Dusun quarterly 3

dusun quarterly

Winter 2014

e-journal of Asian Arts and Culture

Wang Yi Gaung Luo Qi Lau Moa Seng Honey Khor Quah See Hoong Celso Pepito Charly Lesquelin Aboriginal Art 1

Dusun Quarterly 3 cover by Charly Lesquelin

Honey in my Head by Martin Bradley 2

Editor Martin A Bradley email martinabradley@gmail.com Dusun TM Published by EverDay

y Art Studio and Educare December 2014

Dusun remains an entirely free and non-associated publication concerned with bringing Asian arts and culture to everyone

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inside....

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Editorial

Wang Yi Guang, Tibetan paintings

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11th Asian & African & Mediterranean International Modern Art Exhibition

Shang Kun Luo Qi Museum of International Modern Art

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Lau Moa Seng, Expressions of Muar, Malaysia

Honey Khor, Scintillating Images of Love

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Luo Qi, Chinese calligraphyism

Tonghua Children Fine Art Education, Hangzhou, China

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Winter 2014

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Quah See Hoong, Naturist

Celso Pepito, Philippines

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Charly Lesquelin, RĂŠunion Island

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Short story, Bill and Ben by Martin Bradley

Ninbella Contemporary Australian Aborigine Art

Poem, China Granted by Martin Bradley

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Food Dusun, Tongue of Duck and Chicken for Beggars

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dusun quarterly e-journal of Asian Arts and Culture

editor’s note It is Autumn, heading towards winter. In some parts of Asia leaves change colour, and fall. In others it’s business as usual, green begetting green in a perennial summer.

This year Dusun visited Hangzhou, in China, and brought back some interesting stories especially for you, dear readers. There are fantasy paintings depicting Tibet and contemporary Chinese calligraphy. We have news of exhibitions, and children’s art tuition from China.

From Philippines we have modern cubism and from Réunion Island fantastic fauve symbolic romanticism. Australia shows the contemporary Aboriginal works while Malaysia shows some of its very best paintings, within these pages.

Food, this issue, is Chinese street food, part one....more next issue.

Dusun remains unaligned, and Free in every sense of the word.

No allegiances to gallery, or tourist board, race, creed or financial backer.

Read Dusun four times a year for the very best of Asian Arts and Culture.

Now read on................

Martin Bradley Founding Editor.

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Wang Yi Guang

Soaring Flower

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Vibrant Reflection

Wang Yi Guang was born in Yimeng Mountain area of Shandong, China. He is the younger brother of another notable painter, Wang Yidong. Graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1990. He participated in various national and international exhibitions and art fairs in Beijing, Guangzhou, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Wang Yi Guang works as a creative designer for the China Railway Construction Corporation.

In 2002 when working on the Qinghai-Tibet high-speed railway, the painter was struck by the "humble beauty" of the Tibet, which inspired him to create a Tibetan series of paintings, which were exhibited in 2004 at a solo exhibition "Retrospective of Tibet - The Spirit and Movement" held at Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong. (taken from his Facebook Page.)

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Summoning of the Heart

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Lucky Railway

Towards the Sun 13

Snow Lotus 14

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Cloud River

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Warm Clouds

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Red Mani Stone 19

Far Far Away

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Here Comes the Train

Towards Lasa Series No 2: Full Moon in Tanggula

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HANGZHOU

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11th Asian & African International Mod Hangzhou China Towards an Understanding Four thirty pm, October twenty six, 2014, saw the opening of the 11th Asian & African & Mediterranean International Modern Art Exhibition, at the Shang Kun - Luo Qi Museum of International Modern Art. That was in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, literally gleaming with modernity and with at least one eye firmly fixed on a bright new future.

Thirteenth Century Italian traveller - Marco Polo highly regarded Hangzhou as “the city of heaven”, and “the finest and most splendid city in the world”. And, for those of you who had forgotten, Hangzhou has been a Member of the Creative Cities Network and UNESCO City of Crafts and Folk Art since 2012. Hangzhou is famous for its silk, seal engraving, Longjing tea, porcelain, handicrafts and has been nominated as a National cultural & creative centre. That, along with the founding of an arts academy, has led Hangzhou to be one of the most important arts Luo Qi centres in China.

In October, 2014, as maple leaves around the stunningly beautiful West Lake, Hangzhou, were beginning to reveal a gamut of painterly colours, from green to yellow and mauve artist, academic and entrepreneur Associate Professor Luo Qi once again brought international modern art back to Hangzhou. Ever since the founding of the Hangzhou National College of Art, in 1928, that city has housed some of the finest modern art in China. Luo Qi, in his eleventh annual Asian & African & Mediterranean International Modern Art Exhibition, was once more instrumental in bringing a coterie of exciting international modern artists, and their works, to grace and excite his home city.

While the southern Chinese province of Zhejiang has been renown for its superb ink and brush art since the Southern Song Dynasty (1127 to 1279), it was with the founding of the National College of Art, by Cai Yuanpei, of the Overseas Art Movement Society (in 1928), that modern art and Western art techniques originally came to the province. Ideally situated by an inspirational lake, the college of art, ever a promoter of Modern Art, was later to be renamed the China Academy of Art (1993) and that is where Luo Qi had studied, taught and exhibited before establishing the annual Asian, African, Mediterranean international Modern Art exhibition, in 2002.

Professor Luo Qi, overall curator, founder and benign father of the Setting Up 24

n & Mediterranean dern Art Exhibition series of annual international modern art exhibitions, has long been part of an offshoot of Chinese New Literati painting called “Calligraphyism”.

There had be a resurgence of New Literati painting, in China, during the late 1970s associated with the Chinese avant garde. Luo Qi, and painters with like minds, began developing “Calligraphyism”, calligraphic abstraction, in the 1990s. In Sacred Secret, T.J. Morris writes “In China, during the 1990s an abstract calligraphy movement known as “Calligraphyism” came into existence, a leading proponent of this movement being Luo Qi”. Luo Qi’s works have travelled far and wide.

Not just to the countries he has included in his latest exhibition but also to America (US of A). The Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, University of Kansas, University of Minnesota, the Cleveland Public Library, Ohio, and the Seattle Center for Culture & Art Exchange have all shown Luo Qi’s exquisite works in their galleries.

Honey Khor The new ‘Luo Qi Museum of International Modern Art’, rests in one part of the first floor, of a freshly constructed mega-building, the kind of new wave architecture that Hangzhou is becoming famous for. The building, constructed by Shang Kun Construction Company Limited, with Chairman Li Zheng We at the helm, is triangular in design, with each ‘corner’ of the triangle blunted, rounded like a snooker ball rack, reminiscent of the rounded corner building found at Myrtle Avenue at Bleecker Street, Brooklyn, USA. In time, one whole floor of that spectacular building will be devoted to arts, led by the Shang Kun - Luo Qi Museum of International Modern Art. Bringing it all Together Having walked through a ‘hall of fame’, featuring posters from past exhibitions, a virtually life size photographic blow-up of the previous year’s group photo, and been faced with large black and white images of those involved in the latest exhibition, upstairs the visitor came face to face with a chipboard wall. On that wall, in three dimensions, the words “Shang Kun - Luo Qi Museum of International Modern Art” reached out. It was, and is, a large space. The words are down lit, painted black, and quite naturally project from the natural colour of the chipboard. To 25

Discovering

one side stood the doorway which eventually led to the exhibition. On the opening night a table stood with the PA equipment and a laptop at the rear, controlling the ambiance.

The feverishly frantic day before the opening, in the freshly constructed, well lit and unusually spacious gallery, a room stood, housing crates, packing cases, large wooden frames and wrapped, sealed, protected artworks. Some international artists had shipped over their artworks, others carried their precious cargo with them on their various international flights. Artists had begun arriving a few days before the opening of the 11th Annual exhibition, to give plenty of time for the hanging of their unique works. One day before the opening night saw the sort of intense, but well-ordered, international cooperation only artists can extend towards each other, as artists from countries as diverse as Australia, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, Réunion Island and Thailand extended the hand of friendship and co-curated the 2014 exhibition with aplomb.

