dusun 7
June/July 2012 Ridiculously Free
e-Journal of Asian Arts
cheng yen pheng
voon kim cheong
martin bradley honey khor pei yeou denis chai kah yune
dusun
it’s what you’ve been waiting for
contents
june/july 2012
cover
despacho
editor
martin a bradley
martinabradley@gmail.com
Dusun TM
dusun is a not for profit publication
page 6
editorial
page 8 cheng yen pheng pricked page 20 voon kin cheong page 35 let the train gve you strain short story page 41 palette photo essay page 52 honey khoe pei yeou sketch journies page 60 despatcho sunday photo page 90 denis chai kah yune
Thank you for continuing to support Dusun.
editorial
Dear Reader
Once again, in this issue, we bring you the very best that the region has to offer.
As well as superb painting by some of the up and coming talents in the region, and a short story, in this - the seventh issue of DUSUN, we highlight two photo essays - sans text.
Although there are many fine instances when text and images work together, in the two pieces shown in this issue - we demonstrate that text is not always necessary to explain a good image, or a good sequence of images. Enjoy the ride. Dusun always endeavours to bring something new, something fresh and exciting to its readers. Now read on...........................................
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air ball no. 6
Cheng Yen Pheng was born in Penang. in 1982, she graduated from the Dasein Academy of Art in 2004, and was a recipient of the Malaysian Emerging Artists awards in 2009. She was one of three local artists chosen to create a commissioned artwork for Absolut Vodka in 2011.
air ball no. 5
air ball no. 4
air ball no. 3
meat
air ball no. 7
air balls no. 2 “full of hot air (poke me with a needle)�
air balls no.8
air balls no.1 “too much love will kill you, too much air will break you”
chen yen pheng
voon kim cheong
drum and drummer 13
drum and drummer 3
There is a tremendous energy and movement which emanates from the works of Voon Kim Cheong - a resonance and a vibrancy which almost catches the casual viewer off-guard with his stunningly beautiful paintings. In Voon Kim Cheong’s vivacious oil canvases, reminiscent of Italian Futurism, curved kites dart and sway in the wind - tossing and turning amidst turbulent thermals. Gyroscopically spinning tops whirl and jostle while lively multi-racial drummers pound out the country’s lifebeat, reverberating and resonating with a dynamic passion uniquely displayed in a sultry equatorial Malaysia. Born in 1968, In Kuala Lumpur,Voon Kim Cheong graduated from the Saito Academy of Graphic Design in 1992. He sought further training as a fine artist and has made a living in illustration, design and painting. He was included in the Young Artists Exhibition, 1995, in Klang, Selangor and The Philip Morris Group of Malaysia Awards at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur in 1999. The following year (2000) Voon Kim Cheong had art works in ‘Little Treasures Art Exhibition’ organised by Klang Fine Art Centre, The Philip Morris Group of Malaysia Awards, again at the National Art Gallery and ‘The First Step’ art exhibition organised by Klang Fine Art Centre, Klang, Selangor. In 2001 Voon Kim Cheong exhibited in the ‘Open Show 2001’ in the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, and five years later was part of the 1st Malaysia World Art Tourism Expo 2006 at MITC Ayer Keroh, Malacca. The following year he took part in the International Art Exhibition 2007 as part of the Malaysia’s 50th anniversary celebrations at the Daiichi Modern Art Gallery in Sungei Petani, Kedah. As part of an international initiative,Voon Kim Cheong took part in the ‘World of Imagination’ (Vol 2) - an exhibition in the APW Gallery, Long Island City, USA, in 2009. There his works was part of 2000 paintings, hung in a single gallery, featuring 500 artists worldwide. That same year he took part in the Malaysian Chinese Art Exhibition,
