. The title of the exhibition implicates the idea that geographically and culturally everyone is now living on each other’s peripheries, we are more close to one another, but at the same time we are also more distanced. The aim of the show is to bring disparate people together and generate a greater understanding of the current situation in Asia.
The exhibition takes place at 4 Piccadilly Place, Manchester. This huge space with rough concrete walls and columns in an iconic industrial city, provides an appropriate and atmospheric setting for varied artworks with visual and auditory impacts. Peripheries exhibition is a part of the Asia Triennial Manchester 2011 (ATM11), co-curated by Joe Duffy and Tongyu Zhou and funded by MIRIAD, MMU. Dr Tongyu Zhou Research Associate of Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation In Art and Design (MIRIAD) Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU)
TIME AND SPACE In 2011 the Asia Triennial Manchester highlights perhaps one of the most important stories of our time: the migration of peoples from one place to other parts of the world. It calls to artists, curators and the wider public to consider how growing patterns of movement have radically altered our global demographics and given rise to new politics of identity focused on place, territory, belonging, and community. The emerging global networks present a novel cultural geography which is explored through numerous exhibitions throughout Manchester and Cheshire. A notable example is this exhibition, presented in a central derelict space in the heart of Manchester’s Metropolis. Jointly curated by Tongyu Zhou and Joe Duffy, the enigmatically titled “Peripheries”, is a feast of new media and a fusion of visual culture utilising film, photography and installation. This curatorial experimental enterprise is bold and tackles the theme of “Time and Generation” head on. In many ways, the show expands new digital spheres and fresh approaches to making a real profile for international artists. For many artists this brings exciting
new possibilities for their practice to be seen outside of Asia, and in a new environment, and an unconventional venue. The key message to all artists is to make new and exciting work. This is certainly true of the Peripheries show. Artists continue to generate and share ideas that are no longer necessarily to be understood as “Western” concepts of art making and display. They may have drawn upon other sorts of technologies that have challenged the place of art making among globalising patterns of visual communication. The growing range of opportunities for artists is especially visible in Asia: a principal site for the growth of dynamic intersections between artists and their expanding media, as well as the speedily transforming conditions of art’s reception. Add to this the rapid movement of art audiences, art discourse, capital, and artists themselves within and beyond Asia, and a picture emerges of a contemporary art landscape that implicates the broad social, political and intellectual issues of our time. Art ‘in and of’ Asia should be seen as a vital locus for engaging with current social and
political events, environmental change and cutting-edge models of creativity and innovation. It brings together sites of memory and the imagination, the redrawing of spatial and cultural boundaries, evolving beliefs and identities, and the development of novel ways of living and seeing in the current economic climate. “Peripheries” offers a place to think and experience the role of artists in affecting and understanding phenomenal global change. Alnoor Mitha Artistic Director of ATM Research fellow of Asian cultures at MIRIAD, MMU
Songlines Mintio & Kabul Tio Meng Samantha (Mintio) & Budi Agung Kuswara (Kabul) 2011, (Right) One of three photographic prints,101.6 x 101.6 cm
“Songlines� explores the universal human desire to actualize spiritual and philosophical beliefs in creating physical representations of it. Artists Mintio and Kabul worked with forms that are symbolic of belief systems prevalent in Java and rendered them in a new visual language. They used two dichotomous materials in extreme contrast to each other: the first being plastic, as the most material and indissoluble in nature and the other being the light of fireflies, in articulation of the most ephemeral. In the synthesis of physical matter and mystical interaction, the artists examine how modernization brings alive the spirit of pragmatism and consumerism, and how it has an impact on the reconstruction and revitalization of culture and spiritual values. With this work and the processes of material engagement, the artists examine the displaced natural systems at play within the production of consumerism, and how they have an impact on the reconstruction and revitalization of spiritual practices and culture.