Malaysian and Korean Professors, normally to be found holding forth in lecture theatres, or hold up in offices, were up ladders attending to the delicate business of hanging large, and small, works of art. The keen observer would have noticed that this was tackled with a seeming ease, also demonstrated by the rest of the newly formed group. An Aladdin’s Cave of a tool chest was brimming with exhibition utensils, gleaming steel wire, hooks, nails and vital exhibition construction implements, curtesy of Luo Qi and his decades of exhibition experience. This access to vital materials enabled the smooth mounting of disparate object d’art.

Those canvases not needing stretchers, or frames, were stapled onto freshly painted white walls, their exhibiting reflecting the nature of the works themselves, as modern, contemporary, fresh and exhilarating.

While Australian Aboriginal art was being hung by a team consisting of Italian artists, an Australian curator and a British art critic, elsewhere a Malaysia artist was extending her canvas onto the square column forming a support for the gallery ceiling, and a Mauritian painter was aiding a Fauve artist from Réunion Island. While some artists had met at other annual international exhibitions, many had come together for the very first time. Luo Qi had provided the right venue, a new venue, for a varied selection of international artists to bond together and form a Hanging Paraphernalia formidable team to successfully build a physical exhibition for himself and the people of Hangzhou.

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Beginning the Process

An Exhibition of Superb Creativity and Imagination Grant Vincent Rasheed, half Irish, half Libyan, and a prime example of the exciting mix of races Australia now presents to the world, had brought Australian Aboriginal art to Hangzhou. Dreamtime, the dreaming, Rasheed’s Aboriginally painted canvases brought complex narratives of outback life, history and culture to the Luo Qi Museum of International Modern Art. Earthy colours, once originally of earth but in modernity acrylic, became patiently dot painted onto intriguing canvases, blurring boundaries between man and environment. Ancient tribal stories permeated indigenous memory stretching from prehistory, revealing the inter connectedness of man and his environment. Floral mandalas, mandalas dot mapped in our minds, tribes interconnecting like atoms across the vastness of outback dryness, were all revealed in two gallery sections.

In other parts of that spacious gallery, Milanese enchantress Emanuela Volpe exhibited white calligraphic poetry clouds drifting across a bright blue sky delight. Words, thoughts, ideas had become as light as air, drifting to gather weight, eventually to fall like rain as sentences, paragraphs and astound with their moment and magnitude. Ms Volpe’s countryman Marco Cascella’s two large paintings reflected both airiness and vertigo. The viewers practically tumbled into “Blue Sea with dark Land”, modern day Alices falling into Cascella’s surrealist fantasy.

On an adjacent wall, Cascella’s lighter piece, heavily reminiscent of Dali’s Catalan landscapes, caught the viewer in a dreamy delight, with consciousness adrift in Phantasos’s surrealistic dreams. Cascalla’s smaller, oval pieces danced with other worldly plankton, wisps of windtossed Turneresque cloud and seascapes which invited keen observation of those miniature works. Lastly, but be no means least of the Italian trio, came the sophisticated works of the Italian architect Alessio Schiavo.

Schiavo had produced three intriguing canvases of stylised fish shapes, almost flat colour, but keen observation revealed modernist brush strokes with acute dynamism within the seeming simplicity. These canvases seemed to echo Schiavo’s earlier black and white images of swimming fish. Those earlier pieces were gathered under the title - Pelagos, meaning 27

sea. The newer images reflect Schiavo’s renewed interest in colour, particularly colour combinations found in the works of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (Michelangelo).

From the small French overseas territory island of Réunion, adrift in the Indian Ocean, nestling adjacent to both Madagascar and Mauritius, came the indomitable les Fauves painter Charly Lesquelin. Lesquelin’s two large canvases were stapled onto the gallery partition, both were statements concerning man’s dichotomous relationship with his environment. One was Gaia herself, trying to inhale pollution to heal her Earth. The other was a Green Man figure whose world was being eroded by pollutants and the over industrialisation of the planet. In the famed N8 Club, once a swimming club for Mao Zedong, and now a playground for Hangzhou’s elite, two more works by Lesquelin hung.

One a portrait, the other an exquisite Fauve landscape revealing all the heat and passion of his beloved Réunion Island. Back in the Museum gallery, during the opening night, Lesquelin painted a live portrait of the beautiful Zhu Miao Zhen, which he not only managed with ease, but with distinct flair.

A number of Malaysian artists were represented in that exhibition print makers, painters, and Dr Cheah Thien Soong, a master Chinese ink and brush painter from the Nanyang school, and his characteristic paddy field birds. His student, up-and-coming Malaysian artist Honey Khor was also featured with a painting taken from her forthcoming solo exhibition in Malaysia. While other artists were content to hang, or staple their works onto the walls or partitions of the gallery, Ms Khor chose to exhibit on one of the pillars joining ceiling to floor, and extended the bounds of her canvas beyond its frame and onto the pillar itself, with watercolour paint. The effect was remarkable, and remarked upon.

Korean artists ink brush painted large Daliesque black ants, Muangjan Subin, a Thai artist, presented his watercolours and a young Russian artist, Evgeny Bondarenko, had hung his sketched architecture. Together, the collection of artists from differing countries presented a cornucopia of art, and artistic styles, to delight visitors to the gallery. Luo Qi’s own inimitable work graced his gallery, revealing complex works of symbols which were, perhaps, both ante and post language.

In that Shang Kun - Luo Qi Museum of International Modern Art there was a diverse exhibition of paintings from myriad countries. Once again, 28

Russian artist, Evgeny Bondarenko

the artist, poet, writer, professor and entrepreneur Luo Qi had sleekly engineered a show fit not only for the discerning of Hangzhou, but for everyone. That diverse show, in the new Museum gallery, heralded a new beginning, one which will bring even more art from even more countries to astound, delight and educate the citizens of Hangzhou. The gallery museum represents the first phase of a planned art floor, the first floor of the exciting new building. Over time the people of Hangzhou, and their many visitors, will have greater access to a wide variety of international Modern Art, and learning about art, with thanks to initiatives from the local government, interest from Hangzhou businessmen and to Luo Qi himself.

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SHANG KUN LUO QI MUSEUM OF

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F INTERNATIONAL MODERN ART

11th Asian & African & Mediterranean International Modern Art Exhibition

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Portrait of Zhu Miao Zhen by Charly Lesquelin

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Paintings by Italian artist Alessio Schiavo

Ink and Brush Ants by one Korean artist

Four thirty pm, October twenty six, 2014, saw the opening of the 11th Asian & African & Mediterranean International Modern Art Exhibition, at the Shang Kun - Luo Qi Museum of International Modern Art, in the Chinese city of Hangzhou

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Milanese artist Emanuela Volpe with one of her works

Opening ceremony

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Zhu Miao Zhen with artists Honey Khor and Angel Angoh

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Italian Surrealism by Marco Cascella

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Art from Mauritius by Angel Angoh

Korean sculpture

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follow artist Honey Khor as she sets out to volunteer for the charity - Colors

Every so often a book appears that reveals and illuminates a project that might otherwise remain largely unknown by the outside world: ‘Colors of Cambodia’ is such a book. This is a highly personal and passionate account written by Martin Bradley and illustrated by Pei Yeou Bradley of her encounter with a remarkable art-based project in and around Siem Reap in Cambodia, and how she was drawn into practical involvement with the children for whom the project exists.