celebrating the 35th anniversary of Malaysia/China ties, at the Cheng Ho Cultural Museum, Malacca. That year he also had his work exhibited in the Penang Art Society 56th Anniversary Art Exhibition in the Penang State Art Gallery, Penang. In 2010 Voon Kim Cheong took part in the International Famous Artists’ Paintings Exhibition at the Daiichi Modern Art Gallery in Sungei Petani. The current exhibition springs from work the artist had done back in 1998 – Rhythm of the Night. It is a darker piece, more surreal than his later works but, in it, is the love of music – a combining of musical instruments that brings to mind the Chilean surrealist Roberto Matta, the colouration and fluidity of line of Frans Marc (The Little Blue Horses - 1911) or the dynamics of The Golden Eye by Max Ernst (1948). Voon Kim Cheong’s latest work focuses, primarily, on Malaysian drums, drummers and drumming using dynamic rudiments of the ‘curved line’. Other elements on show are spinning tops (Gasing), flying kites (Wau) and the ‘Performer’ series, accompanied by still life, fishing villages and antique architecture. Drums and drumming are integral to the races living harmoniously in Malaysia. A full Chinese drum troupe may consist of 24 drums - 6 representing each season from the first of spring to the great freeze. Malays use a longer drum called a ‘Gendang’, of which there are more than a dozen different types, used in civil and religious ceremonies. Malaysia’s Indian population have brought with them the popular drums of India, used in the north and south of that country and there are many other drums used by indigenous peoples. ‘I use the idea of drum to represent the sun and moon. Sun is harder while the moon is soft. Sometimes when you bang a drum it is hard, and the sound is hard, at other times it is soft. When I paint the images of drumming, I try to depict colours relevant to the race of the drum and drummers, in my work’ said Voon Kim Cheong as he revealed the passion, energy and vitality explicit in the reverberations
of Malaysian drums depicted through his rich, evocative canvases. With influences from Picasso, Cubism and Futurism,Voon Kim Cheong’s art works are reminiscent of those spectacular paintings by master Futurist Umberto Boccioni in their lyrical sweeps of movement and dynamic colouration. Voon Kin Cheong’s latest works have his figures spring with gusto from the canvases, aided by carefully placed colour dynamics and racing shapes which immediately engage the viewer. Even in the simplicity of black and white,Voon Kim Cheong’s work explodes with a painterly intensity seldom seen in a young Malaysian artist. Whether dancers sway, drummers beat; kites drift, or tops spin Voon Kim Cheong’s works are about delicious movement, vibrant energy, a resounding passion for art and a love for life.
drum and drummer 17
drum and drummer 2
drum and drummer 14
drum and drummer 12
infinite grace in lingering twirls
“gasing” top spinning 1
drum and drummer 11
“wau” flying high 2
short story
let the train give you strain by martin bradley an extract from the forthcoming collection - Buffalo and Breadfruit, published by Monsoon Books, Singapore and available as an ebook through Amazon and other ebook sellers.
Winding up the valley to the watershed, Thro’ the heather and the weather and the dawn overhead. Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder Shovelling white steam over her shoulder, Snorting noisily as she passes Silent miles of wind-bent grasses. (W.H.Auden, ‘Night Mail’) With the memory of Papan, its calmness and peace, resting at some rear corner of my mind and, after spending weeks cocooned in my studio writing, I got the wind up my tail and had this mad desire to travel south to KL. I made all kinds of rash promises of meeting with friends, packed my small black shoulder bag, organised a cat sitter for our various cats and off I toddled. For some quite inexplicably romantic reason I had longed to use the train. Maybe it was some deep-seated memories of John Betjeman’s BBC Branch Line Railway programme, or Auden’s Night Mail poem which coloured my view of rail journeys, but the desire was upon me and I had to act on it. For my tiny British brain it had seemed a simple enough affair. I was to get a lift to the train station, buy a train ticket, travel to Kuala Lumpur by train, and alight at the other end. I would make my way, by LRT, to meet said friends. It is said – the best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men often go awry, and mine did – well and truly. Everything had started well. I got my lift, from my brother-in-law. We had an early morning dosai for breakfast, and I was driven to Kampar train station. We arrived early. My brother-in-law had to get off to work, so I walked around a bit – familiarising myself with the station layout just in case, one day, I am stopped by some over-exuberant special police and requested to describe the train station in detail. I sat