(Above) Still from ‘Songlines’ : Tio Meng Samantha (Mintio) & Budi Agung Kuswara (Kabul) 2011, Single Channel Video with sound, Duration: 3mins
DASAR PEMBOHONG KERAGUAN CINTA, PERCAYALAH PADAKU Bambang ‘Toko’ Witjaksono 2011, Three Illustrations Ink prints, 18 x 15 cm each
Bambang ‘Toko’ Witjaksono creates graphic illustrations revolving around popular pulp narratives, mass entertainment stories circulated and re-appropriated through kampung art styles and graphic street arts. Idealised romantic situations are subverted to reveal emotional disjunction. The work shows the story of a relationship. The theme is trust within love. It can be seen as a parody of unrequited love between people of two cultures that are the same but different. Bambang ‘Toko’ Witjaksono has had a keen interest in comics since childhood, this affects his way of visualizing narrative. Keraguan Cinta - Doubt Love: Ada apa sayang? - What’s up honey? Aku ragu akan ketulusan cintamu - I doubt the sincerity of your love Percayalah Padaku - Trust Me: Percayalah...hanya ada kau seorang dihatiku... - Trust me...only you are in my heart Dasar Pembohong - Liar: Dasar pembohong - Liar
crescendo Dinu Li 2010, Single channel DVD with sound Duration: 7mins
Conceived as a flash mob style intervention in public space, Crescendo explores the significance of distance in time and space, and the social and political perspectives defining our cultural landscape within the context of the times we live in. Split into two parts, Li’s video involves ordinary citizens participating alongside the artist himself, in a public performance within the confines of China’s metro. Preceding this, and echoing the action taking place on the subway, bygone era black and white propaganda movies are freeze framed, emphasizing the contrived expressions of the actors, as an uprising is about to take place.
Live longer, Die faster Tianzhuo Chen 2011, Mixed media Installation Permanent paint marker on money for the dead, light box, silver mirror card and mask.
Live Longer, Die Faster is a multi-media installation that explores the human desire for long life. It questions the human fight against the process of ageing. In the past rituals were used: nowadays science has taken the place of these rituals. ‘Ghost’ money plays an important ceremonial role in some Eastern rituals. It can be seen as a bridge between the living and the dead. The juxtaposition of the ghost money and the beer advertising lightbox is intended to appear as a ‘commercial’ for life. The use of a facemask invokes the use of cosmetics to disguise the aging process, and the altar-like structure of the piece is intended as a comment on the propensity to ‘worship’ cosmetics. In the past rituals were used: nowadays science has taken the place of these rituals.
The Rise of the 20th Century (tentative) Xinyi Liu 2011, Single Channel Video Projection Duration: 2mins 24sec
Well known political figures evoke a certain response due to their notoriety. In this piece these figures are treated equally. Images of 39 world leaders were attached to the stems and leaves of narcissus flowers and filmed continuously for one month. The final film is speeded up and runs for two-and-a-half minutes. The narcissus flower holds a variety of complex meanings within different cultures. In the West the narcissus plant calls to mind the Greek myth of Narcissus, it can also be used to symbolise the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Within China the narcissus flower has become a symbol of wealth and good luck, due to the fact it flowers during Chinese New Year. Rise of the 20th Century documents a month long process of an unexpected integration of politics and nature.
Automatic Arms Xinyi Liu 2010, Mixed Media Installation Lucky cats, batteries, paints, 131 x 14 x 78 cm
Automatic Arms is a kinetic installation made from Maneki Neko or lucky cats: a sculpture of Japanese origin symbolising fortune and wealth, displayed at the entrance of many Asian shops and restaurants. The majority of Maneki Neko on the global market today are manufactured in China, where most of them are given a moving paw. The project aims to create something new by merging the encounter of commercialism with revolution. The shells have been removed to reveal the interior mechanism. Each lucky cat’s wrist has been turned 90 degrees, making their beckoning paws become waving fists. The lucky cat becomes a symbol of revolution.
FAMILY ALBUM Funa Ye “Family Album No. 1” 2010, Single channel video projection Duration: 5mins “Family Album No. 2” 2010, Single channel video projection Duration: 2mins
Funa uses the concepts of photographic genres to create a series of moving photographs. She re-enacted old photographic portraits of her parents and grandparents, recreating them as video. She dressed in appropriate clothing for each character. Using recordings of the family members, she then lip-synched their monologues. The combination of the lip synch and the voice-over subvert the notion of photography and emphasize the idea of the photography as performance. These videos not only represent personal identity, but also historical and documentary elements.
MERAPI Joe Duffy 2011, Single Channel Video , Projector/Monitor Installation Duration: 6mins; 5mins (On Monitor)
This visual journey through the site of the volcanic eruption at Mount Merapi in Java, Indonesia, reveals narratives of loss and displacement. The split screen format presents us with images of the ruined natural environment, as a monologue reveals attitudes to local myths and ecology. Juxtaposed against these images within the split screen are the destroyed domestic interiors and broken houses. These remnants of disaster and tragedy from the domestic to the natural combine to form an apocalyptical sublime landscape.