Richard Noyce, Artist, Wales 2012

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s of Cambodia, for the first time

written and designed by Martin Bradley

on sale from cocthebook@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/ groups/138402846288849/ http://colorsofcambodia.org/

proceeds from all sales go to the education of children in Siem Reap, Cambodia 39

Luo Qi

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International, Chinese born, artist Luo Qi, from the renown art city of Hangzhou, the largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China, has already established himself on the world’s stage as an academic, poet, writer and avant garde artist. In his artistic endeavours, Luo Qi investigates Chinese calligraphy with his dynamic artistic movement Calligraphyism (aka Characterism). Luo Qi was taught at, and has lectured in, the well established China Academy of Art (est. 1928), Hangzhou, beside the stunning phenomenon of the city’s West Lake. Over many years, Luo Qi has developed a fresh way of inquiry into pictorial pictogram representations which bind the inquisitive viewer to the object, and yet which also remain referential to historic Chinese pictograms and, in particular, those carved into ancient oracle bones (for divination, used 1500 to 1000 BCE).

In Derridean terms, artist Luo Qi de constructs the familiar concept of Chinese pictograms, where each pictogram reveals a single thought rather than a collection of letters from an alphabet, and reconstructs them as abstracts, into fresh forms, which undoubtedly echo back to their Chinese antiquity.

In China, Luo Qi’s Calligraphyism has grown alongside a revival in Chinese Literati painting, deemed the New Literati movement. It is a renaissance, a signifying evocation of the breakaway moment in antiquarian Chinese artistry and literature - Literati. Back in 1998, Zhang Yiguo had written (in Brushed Voices:Calligraphy in Contemporary China) that “Luo Qi, defies accepted conventions in a more controversial manner. In some of his 43

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works Luo Qi denies traditional calligraphic strokes and characters entirely, adopting instead a “universal line that forms abstract images”.

With these excitingly modern works of artist Luo Qi, it is the fusion of Western ideas, and methods, with those of China that Chinese art has so been longing for. Ever since the early part of the last (20th) century, China has maintained a profuse interest in Western Modern Art, its ideas and techniques. In Luo Qi, a questing Chinese art has finally come of age. It has blossomed into a fine peony, showing the world that a Chinese Spring has well and truly arrived, beautiful and exceedingly bountiful.

Viewers of Luo Qi’s work might be forgiven for recalling ancient Sumerian texts (26th century BCE), and the world’s first known writing system. There are similarities, particularly in Luo Qi’s ‘Love Writing’ series. It is the simplicity and beauty of both the Mesopotamian cuneiform and Luo Qi’s creations which lead to visual delights and a soupçon of intrigue. Yet, within Luo Qi’s works there is also reference to modernity.

Echoes of the late Keith Haring, with his iconic quasi-primative graphic imagery seem to haunt Luo Qi’s imagery. But where Hering’s icons are drawn (literally) from simplistic figures, ala underground comix, Luo Qi reinvents Chinese calligraphic pictograms with 44

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a complex, wonderfully pictorial ’language’ of their own.

Luo Qi’s latter works zing with colour. Using contrasting colour, like red against green or green against red, he makes his canvases resonate with colour, forcing a visual engagement. Luo Qi manipulates shades of orange, contrasted in early icons marked with mid green, or orange upon yellow, speaking in terms of colour, formulating a fresh visual language.

The use of rounded shapes, and lines ending in curves, lends a degree of humour to some of the works, which echoes the playfulness of the Surrealist Joan Miro and, perhaps, shades of some of the more playful 1960s Pop Art. There are also reminiscences of imagery found on China’s own celadon glazed archaistic vases, hidden within Luo Qi’s profound referential system. Luo Qi’s ouvre blends with a keen Post-Modernist agenda, with astutely observed historical reference, within his decorated canvases. Luo Qi’s Chinese pictograms are defined so broadly as to encompass not just traditionally brush-stoked ideas, but an entirely new spectrum of symbols and phenomena ripe for any phenomenologist to de cypher.

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tonghua

Children Fine Art Education Hangzhou China

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It was October. Autumn in Hangzhou, China. A resplendent season of vivid colours was beginning to grace the area around West Lake, and the Wetlands. It was the very start of autumn, with hints of the magnificent colour changes to come. The sky threatened rain as I decamped. I had been taken to the Qianjiang New City, a freshly erected business area, one of the many in Hangzhou, and had been led to see one outlet of China’s most successful children’s art education franchises - Tonghua.

Outside, the grey looking, and for Hangzhou practically nondescript, concrete building had come alive with a stunning facade of red. Graphic design symbols and logotypes were raised in 3D. In the centre of that masthead was a yellow Chinese pictogram and a black, raised, logo depicting primary colours, beneath which ran the legend - ‘Children Fine Art Education’. The welcoming teacher wore a sparkling white top, and business-like black trousers. She delicately pinned a flower buttonhole onto my shirt, then ushered me into their prismatic, pristine environment.

Inside was a neat and orderly environment. The words ’Children’s Eyes, Children’s Ideas, Children’s paintings’ stretched across one wall on a large poster. High in the reception area, nearer the ceiling, a bank of painting reproductions heralded the organic abstract works of one of my favourite artists - the Austrian Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I was taken aback. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined to see Hundertwasser’s images in China, but then China had been one surprise after another. Representations of Lichtenstein and Picasso (of course) were also there, as might be expected.

The reception area was designerly spotless. One could almost imagine a Swiss troupe of interior designers sweeping through the building, like Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition, rendering clear, crisp, lines designed as showcases for their art.

An almost obsessive care for the surroundings was apparent throughout the classrooms. I had to keep reminding myself that hundreds of young children pass through those rooms, and corridors, every day.

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splashes of paint, glue, no scribbling of marker-pen or pencil evident in the spotless areas I came to. Had it all been scrupulously scrubbed and cleaned before my arrival, I doubt it. My impression was that everything at Tonghua was constantly kept clean, neat, tidy, and that was, perhaps, part of the training for those very young artists-to-be.

The very first thing to notice was the row upon row of clear glass bottles containing shredded strips of coloured paper. Each shade of colour was kept with its like, to present the gentle gradation of colour as one looked down the shelf, at the bottles. Below, more glass bottles, but painted on their exterior, again kept by colour. The bottom shelf held plastic bottles, each filled with a coloured liquid, ranked by colour.

Felt-tip markers were kept, segregated by colour, in wire desk tidies.

Sheets of coloured paper, on racks, were also laid by colour shade.

Everything was orderly, precise, regimented, and yet the children’s artwork on view were as imaginative as any child’s in the West.

As I walked, I was informed that Tonghua, which considers itself to be ‘China’s most influential children’s art education brand’, is one of the most professional junior arts training institutions for children in China. It was mentioned that Tonghua was established by the parent company from Shenzhen, as a Hangzhou children's art base.

Children are taught art and Fine Arts in curricula which begins at ages of three through to six, and considered to be ‘child modelling’.

The children's Art Foundation proper begins at ages six to eight. The concept of art is expanded throughout the age of nine, and a series of juvenile systems training begins for children twelve years and over.

China now has over 100 of these centres, and Hangzhou, six.

Many children, of this privately operated and business funded institute, go on to Art Schools and achieve success as artists, or architects, something that Hangzhou is becoming famed for. An Italian friend of mine, from as far away as Milan,(also famed for its design), had sent his son to learn architecture in Hangzhou.

He said that he considered it to be the best he could do for his son.

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alaysia

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Expressions of Muar Lau Moa Seng

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Lau Mao Seng was born in Muar, Johor, Malaysia, in 1944. He graduated from the famed Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, in Singapore, in 1967, and joined an art exhibition with 6 other Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Graduated Artists, at Singapore National Library.

Life in Muar, Johore, Malaysia is represented, vividly, on his Expressionistic and energetic canvas boards. Those boldly colourful canvas boards are the by product of many years of vigorous, vivacious painterly fervour. Lau Moa Seng has sought to capture his neighbours, and his neighbourhood, in his Malaysian hometown of Muar, with each canvas board a lightning ‘sketch’, capturing the vivacity of the moment . Lau Moa Seng has explained that canvas board, alone, was suitable for his vigorous way of working. Framed canvas was too flexible, unable to resist his animated strokes. He needs a surface resistant to his robust striking of oil pastel, yet small enough to be completed at one sitting en plein air.