and waited for the ticket office to open. So I waited, then I waited some more and all in all I waited an hour. The ticket office, such as it was, opened more or less on time: at 8 o’clock. I sidled up to the uniformed gentleman, seemingly imprisoned behind glass (goldfish came to mind). “One return ticket to Kuala Lumpur, please”, I said in my most polite English, hoping he spoke the language. “No tickets,” was the reply, in good enough English. I ventured the same, a second time, thinking that maybe I was not getting my message across adequately. “No tickets” was the reply a second time. Getting on my imaginary high horse, I ventured, “I cannot believe that there are no tickets to Kuala Lumpur, at all today”. With my modicum of surliness noted, the KTM official swung his computer monitor round for me to view. “There,” he said, with a slight edge to his voice, “Are no tickets to Kuala Lumpur, at all, today”. He was right. I read the screen. In each of the columns where the number of tickets available should have been, for each of the trains heading towards KL, from Ipoh, there was a ‘0’ – a zero, nothing. Truly, according to the computer screen, there were no tickets to be bought going towards Kuala Lumpur, for that day. That day, I remind myself, was a Friday. One of the anomalies of living in the computer age is that some people do book tickets on-line. People that is, not me. I foolishly believed that there would be reserves of tickets. I trusted that physical tickets that were held, or printed, at the railway station. Tickets perhaps kept aside for those individuals who do not have access to the KTM on-line site or who, again like me, do not have a credit card to buy tickets online. I was wrong. The other factor, of which I was ignorant at the time, was the Friday factor. Friday was the day when people who had travelled out of Kuala Lumpur on a Sunday, travelled back. Meaning that the human traffic to and from KL was inevitably greater on Sundays and Fridays, hence the
lack of tickets. It might have been nice, if some kind soul had thought to put out a notice to the effect that all tickets were sold, prior to the ticket office opening at 8 a.m. in the morning. They had not. I had wasted over an hour waiting for tickets that were not to be had. Never mind, thought I, not all is lost, and there must be buses. Having failed in my attempts to gain a seat on the train to KL I had no choice but to seek another means of transport – namely said bus. The ‘bus’ is actually a misnomer; it’s actually what we would call elsewhere a coach. Intercity coaches are generally as quick as the train, air conditioned and reasonably comfortable. Once again I was off having romantic notions – this time of Malaysian coach travel. Of course, there were no taxis outside of the railway station. I walked the ten minutes of morning heat, back towards Kampar town. I had reached the edge of town when, coming towards me was a vehicle with the letters KL printed on a board behind the driver’s windscreen. There was the word EXPRESS along the side of the vehicle. Aha, I thought, that must be the KL Express – because that is exactly what it says on the sign board. I caught the driver’s attention. He stopped the coach; I ran. I dodged traffic, speeding like The Flash, to the driver’s window. I asked if I could get a ticket to KL. He motioned for me to board the less-than-sleek coach and I was off, on my way to Kuala Lumpur – at last. I sat and gave a silent prayer to any and all Gods, or gods, their saints and hangers-on who might just want to protect me in my journeying, and let my racing adrenalin subside back to more tolerable levels. It was only when I had began to breathe easier, that I noticed that the TV was missing from the TV cabinet. I also noticed that the air-conditioning was not as cool as I had been led to believe. I looked around. The bus, for that is what it was, was half-full, and more that a little dowdy. A poor relation, indeed, to those streamlined greyhounds that race back and forth between cities – giving the impression of massive caterpillars with their wing mirrors looking like antennae. I had caught
