SQUARING THE CIRCLE

SQUARINGTHECIRCLE Contemporary Art from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines 30 October - 16 November 2013 Gallery 8, 8 Duke Street, St James’s, London

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Detail from From Pekalongan Teng Nee Cheong

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FOrEwOrD I am delighted that such an excellent selection of contemporary Southeast Asian art is being displayed in the UK. Southeast Asia has an old and rich cultural heritage that has been shaped by our location at the crossroads of historic maritime routes.

Even as countries in the region move towards building a common identity through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), we celebrate our strength in Singapore High Commission in London

our cultural diversity.

I commend One East Asia for taking the leadership in promoting our region’s leading artists in London. After all, London is widely considered by many to be one of the contemporary art capitals of the world.

I am especially enthusiastic about this year’s show because half of the artworks are by prominent Singapore artists. This is a ringing endorsement of the great strides being made in the education, training and promotion of the arts in Singapore.

Today, the arts scene in Singapore is vibrant with both international and local artists who fill a broad range of museums, galleries and exhibition spaces. This is the outcome of many years of patient effort.

I wish One East Asia and its many hard-working collaborators every success.

His Excellency, Mr T Jasudasen,

PPA(E), PPA(P), PBS

High Commissioner of Singapore to the United Kingdom

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It is often argued that, in common with many other former European colonies, countries in Southeast Asia arrived at the beginning of the 20th century with a diversity of defeated cultures. They appeared on the maps as nations, but they were not. They were countries created by their colonialists.

Despite the long history of fractured societies, however, South East Asia has recently garnered attention as one of the world’s most important emerging markets, not least in the sphere of fine art. Its newly acquired wealth and expanding provision for the training of young artists and the dissemination of their work is increasingly feeding into the international art scene. The contemporary art that is produced by the region’s practitioners is closely allied with current global trends and yet reflects its long cultural traditions and complex histories.

‘Squaring The Circle’ brings together eight established Southeast Asian artists hailing from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Their work represents a valuable sampling of the variety amongst the most recent developments in the wider region.

The primary focus is on Singapore as a vital offshore centre within the region, a creative hub that is steadily making its mark in both the institutional and commercial sectors.

Art that is unfamiliar to its viewers takes time to appreciate fully. Learning its historical narrative, following the development of the many critical discourses by which it has been shaped, and careful study of the artworks themselves are all key to exploring meaning in the visual form. Yet, ultimately, it is one’s personal feelings and reactions to a work of art that provide the most honest aid to appreciation.

This does not automatically lead to understanding: unreasonableness and multiple meanings are often to be found. Nevertheless, I believe that a great work of art – from any era – creates a response in the onlooker. It must be great in spirit regardless of its origin, size or configuration. It must shun pettiness and smallness. It must delight and change each time you look at it. It must speak to you clearly and with authority, neither shouting nor whispering. In short, if it’s a great work, then it’s beautiful and mighty.

One East Asia is proud to be part of Asian Art in London once again in 2013 and bring to your doorsteps outstanding works by some of Southeast Asia’s finest artists. Not only have they produced thought provoking works, but they have also managed to retain their cultural integrity in creating them.

I would like to thank all participating artists and our working partners who have been supporting and helping us from day one, directly or indirectly. we are particularly indebted to the General Hotel Management (GHM), Agility and DP Architects for their generous sponsorship. I would also like to thank the individuals closely involved in the exhibition: Veronica Howe (OEA Chief Consultant); wong

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I would like to thank all participating artists and our working partners who have been supporting and helping us from day one, directly and indirectly. The National Arts Council, Singapore, has given great encouragement and we are particularly indebted to our partners General Hotel Management (GHM), Agility and DP Architects. I would also like to thank the individuals closely involved in the exhibition: Veronica Howe (OEA Chief Consultant); woho weng (Curator); and Viv Lawes (OEA London Consultant and Independent Curator).

Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to His Excellency Mr. T Jasudasen, High Commissioner of the republic of Singapore to the United Kingdom, for gracing this exhibition.

Daniel Komala Chairman, One East Asia

ONE EAST ASIA is a Singaporebased international art management company. It aims to enrich the appreciation of Asian art, especially Southeast Asian art, through diverse programs and educational activities. Located in the heart of Singapore’s premium shopping belt of Orchard road, One East Asia aspires to connect Asian art to the world, providing avenues for collaboration, discussion, education, communities, networks and links.

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Squaring the Circle: The Conundrum of How to Achieve the Impossible

By Viv Lawes, One East Asia London Consultant and Co-curator

Contemporary art from four Southeast Asian countries Following the success of One East Asia’s show Romancing Indonesia at last year’s Asian Art in London (AAL), the gallery is once again back in the capital for the 2013 event with Squaring the Circle.