2005 Held the 1st solo oil painting art exhibition in Muar.

2012 Charity solo art exhibition for Eng Choon Oh Yong [LAU] Clan of Malaysia, Muar.

2014 “ MALACCA DECADE OF CHANGES “ joined art exhibition with 4 artists in Malacca & Muar. Current member of Muar Arts Society & Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Alumni Association Malaysia & Singapore. Frequent participation in various arts exhibition held by society / association & arts invitations. Primarily uses oil paint & oil pastel media for outdoor paintings.

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Uniquely Toro

is the story of a remarkable artist known only as Toro.

He has diligently tested the norms and conventions of artistic ‘society’, and shaken a poignant fist at corruption and prejudice.

It is a bold book about temerity and bravery written and designed by Martin Bradley Available through Waters Publishing House, Manila,The Philippines

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Honey Khor

scintillating images of 74

love

text by Martin Bradley

Come

journey

my into

inner world

my desire burning to create .... a soul’s journey to fulfilment 75

Sitting in my lotus haven, I am finally at rest with my spirit and the spirits around me. I

commune with nature and nature comforts my soul

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I am at one

with my nature watching

the free flight of my mind’s children

in poems replete with quick sunflowers dancing

in Catalonian fields my

mesmerising stillness

at times

melting into a delight

of red heat passion

expressed through wisps and whims on canvases emboldened

by the moon 77

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mushroom trees

startle

white doves paloma blanca family

symbols

observing keen

forests of

golden racial

memory in

lands of lush

fecund

emerald

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Cataloni In the summer, while school was out, Honey Khor took her second yearly trip to Northern Spain. Eventually landing in Barcelona, she navigated the transport system to bring herself back to the small town of Figueres, in the province of Girona, and the friends she had made there. The delicate Catalan light effused with the memory of summery scents, fresh mottled apples, ripened strawberries and creatively misshapen brilliant red tomatoes, presented itself unashamedly to the keen-eyed Malaysian/Chinese artist.

Honey had travelled continents, traversed the intricacies of transportations to return to her adoptive ‘family’ in that very special region of Spain - Catalonia, partly French partly Spanish.

Skies, under which the poet Lorca wrote and Hemmingway drank, gave up a serene Mediterranean dark phthalo blue, through which barely a titanium white cloud had drifted. Honey, in her new electrically night green dress and vividly tangerine hat, ducked sweet olive branches and once more sketched her way into ancient Catalonian hearts more used to the Surrealistic eccentricities of their beloved Salvador Dalí i Domènech.

Thirteenth century Figueres, birthplace of Dali and luscious figs, sprouted green, fresh. Amidst manganese violet, madder and cooling blues the town presented antique stone façades, squares, statues and a promenade - la rambla arched with shading trees. The awed artist delighted in contrast shadow, keen streaks of sun. Majestic monuments were painted in watercolour, uniquely rendering the dry heat of Orwell’s Catalonia, and its welcoming golden sun.

Dali was absent, nevertheless it was still exciting to be sleeping in the room he always stayed in (room 101) when visiting Hotel Duran, in Figueres, Spain. Those two weeks in Hotel Duran were time well spent and extremely memorable for us as my artist wife was using the room as a temporary art studio. Her exhibition was later to be hung at the cafe/restaurant Dalicatessen, in Figueres, known for its speciality of anchovies from Roses on the Catalan coast.

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In Catalonia I

roam free, tasting

dark olives and sweet blackberries

ia Summer

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The Durans had been great friends of Salvador Dali, schoolmates, friends and patient chefs too, acceding to Dali’s often eccentric tastes in both food and art materials. Rumour has it that as well as ordering a variety of birds to feast upon - thrushes, larks and terns, Dali once ordered an octopus, but not for eating - for use as a brush for painting. Another gem tells that Dali was in the habit of drawing on the hotel’s tablecloths, which were subsequently sent for laundering. You might wonder just how many millions of Euros those tablecloths could be worth on the current art markets of the world if they had been saved from laundering.

In Figueres nearly everything is Dali. The town has made great use of its connection to that great Surrealist painter, especially after Dali made inroads to construct his teatro museo de salvador dali (Dalí Theatre and Museum) there, in 1974. At times the sheer weight of commercialism does tend to cloy. You can only see so many badly made Dali watches (as key rings) or buy so many posters of his work before the excitement wears off. But, and there is a big but, when you come face to face with his actual works (in the Museum) you are frequently awestruck.

Well, I was, and that does not happen to many times these days.

Hotel Duran was a sheer delight. Yes, the hotel did make its connection to Salvador Dali clear, but in an understated, subtle way. Photos on the wall showed generations of Durans with Dali, or Dali and his classmates both at school and at the art school in Madrid. Other photos were of Gala and Dali, but they were all outdone by original Dali lithographs hanging in reception and all dinning areas of that hotel. Hotel Duran is a treasure trove for lovers of Dali’s work and, incidentally provides some of the best accommodation and food to be found in Figueres, as we (my Dali struck wife and I) were to discover on the last night.

Breakfast at the hotel was the usual European fare, with lashings of cold meats and cheeses, not to mention gallons of Nespresso coffee to wash down the rolls, croissants and chocolate croissants.

Tea infusions nestled against each other for comfort and the odd pyramid of Lipton’s Earl Grey tea waited for this odd Englishman to purloin. We never lunched at the hotel. Daylight meant us traipsing off to Cadaques, Port Lligat, Roses, Girona, L’Escala or Besalu 83

(a medieval Spanish town famed for its Romanesque bridge).

Lunch was grabbed on the fly, and where we could, along bus or train routes. Sometimes it was green tea with fresh orange drink and later gelato ice cream (an Italian import) in Girona. There was zarzuela (Catalan fish stew) in Roses, washed down with sangria, after visiting a local farmers’ market and buying chorizo (Spanish sausage). Other times Middle-Eastern cous cous in Cadaques, taken down some ancient lane laden with bougainvillea, accompanied by Damm Lemon 6-4 (cold lemon cerveza - the Spanish equivalent of British shandy), or simply gazpacho (cold, spicy, tomato soup) taken with local Catalan bread smeared with garlic and rubbed with tomatoes in the Spanish way, while we were on our way.

Generally we steered clear of the tapas bars. Tapas (Spanish appetisers similar to the Middle Eastern mezze or Hong Kong Dim Sum) are a great way to sample Spanish food, but are renowned for cost, not per single dish but as an accumulation over the evening, like in Sushi bars. Tapas simply was not in our meagre budget, travelling, as we were, from the Far East and having to convert from Malaysian Ringgit to the more expensive Euro.

Figueres market brought all the colour and flavour of the comarca of Alt Empordà in one delicious arena. While housewives and tourists sampled cheeses, dates, meats and fresh fruits, Honey, in her Andy Warhol soup-tin dress, squatted and, with luscious strawberries, painted the vividness of the market environs. Strawberry pits can still be seen beneath the vigorous carmine on watercolour paper, her fingers stained with the colour and sweet, flavoursome juices.

Hotel Duran, gourmet haven for all that is Dali and Gala, sheltered the artist in its notable Dali room. She sketched portraits of the Duran family as thank-you gifts for all the late night chocolate drinks and delicate pastries Señor (Mr) Duran proffered. She talked endlessly with the Duran children and became beloved by the family. She is an adopted Chinese granddaughter, the young Malaysian cousin and devourer of delicious midnight Crema Catalana. Honey stayed there, surrounded by the paraphernalia of Dali, his litho prints, newspaper cuttings, and photographs with the Durans.