the wrong bus. True, it was travelling towards Kuala Lumpur, but it was the slow bus, the old bus normally reserved for the unhurried and the carefree. The bus traversed the old road out of Kampar and into Tapah. Then, with much swinging around corners, and ambling along town lanes, it pulled up at what must have been Tapah bus station. A middle-aged and middle-sized Indian conductress, wearing what I imagined to be a uniform – though in Malaysia you couldn’t always tell, launched herself up the bus’s metal steps. Upon her request, I paid the ticket fare to Kuala Lumpur. The bus pulled out again. Eventually, after stops to take onboard a miniscule amount of passengers, we headed out onto the highway. I desperately looked at my phone. Could I still make my lunch meeting – perhaps. No sooner had I done so, than the bus veered off the highway and back onto the old road again. I was perplexed to say the least. Back we travelled and then into what could only be described, in English terms, as a transport cafe car park, at the small town of Bidor. The driver descended, as did the smokers among us. For a few moments, there was silence. Then the driver climbed back on board, calling and hustling passengers from the bus. I wasn’t sure if this was the normal course of events. Was this a breakfast stop, and so soon after starting? Would we also have an elevenses break, and then a lunch break, just to add some interest into an otherwise boring journey? Was it usual to change buses half way, like tennis players. As soon as my feet hit the ground, the Malay driver said to me, “My wife, she has a problem”. It was said in a very conspiratorial tone. Was this man a spy. What was my reply to be – ‘Yes, perhaps a hospital, in Russia’ ha ha ha, in a pseudo Russian accent? I was about to commiserate with him, to show a little empathy for this man who, evidently, loved his wife to the extent that her welfare came before his job and passengers. The driver then pointed to the bus front wheel. “My wife, she has a problem,” he said
again, pointing to the, now flat, tyre resting on the broken tarmac. He then laughed a hearty belly shaking laugh, which I was too bemused to respond to. The second bus was already half full. With us transferring over it became overly full, all that is, except for one seat – next to mine. I completed my journey to KL thankfully unaccompanied except, that is, for the two naked feet of the female passenger behind me, who had insisted on resting them through the gap between the bus window and my seat. I finally arrived in Kuala Lumpur city far too late for my lunch date. In a way it was a little fortuitous as I had no thoughts of food in my mind – especially anything having to do with cheese.
Martin Bradley is a writer/poet/designer. He is winner of the 2012 Warren Adler Divorce Short Story Prize (USA) and was Guest Writer at India’s Commonwealth Writers Festival in New Delhi (2010) and Guest Writer at Singapore’s Lit Up literature festival (2010); he has read in Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh Malaysia (2011). Martin writes articles on Art & Culture for magazines and newspapers and designs digital images. He has been the editor of Dusun – a Malaysian Arts and Culture e-magazine and founder/host of Northern Writers – a venue for ‘readings’ in Ipoh, Malaysia.
photo essay
palette
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sketch journies honey khor pei yeou
village in hanoi, vietnam
loves in sapa, vietnam
Honey Khor Pei Yeou was born in Bukit Mertajam, Butterworth and undertook a diploma in Fine Arts at the Institute of Art (MIA). She participated in Pameran Terbuka,Yayasan Seni Selangor, at Galeri Shah Alam in 2007. In 2008, she held her first charity group art exhibition - “A Journey into Joy & Peace” at Desserts, Bar, Solaris, Mont Kiara, Kuala Lumpur. Honey held a second charity art exhibition - “A Journey into Joy & Peace” at Penang Village & Great, Eastern Mall, Ampang, Kuala Lumpur and had her first solo exhibition - “The Color of My Journey” at Penang Village & Great Eastern Mall, Kuala Lumpur, 2011.
angkor wat, siem reap, cambodia
colors of cambodia gallery, siem reap, cambodia
temple in langmushi, shechuan, china
juzhaguo, shechuan, china
fishing village II, sungai petani, malaysia
good morning putrajaya III, malaysia
photo essay
despacho sunday
despacho - a cremony for pachamama (mother earth) and the apus (mountain spirits) for gratitude, abundance, & resetting
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denis chai kah yune Denis Chai Kah Yune was born in Kulai, Johor and graduated from Kuala Lumpur College of Art, in Fine Art, in 1996. He held the post of illustrator to the Encyclopedia of Malaysia and to a well known United Kindom travel book. He established his Pure Art Studio in 1999 and teaches art to children. In 2007 he was invited to Shanghai, China during a cultural exchange, and to Kaohsiung’s Children’s Art Education Festival.
remembering whiteness & other poems by martin bradley
downloadable as a free pdf from http://correspondences-martin.blogspot.com/2012/04/open-publication-free-publishing-more.html