LANDFILL Joe Duffy 2011, Single Channel Video , Projector/Monitor Installation Duration: 12mins; 9mins (On Monitor)
Landfill here refers to the activities of the urban poor through a series of journeys mapped and displayed as abstract indicators of geographical sites and GPS points, simultaneously realized through factual representation. The landfill alludes to the filling of space, the gap between the real and simulated and the site at the periphery of the city, the network of flows and social conditions resulting in trashpicking, informal economies, stories of home and migration. The installation gives voice to individual perspectives and narratives connected to the waste industry of Jakarta to reveal migration, transit and experience of the ‘everyday’ of urban peripheries and the urban poor. One screen displays the compression of time and space through mobile technologies of GPS mapping and fractured broken narratives, the other reveals a counterpoint to the fast-paced flow of images and journeys. The images are connected to the social and economic through the voice of activist Ronny Poluan as he reveals the changing structures of the city, and its relationship to social and political upheaval in the recent past, to the emergence of investors and the IMF.
PUA RUG OF POLITICS Carl Jaycock 2011 reprint of 1998 original Digital print 129 x 74 cm
Pua Rug of Politics (Malaysian & British) taps into the traditions of South East Asia and uses these craft traditions in combination with digital media techniques. This artwork is reworked from a series that was created in 1998 when Jaycock lived in Kuala Lumpur. The artwork explores histories to critique aspects of South East Asian culture and its connections to British history, and also other countries’ connections to the region. The colonial past still permeates the South East Asian culture and mind set and Carl Jaycock endeavours to confront these issues and ideas through creating works that explore the intriguing complexities discovered whilst living in South East Asia. Pua Rug of Politics (Malaysian & British) plays with the tradition of rug weaving in Malaysia but subverts this with the use of images from ‘Merdeka Day’, which is the day that Malaysia celebrated ‘receiving’ its independence back. The space in the centre of the Pua rug was traditionally said to be where heads were placed by the old indigenous head hunters of the region.
THE FOAMING WEARINESS Chu ChunTeng 2010, Mixed media installation Rice cooker, universal electric adapters Dimensions variable
The Foaming Weariness is a very simple and personal piece, it truly reflects Chu Chunteng’s personal state during the last three years. In 2008, Chu Chunteng moved from Taiwan to London. Like many international students he expected the experience of studying abroad would bring a different and better future, but he discovered the cultural conflicts and hardships in daily life are everywhere. He pushed himself to integrate into his new society, struggling to adopt appropriate behaviors and improving his English language skills. Through this he became more aware of his own native context, and started to question how necessary these behavioural modifications were. The almost endless adaptor connections illustrate the complex mental processes that entangled Chu Chunteng; the rice cooker can be seen to represent the environment that constrained him.
biographies Tianzhuo Chen
FUNA YE
Born 1985, Beijing, China 2009 BA Graphic Design, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Desgin 2010 MA Fine Art, Chelsea college of Art and Design
Born 1986, Kunming, China 2008 BA Experimental Art, Central Academy of Fine Arts, China 2010 MA Fine Art, Central Saint Martins College of art, UK
Tianzhuo Chen’s work embraces his belief in the immortality of the soul. Combining painting, print and sculpture, his work creates an articulation between everyday consumer goods and ancient fetish objects. His practice utilises everyday objects and is based around theological ideas from primitive religions in an attempt to create a contemporary religion.
Funa Ye is interested in power structures, ethnic groups, and the fictional space of propaganda for the concept of ‘perfection’ in an ideological system, Her practice is mainly concerned with the relationship between the realities of every day life, and the perceived connection with authority. Her work is politically charged, subtly engaged in pastiche as a satirizing style of propaganda.
Tianzhuo Chen’s ongoing project is to create temporary temples in different places. He transforms galleries and public spaces into a place of worship that last for only short periods of time. By doing so, he claims to question the brokenness of our contemporary life, and our fall in morality and belief.
Bambang ‘Toko’ Witjaksono
Xinyi Liu
Born 1973, Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia 1997 Indonesia Institute of Art “ISI”, Yogyakarta 2005 Bandung Technology Institute “ITB”, Bandung
Born 1982, Hanghzhou, China 2007 BFA Sculpture, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China2010 MFA Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, UK
Bambang ‘Toko’ Witjaksono is a renowned Indonesian artist He was one of the founders of the art group Apotik Komik and now teaches graphic arts at Institut Seni Indonesia and is well known for his signature style that blends iconographies of ‘Urban Kampong Street Art’, Indonesian vintage comic illustrations, and cheesy ‘80s pop culture.