In the cooling evening, gold ochre nuts (from leafy Hazel) littered 84

I tread the bright

sunflower fields, bask

by aquamarine seas and quaff maroon wines

85

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cobbles near the majestic 11th century Romanesque bridge, in the antique town of Besalú. Sanguine, the colour of a poet’s blood,moss green and ebony olives succulent in their virgin oil, sat in a partially open bag as Honey perched on an ancient rock. She was sketching the monastery, and church, of Sant Pere (St. Peter). She had journeyed past lemon fields of Van Gogh sunflowers to that medieval town, stopping briefly to wallow in the acres of golden flowers. She sat by tumbling waters and remained dazzled by the splendid vistas that Catalonia had to offer.

Her driver, non other than that former family friend of the late Salvador and Gala Dali, and new friend to Honey - Señor Duran.

The Catalan coast is truly brave. It is ridden rough-shod over by the sea, forming coves, caves and moulding hearts exuding bravado in their welcoming of strangers. Honey headed for the sea side town of Cadaqués. The beloved coastal town of Salvador Dali, Picasso, the American visionary artist Robert (Bob) Venosa and Walt Disney.

Honey sipped lemon beer (cerveza de limon) while sketching sea vistas; delicately capturing the fuchsia sky closing toward sunset.

Red sea vessels echoed the tiles of distant roofs, prominent amidst the green of plentiful olive trees. That painting may be found in Hotel Duran and is the property of it collector - Señora (Mrs) Duran.

It was in Cadaqués that Honey met Joan Vehí, Dali’s good friend, frame maker and, eventually, the photographer whom we have to thank for so many images of Dali, his family and his life. Vehí, bald, creased with years but still smiling his magical smile, regaled Honey with remembrances of his contacts with Dali, the portraits, the craziness, the honesty and the loyalty of Dali. Sitting with an architect friend,Ignacio Puras Abad, in the cafe Rosa Azul, Cadaqués, Honey dipped her brush into the remains of her Catalan coffee, and painted her friend’s portrait.

It was a technique she had developed in her home town of Bukit Mertajam, in Malaysia, and produces a richness of line and deep bistre brown colour, far superior to those of normal watercolour.

For a moment, Honey dreamed a sighing dream of home.

Silhouettes of coconut and banana, but in Spain she was comforted by the trailing vines of gorgeous grape and the sweet, pulpy blackberries of Port Lligat, rambling near Dali’s former home. In 87

Port Lligat, Honey took sketch notes in her light rose carmine ‘two way’ opening double-sketch pad (especially made by a friend in Singapore). She stood in front of Dali’s painting of Gala as a Leda, approached by the swan Zeus (a replica for tourists), a Catalonia seascape in the background. Others gawped and gaped, hastily taking photographs. Honey, instead, sketched to the delight of fellow tourists. In the Dali olive grove, Honey sprang from a hatched Dali egg, an artist reborn, a tiara of olive leaves and moss green olives in her hair, all smiles, reaching for the life-giving sun.

Her Catalonian journey continued with walks from Sant Martí d’Empúries to L’Escala, Roses and around the uniquely charming small city, and Roman citadel, of Girona, all the time sketching furiously as she went. Sauntering down shaded alleyways, climbing cathedral steps, gazing at rivers from tentative bridges, Honey soaked up the Mediterranean atmosphere, easing into the casual lifestyle of coffees and pastries, olives and Cava.

Back in Figueres, Honey took a small troupe of the Duran children to sketch the gothic Church of Sant Pere, seated opposite the Delicatessen Cafe, in Career Sant Pere, and adjacent to the Dali Museum. Honey and the children thrilled at that opportunity to be together and to sketch together, to the delight and entertainment of those waiting in line for tickets to the Dali Museum. It is in that very Dalicatessen cafe, in a large gallery set aside for such purposes, and owned by Martí Dacosta, that Honey held her exhibition of acrylic paintings inspired by her visit to Catalonia. She was interviewed by Cristina Vilà of l’Empordà - a local Spanish newspaper. Both Martí Dacosta and Señor Duran looked on like proud Catalan fathers.

Then, almost as quickly as it had begun, Honey’s sojourn in Figueres, Catalonia and Spain, was finished. With more than a little sadness, Señor Duran drove Honey the full length of Figueres town, past La rambla, and past the farmer’s market to the waiting train station. He bade her a teary farewell. Honey was happy to return to her beloved Malaysia, her home, family and the children she teaches, but had left a large part of her heart in Figueres, and many paintings too, which are now in collections there.

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But all too soon I must leave for my equatorial haven.

89

90

I am beset by a whirlwind of

personal confusions and challenges,

imploringly I reach out to the cosmos for inspiration and guidance. My mind lacks calm. I find myself in a quandary as I have to balance my innate spirituality with my

constant need to re-foster familial relationships, loves, lovers and

the nature of my soul. Amidst

my confusion I quest, I reach out hopefully.

To find the nexus of my spirituality and peace of mind, in tenderness

and giving I commune in and with

nature. The calmness of the natural world soothes and heals my soul,

bringing me untold joy. I begin to

find my centre, that stillness in us

all. There, with the natural world

around me I dream of the Bodhi tree and the comforts therein.

Upon awakening, I find that I am ready to begin. I now understand that my destiny awaits with but a first foot step on the path, on

the way. The dank confusion of

my past mellows into clarity and

determination. With a pure, light heart and a clear mind, I am

serene and stride purposely into my beckoning future.

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Quah See Hoong

Naturist

Quah See Hoong was born in Kajang, Malaysia, 1974, and graduated from the Malaysian Institute of Art, majoring in ink. Now a full-time painter, he has taught painting courses at the Oriental Art Museum, and participated in a number of exhibitions.

Since completing his Institute major in ink and brush work, over a three year period, he worked in social work. After ten years he renewed his enthusiasm for art, and began in a method different from that he was taught - bird Painting.

Initially bird Painting was strange for him, as it is based on a production process which is long and very specific. At first he was unsure how to use his skills for that type of painting. He kept exploring; he had failures, but gradually he was led to the right track.

Nature, flowers; he has a close relationship with everything natural. Innate beauty and nature became his best subjects. Rather than painstakingly painting paintings that imply some sort of special meaning, his flowerand-bird painting are less complex, less profound. This he prefers. He is also passionate about drawing freehand. For him it is a simple and elegant beauty.

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93

94

95

96

97

98

99

P hillipines

100

When Love is not Only a Word but an Action 101

When Love Inspires 102

Celso Pepito Celso Duazo Pepito was born in 1956, at the northern tip of Cebu, Cogon -Talisay, Daanbantayan, and grew up in Malaybalay, Bukidnon, The Philippines. He is a graduate of University of the Philippines Cebu College, and enrolled as a Fine Art student in 1977. He graduated in 1981. Pepito’s works have a very strong modern Cubist influence. Initially he studied under Martino Abellana, a Cebuano painter from Carcar who was known as “The Dean of Cebuano Painters.” But Pepito’s move towards a Cubist approach to his painting was influenced by Vicente Manansala, a National Artist of the Philippines in Visual Arts.

Pepito has a very strong connection to his religion, and many of his paintings depict Catholic scenes, as well as family and his surroundings. Pepito has been very active during his career, exhibiting in Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur and Langkawi (Art Biennale), Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore as well as in the US, Germany, Luxembourg and, of course, Manila.

A Love That Moves 103

Manifestation of Faith 104

105

Love as a Motivation 106

An Air of Harmony

107

A Gesture of Support

108

In Harmony there is Joy

109

Dad Please Sing for Me

110

Dad! Thank You for the Music

111

Bill and Ben

by Martin Bradley

Under a clear, cloudless sky, bright pinpoint stars twinkled. The air was still. The night crisp. There was crunching of footsteps on the loose gravel outside Bill Stafford’s well-lit kitchen.

Somewhere an owl hooted, just to add atmosphere.

‘Bill.’ Ben Benyon’s gruffly debauched voice broke the cool night’s silence. ….Silence.

Ben shuffled about, impatiently, disturbing more gravel.

Thump, thump, thump Ben banged with his right fisted hand upon Bill’s green kitchen door. ….Silence.

All that could be heard was Ben Benyon’s breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out……

‘Bloody hell Bill, come on, Bill, let me in.’ ….Silence.

Ben’s fingers twitched.

Thump, thump, thump Ben attacked the peeling plywood door once again.

He could see the lights were on in Bill’s kitchen. Ben could see someone, perhaps Bill, moving about in the kitchen, silhouetted against the drab kitchen curtain.

‘I can’t understand why you just will not open this fucking door’ said Ben, getting a little bit more than miffed.

He banged harder, shaking the door almost off its hinges.

It was about midnight.

Still silence.

Thump, thump, thump ‘Shit Bill, I need a fag’ The moon was as full as Ben’s cigarette packet was empty. The day’s journey back and forth to Kent had depleted Ben’s illicit cigarette supply.

The fag-man, that dodgy guy with the parka at the Grace and Fidget, wouldn’t be round until opening time tomorrow, and Ben was desperate for a cigarette.

It had become a good trade, supplying illicit tobacco or illicit whites (cigarettes manufactured for the sole purpose of being smuggled into, and sold illegally in another markets, duty unpaid, mostly from France, to the waifs and strays of Blicton-on-Sea). It was practically charity.

Once a week, three herberts almost indistinguishable in their grimy hooded parkas, bundled into an indistinct Thames Trader, and headed off to Dover, then France. Once there, they hit the small, secretive, hideouts, 112

bought as much fags, baccy and booze as they could, and high-tailed it back to Blighty to distribute their booty.

During the week they sold it all off, well below market price, to the local jobless, under-employed and those on all kinds of breadline benefits, one of whom was Ben. They were practically heroes, dodging Customs and Excise, Robin Hoods dealing in cancer sticks, chronic emphysema and alcoholism. ….Silence.

The dejected town owl flapped snowy wings, flew off, disturbed by the noise, leaving the area’s mice to party for one more night.

‘Come on, open up, I know you’re in there’ Lights were beginning to flicker on around Bill’s flat.

A deafening silence. You could almost hear the light switches click.

Ben resumed his thumping.

Thump, thump, thump Thump, thump, thump Small particles of dried, ancient paint few as Ben thumped.

In his desperation for a nicotine fix, Ben shuffled along to the kitchen window. The flimsy plastic curtains were drawn, showing a murky version of Van Gogh’s fading plastic sunflowers to a darkened world.

Ben could see movement inside. Like some Eastern puppet show, Bill appeared to be dancing behind the curtain. Agitated, Ben started to tap on the window with his cigarette lighter.

Tap, tap, tap Tap, tap, tap Tap, tap, tap ‘Bill I can see you, you wanker, are....you....going....to....let....me.... bloody.... well... in’ Ben spat the words out in tune as he hit the window with the lighter.

Again, somewhat impatiently, Ben rapped a second tattoo with the plastic lighter - hitting his pinky finger in the process.

‘Fuck’ He sucked his finger. It was red. There was no blood.

Unfortunately, the sucking of the finger only reminded Ben of how much he wanted a cigarette. He could see the light still on in the kitchen.

Someone was pacing backward and forward. Ben put his ear to the window. There was silence from within.

‘Bill, oh come on Bill’ Ben wheedled No answer.

Ben was getting really desperate. He’d run out of cigarettes hours before. He’d searched his flat for dog-ends, racked through ashtrays, the floor, the waste bin, and found none, not one. He had quickly reached the point, in his desperation, that he would even beg his old nemesis - Bill Stafford, for a cigarette, knowing that Bill thought him to be an incarnation of The Devil.

Each time Ben banged, getting no reply, his sense of frustration grew.

He became even more desperate to get into Bill’s kitchen. He was becoming obsessional.

‘Bill, come on you miserable sod, open this fucking door. ‘Jesus fucking Christ Bill, let me in you cunt.’

A cold, white, light went on, inside of Bill Stafford’s head. It was a 113

moment of utmost clarity.

Inside his kitchen, Bill Stafford had been equally desperately trying to ignore the ranting and raving from the scruffy sod of an ex-footballer, without. Bill wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the uncouth shambles, who was Ben. Bill had recognised Ben Benyon as The Devil all those many years ago, when they were both inpatients at Crossways Mental Hospital. Nothing had changed. Except, perhaps, Bill was more convinced now that Ben was an earthy incarnation of The Devil.

Bill had despised Ben, back then, in hospital, and he despised him now.

Ben was a lazy good for nothing leech on society, a parasite, drug taker, alcoholic, debaucher; taking any woman no matter how deranged, how dirty they were and laying with them. Ben was reprehensible. A maggot, fit only to be stamped on, squashed until his insides where leaking into the gutters of this despicable hovel they were forced to live in.

Bill busied himself arranging and re-arranging things in his small flat.

He had to stop himself from reacting to the lunatic outside. But it was becoming increasingly more difficult not to react. Bill held the silver chain around his neck, fiercely rubbing the blessed representation of his Lord for comfort, his eyes staring as if in rapture.

‘Get thee without Satan. Get thee without Satan. Get thee without Satan’ he said to himself. It had to be said three times.

The noise without, the constant rapping and shouting was becoming intolerable. Bill’s tender nerves were now on edge. Each tap on the glass pierced his head like an ice pick. Each shout sounded like clashing cymbals. Bill was rapidly reaching breaking point.

‘Yes Lord’, Bill said to the empty, grubby, room ‘…he is Armilus, I cannot allow him to blaspheme’ he muttered. ‘I am your sword, your protector, he is my nemesis, the embodiment of The Dark One, the time is coming, through you resurrection, by him damnation. I am your servant, forever the cleansing blade.’

As a momentary distraction, Bill played out all kinds of scenarios in his mind. None of them ended with Ben being happy, or indeed whole. To the maniacally religious Bill, the final insult at last came. The barbarian without the kitchen, had gone too far this time. He had blasphemed, taken The Lord’s name in vain.

He had said, ’Bill, come on you miserable sod, open this fucking door.

Jesus fucking Christ Bill, let me in you cunt.’

‘For you lord, praise your light and love, praise you Angus Dei, Lamb of God’, Bill murmured.

Ben had blasphemed. Bill snapped.

‘He is the Antichrist, the Man of Sin; he is the abomination that causes desolation. He is the Antichrist, the Man of Sin; he is the abomination that causes desolation. He is the Antichrist, the Man of Sin; he is the abomination that causes desolation’ he chanted, each chant louder than the last, until he was reaching a crescendo. It was his Sunday, righteous, voice. The best voice of the Our Lady of Light, church choir. A clear, strong, holy voice, meaty enough to drive off any daemon.

The noise, the banging, and an ever-growing distaste for that monstrosity disturbing his peace, induced Bill to grab the nearest object to hand – a cheap Saturday market bread knife, and rush to the kitchen outer door; his whitening knuckles firmly clutching the nearly new, sharp, shiny 114

knife.

The kitchen light took that opportunity to flicker and flash, giving a neon strobe-like effect to the ambience of the kitchen and the outside garden.

The light.....

Now on, now off.

Now on, now off.

Now on, now off Flashed before Bill’s eyes, and deep into his mind.

The kitchen’s ambiance reflected Bill’s mind altered mood. Sweating, trembling, shaking, Bill grabbed the kitchen door handle, from the inside. He shook the door in rage. He frantically scrambled to open it.

In his anger Bill had forgotten the upper bolt on the kitchen door.

The door, frustratingly, only partially opened.

Ben grabbed the kitchen door handle from the outside and shoved with all his failing strength. Bill quickly unbolted the top door bolt, and forcefully swung open the door.

Ben fell inside.

Bill narrowly missed hitting Ben with the door.

Ben lunged at Bill.

Bill pulled back his arm, brought it forward - knife in hand, and stabbed.

Ben felt a cold piecing in his left shoulder. He looked. He had somehow grown a bread knife. It looked like a little shiny wing, now black, now silver, now black, now silver under the strobe lighting.

‘Devil, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan’ Bill screamed at Ben, adding to the confusion.