Xinyi Liu creates work that focuses on utilizing and transforming various forms of political knowledge into new ways of seeing the world. Working mostly in sculpture and installation, Xinyi Liu references historical figures and key political moments to visualize his questioning view. His recent interests continue his investigation into the boundaries of political comprehension and ignorance.
BUDI AGUNG KUSWARA (Kabul) Born 1986 Singapore 2009, BFA, Photography, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
TIO MENG SAMANTHA (MINTIO) Born 1982, Indonesia BA Fine Art, Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Mintio is a fine art photographer whose work has depicted and explored the urban environment to examine the links between spirituality and reality. Kabul is a Balinese painter whose work appeared in the first Jogja Biennale in 1988 and has been exhibited internationally. Collaboratively they work with painting, photography and mixed media to explore dichotomies of interior and exterior worlds, from the reality to the spiritual, the visual and the textual. Together they formulate their ideas across materials and methods of presentation, different environments that create more porous and ephemeral settings for engaging with images.
CHU CHUNTENG
BUDI AGUNG KUSWARA (Kabul)
Born 1982, Taipei, Taiwan 2006 Shih Hsin University , Department of Film, Taipei, Taiwan 2010 MFA in Fine Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK
Born 1985, Beijing, China 2009 BA Graphic Design, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Desgin 2010 MA Fine Art, Chelsea college of Art and Design
During his undergraduate degree, Chu ChunTeng made a number of short films and participated in international film festivals. His graduate work “The House of Sleeping Beauty” was inspired by Kawabata Yasunari’s novel.
Tianzhuo Chen’s work embraces his belief in the immortality of the soul. Combining painting, print and sculpture, his work creates an articulation between everyday consumer goods and ancient fetish objects. His practice utilises everyday objects and is based around theological ideas from primitive religions in an attempt to create a contemporary religion.
After graduation from his BA, he shifted his direction towards fine art. His work has been selected for group shows including Fábrica de Talentos Portoin Portugal, Taipei Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum and Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts.
Tianzhuo Chen’s ongoing project is to create temporary temples in different places. He transforms galleries and public spaces into a place of worship that last for only short periods of time. By doing so, he claims to question the brokenness of our contemporary life, and our fall in morality and belief.
Dinu Li
joe duffy
Born Hong Kong, China 2001, BA (Hons) Photography, Liverpool John Moores University
Born in 1972, Manchester, UK 2001 BA (Hons) History of Film & Photography with Practice MMU 2002 MA Communication Design, Manchester Metropolitan University
Dinu Li is a UK and China based artist working across the moving and still image. Throughout his practice, Li places himself in a variety of circumstances, responding to his immediate surroundings in an attempt to understand the many cultures he encounters. He explores the nuances of the everyday – its many rituals, routines and patterns. Recent works have been situated between modes of representation, the vernacular, specific geographic and historical contexts and the intersection between the personal and the political.
Joe Duffy’s practice involves film, photography & installation with a widening interest in landscapes, environments and the senses of places with historical, social or political uses. Migration, diaspora, layers of memory and meaning are revealed and relayed in the play of natural and architectural spaces as narratives unfold. This exploration of place has included work mapping urban spaces, questioning notions of territory and drawing on the sublime through natural and manmade disaster sites. His work has also been exhibited in Chile, Russia, Serbia, Germany and other countries.
Dinu Li’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: the 53rd Venice Biennale, Danielle Arnaud, London; White Space 798, Beijing.
carl jaycock Born 1963, Old Windsor, U.K. 1998 MA Fine Art, Birmingham University Carl Jaycock’s artworks are primarily concerned with exploring ideas around identity and presenting them in a physical form that raises ideas and questions in the viewers. The use of images via print processes and computer manipulated media brings to the forefront issues around the complexity of identity and the connections between local and global culture.
WITH THANKS TO THE ASIA TRIENNIAL MANCHESTER This catalogue was published to accompany Peripheries in ATM11 27th October – 13th November 2011 Curated by Joe Duffy and Tongyu Zhou http://www.peripheries.co.uk 4 Piccadilly Place Manchester M1 3BN Published by MIRIAD Manchester Metropolitan University Edited by Melanie Miller and Tongyu Zhou Designed by Anna Frew ISBN 9 7 8 - 1 - 9 0 5 4 7 6- 66- 4 All texts © the authors, 2011 Photography © the artists, 2011 Cover image from Joe Duffy’s ‘Landfill’ Peripheries was distributed by Miriad Manchester Metropolitan University
£5. 00 I S B N : 9 7 8 - 1 - 9 0 5 4 7 6 - 6 6 - 4 .