Panicked, blood running from his wound, Ben started to scream.

Ben’s screaming made Bill more frenzied. Bill panicked, plucked the knife from Ben’s shoulder and stabbed Ben again, and again, somehow missing Ben’s chest, but slicing the arm Ben eventually raised in defence.

Ben stood bloody and disbelievingly in shock. He took that opportunity to scream for all he was worth.

The screaming made matters worse.

Bill attacked Ben again, this time planting the knife squarely in Ben’s upper chest, where it stuck, fast. Ben half-ran, half-stumbled screaming back into the chill night.

Ben had never felt such pain before. He staggered from the back of Bill’s terraced house with blood staining his white Led Zeppelin T shirt, and practically fell through the rickety wooden gate, stumbled down the alleyway separating the two Edwardian houses, unwittingly kicking a milk bottle, knocking it against the short tunnel wall, smashing it, spilling putrid curdled milk over the alleyway and onto the pavement.

It looked a little like blood, in the orange half-light from the street lamps.

A neighbour’s heavy, lined curtain twitched. Seeing only a drunk in an alleyway, Mrs Robinson quickly closed her curtain, hoping to avoid a brick, or bottle, through her window, you never knew these days, what with all the poor people moving into Blicton. She moved away from her curtain and attended to her young suitor. ‘You never knew with these Asbo types’ she muttered.

Bill stood, blood on his hands and arms, looking out into the night.

He’d not registered what had taken place. It was a nightmare. The kitchen door was open, Bill couldn’t quite remember why. He closed it, 115

went to the kitchen sink and started to wash his hands - watching as the intense redness of the fresh blood curled in the water, then disappeared down the sink-hole.

Feeling giddy, Bill sat down at the small kitchen table, whereon lay his newly opened packet of Benson & Hedges. He grabbed the cigarette packet, lit a cigarette - his hands shaking - his mind anaesthetised. He sat and stared at the cigarette packet, drew in a breathe of smoke, then reached out for a second time, snatched the packet, squeezed it with all the force he could muster and threw the mess of packet and broken cigarettes to the kitchen door.

Ben stumbled into the orange lamp-lit street. He staggered along the tarmac, dripping blood from his wounds, splashing darkly onto the cold concrete slabs of the pavement as he lurched from one to the other.

He tripped and half stumbled over the roadside curb, swearing weakly.

He was cold and numb. Ben began to feel his chest throb, painfully. It was icy cold and fire at one and the same time; his flesh seemed to be burning inside and out. Ben felt his face getting colder, draining; it was becoming difficult for him to see, he was getting tired, so very tired.

From somewhere, at the very depths of his mind, Ben knew instinctively not to pull the knife from his chest. Perhaps that knowledge was gleaned from the endless cop shows on his small portable TV. He doubted that he had the strength to pull it out anyway; he was feeling weaker, colder and less able to concentrate with each second he bled.

Unable to stagger any further, Ben rested against one of the lampposts still gracing the Edwardian street. He hit his head on the curiously painted pseudo-Art Nouveau detail, but that small accident didn’t seem to matter then. Ben slumped twenty or so yards from where he started.

He slid slowly down the hard caste-iron of the lamp-post, smearing it with his blood as he slid. Ben’s back leaned against the street lamp; his legs sprawled across the footpath. More blood seeped through his T shirt, onto his jeans. The black and white Zeppelin print on Ben’s T-shirt turned red. A bloody bread knife still protruded from his heaving chest, piecing the airship and deflating Ben, but not the image.

It wasn’t his whole life that flashed before Ben’s eyes, only one part of it, the part that mattered. He was on the pitch, Gransburgh United, heading the ball, caught from ‘Streaky’ James’ excellent pass, crowd cheering for all they were worth. The ball skimmed the goalpost, span and went straight into the back of the net. The crowd roared. This is what they had come to see. Just at that very moment, big Dave Brannon, heavyweight goalie for Gransburgh United, barged straight into Ben, knocking him off his feet, smacking him squarely into the remarkably well-built goalpost.

Ben’s team won, but Ben was out for the count, comatose, severe head injuries which had damaged the hippocampus and limbic system (the emotional side of his brain), and he hadn’t been right since. His football career was over, as was his extravagant lifestyle.

Against the lamp post, his face growing more sallow, Ben Benyon began to breathe heavily - the effort of staying alive was becoming more difficult. He collapsed, crumpled into a heap of flagging humanity.

Breathing what could have been his very last, Ben was discovered by the rotund and ageing Sergeant Jones, of Blicton constabulary. Sergeant 116

Jones called it in. Ben had been spotted by a teenager sliding home after curfew. The boy, slightly worse for wear from his evening out, was alert enough to do the decent thing - he called the police. The boy was also alert enough to ditch the small packet of grass he was carrying in his pocket, into a drain, just in case he was forced to answer any awkward questions, later.

‘Careful Sir, I just have to move you onto the trolley, and then we’ll get you to hospital’ Said Sally Ernshore, the not uncomely paramedic.

‘Sal I don’t think he can hear you,’ ‘I know Jim, but I have to say it anyway just in case he can, remember your training.’

‘Sorry Sir, there will be a moment of slight discomfort,’ Sally said, and meant it. Ben, still alive, but only just, groaned as the two paramedics eased him onto the trolley and into the waiting ambulance. Ben grunted again with the acute discomfort, as the trolley slid to rest.

‘Shouldn’t we remove the knife Sal,’ ‘Not unless you want him to bleed to death all over you,’ ‘Ah, point taken, sorry for the pun mate,’ There was another grunt from Ben. ‘Doesn’t he look familiar to you Sal.’ ‘Jim, he can hear you.’

‘Yeah, I know, but no I don’t think so; anyway ‘e should be happy I recognise him.’

‘Recognise,’ ‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s that Ben Beynon bloke, used to be a footballer, got a crack on the head, went a bit loopy. You know second division, blue and whites.’

‘Jim, what I do know is that you should shut up and drive.’

The ambulance sped off, blue lights flashing, back into the night. It headed along the coast road towards Blicton-on-sea General Hospital, Accident and Emergency department.

In his lounge, standing by the window, Bill could see the flashing lights of the ambulance receding and, later, those of the police cars coming.

He watched as their colours lit up his small lounge, thinking them pretty, mesmerising but not quite understanding what they were doing there.

Shrugging, Bill accepted the pretty lights as they spread across the room and over the ceiling. Orange/yellow and blue, such nice colours, in their own way calming, soothing, lulling Bill, making him feel restful as all the adrenaline began to subside. Someone was knocking at Bill’s front door. In a daze, Bill walked to answer the door.

In the ambulance, lights flashing, rushing to hospital, softly, very softly Ben said.

‘Can, can I ‘ave a fag, all I wanted wassa fag....’ (extract from the collection - MadBadSad)

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ebook

From Britain’s unsunny East Coast to the pounding heat of the jungles of South East Asia, surprises were in store for this author as he naively attempted the rural life amidst sand, sun and slithering snakes.

It is the tale of a seven year journey. A journey into the mind and soul of one deluded Englishman trying desperately to do the right thing, and be the right person, in the wrong place amidst the wrong things.

http://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-Breadfruit-Unwary-Malaysia-ebook/dp/B008BHM91C

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new pocket poetry ebook

ebook

in pdf

Dusun publications 119

R

ĂŠunion Island

120

Golden Triangle 121

Just Water 122

Charly

LESQUELIN Charly Lesquelin, is a painter and the leader of the Reggae band Gondwana (1992), on French Réunion Island. He was born in 1969, and has since brought to life into his island's Creole people, with his energetic singing and his superbly colourful painting.

Charly paints an exotically intense atmosphere, coloured by his Creole environment, and suffuses this with the vivid Fauve modernity of his luscious painting. Charly has a unique, inimitable style which demonstrates Réunion Island’s zest for life, its deep seated love and its innate spirituality. This he achieves with Fauve like coloration amidst a very strong sense of the figurative, with a latter day Symbolist approach which engenders his canvases with Eros.

Love of nature and care for the environment percolate throughout Charly’s works, sometimes depicting an endangered Gaia, or weary Green Man who, nevertheless wins through to give us all hope.

123 123

In your Reflection 124

125

Upon your Shoulder

126

Tree of Life

127

Wild Sea 128

129

Temptation 130 130

The Gate

131 131

A

ustralia

132

133

Artist: Wally Pwerle Clark 134

Grant Rasheed +61 429357274 ninbella.art@gmail.com http://www.ninbella.com

NINBELLA is a modern travelling gallery, showcasing powerful contemporary artworks and sculptures from Australian Aboriginal Artists, principally of the Utopia and Western Desert regions, in Central Australia. They represent highly collectable established artists, and emerging, younger artists seen in Australian and International public and private collections.

Aboriginal Ceremonies have been the means of keeping the Australian Aboriginal culture intact for thousands of years. They are used to pass on rules and laws that are believed to have been handed down by the Dreamtime spirits. They are a part of life for those where the culture remains intact. Although they take different forms in different areas, Aboriginals believe Creation spirits took human and animal form and left rules and laws. They created features of the landscape as they moved across it. They also left ancestral teachings about tools, hunting laws, ceremonies and a totemic system among the tribes.

Aboriginal culture, in the form of art, has been produced for thousands of years for their own private purposes. Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art is now considered one of the most vibrant artistic movements of contemporary art. It is refined and perplexed, a melting pot of paradoxes: prehistoric and ultra-contemporary, abstract and precise, simple and sophisticated. It is a palette of lush colours.

Pointillism accentuated by braided lines, concentric shapes and colour harmony give the works a vibrant and intense effect and an undeniably aesthetic dimension.

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Zhe Xuan Fine Art Gallery D-60-2 Jalan C180/1 Dataran C180 43200 Cheras Selangor Malaysia contact May Lai 016 605 5592 email maylai69@outlook.com

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remembering

ebook

whiteness & other poems by martin bradley

downloadable as a free pdf from http://correspondences-martin.blogspot.com

a Dusun publication 137

Aweley (body paint)

138

Aweley

139

Bush Potato

140

Aweley body paint

My Country 141

Tingari Cycle

142

Emu Tucker Dreaming

143

Untitled

144

Bird 145

Splinterwood Fish

146

147

china Through Oil scented Fumes I see you Stride Tall As gum trees Cuddly As koala Sprite As Kangaroo Sleek Designer Boomeranged To Hangzhou Dots Before Your Limpid camel Eyes 148

Milan Still On your Tongue In your Hair The City Is with You In your One platypus Town A Ned Kelly No longer On the run.

granted by martin bradley

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Tongue of Duck & Chicken for Beggars Fried Duck Tongues

They were not Dali’s Catalonian lark’s tongues, that the Jiang Lan Lou Ke exclusive restaurant laid before us, but those equally curious entities known as tongues of duck. Duck tongues were followed by duck liver, in aspic, then dark orange, semi-transparent, cold jellyfish - the real deal, not fish made from gelatine. Brown tree fungus was there, as well as some of the most delicious porcine meat I have yet to taste (Dōngpō ròu). Carafes of a particularly good French wine helped wash it all down, and that was but the beginning of our gastronomic surprises from the ancient city of Hangzhou, Eastern Central China, once China’s capital (a.d. 1127–1279).

Deep fried items We had travelled to the famed city of Hangzhou to attend an exhibition. During time taken off from setting up the exhibition, attending film award openings etc etc etc, we snatched some much needed leisure time. The wander through the new Hangzhou architectural marvels led us to the aforementioned restaurant. Further time out was taken exploring the Hangzhou, Xixi ‘Wetland Park’.

Traversing those tranquil Chinese waterways, by battery boat, reminded me of my East Anglian youth, boating through the Norfolk Broads, seeing the remains of Dutch windmills, copious otters and imagining that Filled flat bread I was some Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons adventure. The main difference was the huge amount of persimmon trees in that Xixi (West Steam) Wetland Park, autumnally stripped of leaves but revealing fruit hanging like small orange lanterns, from naked tree branches.

Having been led through silent waterway after silent waterway, grown tired of hanging persimmon, autumnal maple and rustling bamboo I, for one, was glad to be back on relatively dry land again.

It was my father who was the seafaring Norfolk boy, running amuck on Yarmouth trawlers, not me. I am quite happy to watch water, drag my toes through sand, and feel little need to skim through acres of wetlands for more times than is strictly necessary. Flaky small cakes Post landing we sauntered a path winding through an ancient fishermen’s village, but fishing has stopped to protect the fish, part of the quest to retain 150

BlackTree Fungus

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an ecologically sound environment. Hence the battery powered boats also.

We walked past tourist shops which led, inevitably, to food. China loves to eat. There was the commonplace restaurant food but, as we wandered along, we managed to discover magnificent examples of the local street food. As I have never been known to turn away a food challenge, I merrily munched my way through those paths and footways, somewhat irking many of the group we were travelling with. My comrades were obviously a tad more reserved, or was that cautious of sampling the local delicacies.

No doubt the smells of freshly frying, steaming or simply cooking foods were all carefully managed to tempt and tease the passersby who, no doubt, were already in the mood for food after spending much time watching water, and listening to nothing but that Zenlike rustle of bamboo stalks. I certainly was. Muscular Chinese men rolled green dough to form fresh noodles, others patted green Longjing leaves onto a hot wok, roasting them to get the moisture out and bring the oil to the surface ready for the delicate taste of this famous tea, grown only on the hillsides around the west of West Lake.

The ubiquitous Beggar’s Chicken (jiaohua ji) lounged, wrapped in 152

Baked Sweet Potato and

Fresh Persimmon

lotus leaves, coated with clay, securing moist portions of tasty chicken.

More chicken was being cooked, covered with local tea leaves, over a work blackened wok next to curiously purple steamed rectangles, baked sweet potato and combs of sweet corn. Green (yes more green) balls (boiled) tempted, sheening in glass pots, while persimmons galore, of various hews beckoned in their scrumptiousness. I crunched on my deep fried crispy local fish, daubed with fresh chill paste, offered it around to our travelling companions, but it was only the Malaysians who were tempted. “Good, all the more for me then”, I thought. Lanky Australians, more used to serving ostrich or crocodile steak than eating it, refined Italians, jocular Russians and particular Frenchmen looked on disdainfully, while I grabbed a round bread (roujiamo) much like a north Indian naan, filled with the most delicious moist minced meat. I walked on, eating. My regret, which came almost instantly, was that I only got the one - I had shared half, with my other half.

While frying in England stops at fish, chips, chicken and occasionally saveloy, Hangzhou offered satay sticks of just about anything, from chill basted chicken kebabs to soft shell crabs and everything inbetween. I crunched on a succulent squid, stood amazed at the curious citrus called Buddha’s Hand; an odd fruit which appears to have yellow, lemon-like fingers, and salivated over a vast number of rounded, baked sweetmeats. But we were time bound, rushing to keep up with our international group, and unable to sample many of the epicurean delights that wetland offered. Secretly we pledged to return to Hangzhou, to the Xixi Wetland Park, and back to the food left untasted.

d Tea Cooked Chicken

Deep fried ‘crispy’ fish 153

Sweet green rice balls 154

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Herb Cooked Chicken

Herb grilled chicken, green noodles and finger long citrus are some of the many exquisite gastronomic delights awaiting the visitor to the Xixi Wetland Park, Hangzhou, China.

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Buddha’s Hand citrus fruit

Rolling Green Pastry for Noodles

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dusun nurture yourself with

asian arts and culture emagazine

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dusun e-journal of Asian Arts and Culture

June/July 2013 Ridiculously Free

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space gambus experiment jaysen yeoh koh teng huat madhuchhanda karmakar albert ashok

Dusun publications 159

洛齐字迹 07-3 by Luo Qi

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