Our exhibition promises to be more thought provoking than ever. This time our scope has expanded from works by Indonesian artists to include those by eight artists originating from four countries in the wider region of Southeast Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Half of the artworks this year are by Singaporean artists Teng Nee Cheong, Lim Tiong Ghee, Hong Sek Chern and Jane Lee, with whom One East Asia has close connections through its permanent exhibition space in the heart of the city. This group clearly demonstrates the diversity of contemporary practice in Singapore: Teng draws from early 20th century western trends and applies them to Southeast Asian motifs, as seen in the perspectivally disorientating, vibrantly coloured still life, From Detail from No Place LIke Home Hong Sek Chern

Pekalongan; Lim mixes western codes of abstraction with Chinese ink painting traditions in his attenuated horizontal compositions Heliconia and Best with Tea; Hong, who trained in Singapore and London, pushes the use of Chinese ink painting away from its traditional applications to create ghostly works on rice paper that reference political and social crises in the west in her works No Place Like Home and Nerone Bruciali Tutti; and Jane Lee pursues process alone, referencing only the materials and techniques being used – in Déjà vu, which was recently shown at the Espace Louis Vuitton Singapore, she manipulates the medium of paint into almost sculptural forms.

It seems timely that Singapore, an island state that tips the Malay peninsular, should share a platform with its larger neighbours. The rapidly developing infrastructure of its institutions – the new National Art Gallery will open in 2015 – as well that of the commercial sector, and the concomitant development of tertiary studies in institutions such as Lasalle College of the Arts, which now has a close working relationship with Goldsmiths College in London (Hong Sek Chern’s alma mater), bear testament to the determination of the state to support the visual arts.

Those familiar with our previous shows will recognise Indonesian artists Yudi Sulistyo and Maria Indria Sari, who live and work in the vibrant arts hub of Yogjakarta in Central Java. Sulistyo is known for his skeuomorphic sculptures, which mimic hard materials through the use of paper and cardboard; this year he has moved away from his typically militaristic themes to produce Rumah (Home), in which he narrates the struggles of the urban poor crammed into their wooden shacks, who hope to be rocketed

Detail from Mother’s Moment Maria Indria Sari

to a more comfortable life. Indria Sari uses textiles and embroidery in her wall sculptures to address the universal theme of motherhood, its joys and difficulties, and addresses the personal conflict it creates for her as a professional artist and stay-at-home mother; Mother’s Moment shows the pleasures and Compartmentalised demonstrates the frustrations.

Increasing international attention is falling on the Indonesian art scene, which is exploding with energy – this year the country rejoined the Venice Biennale after an absence of eight years. Yogjakarta in particular is the focus of attention as the host of the Art Jog, an art fair founded in 2008 that allows

Email from Chang Fee Ming to the author 18 June 2013

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an unusual level of visitor engagement through its system of artist and collective-run stands and open studios, which are sponsored by galleries predominantly from Indonesia but increasingly from further afield – including One East Asia at this year’s event. A decade of economic growth in Indonesia has fuelled its art market both locally and internationally, with increasing numbers of collectors in the west accessing artworks through auctions, exhibitions and art fairs.

Malaysia and the Philippines are represented by one artist each: Chang Fee Ming and Andres Barrioquinto respectively. Chang commands a loyal group of collectors from Asia, Australia, America and Europe, who wait patiently for the meticulous watercolours he produces steadily on the back of his regular travels through Asia and beyond. working from his studios or gardens in Malaysia and Bali, he epitomises the artist with a strong sense of regional identity who manages to transcend national boundaries. “Southeast Asia is where my soul belongs”, he says, and yet his work appeals equally to Chang Fee Ming painting in his garden at Tegalalang, Bali

collectors both East and west. His recent painting After Dawn, Mahakam, depicts a woman working by the edge of the Mahakam river on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan; her batik sarong and appliqued straw hat are visual metaphors that celebrate the fast-disappearing traditional way of life that she represents.

Next year One East Asia will host a solo exhibition of Chang’s work at the royal Opera Arcade Gallery, Pall Mall, London (22 June – 5 July 2014) to coincide with the plethora of art fairs that take place in the British capital throughout June and early July.

Over the last decade Philippines artist Barrioquinto has had regular solo shows in the Philippines and Singapore and he has enjoyed considerable success at auction. The Wedding Present is characteristic of his practice, in which he narrates dark subject matter through attractive imagery, appropriating stories and aesthetic forms from other countries to suit his purpose. In this case the country is Japan, the source of the disturbing tale of a bride who hires a samurai to assault her new husband on the wedding night; when he is found dead in the morning she thinks that she has been given the best wedding present possible.

Barrioquinto is one of the staple names in the art market of the Philippines, which has, in the last five years re-emerged, phoenix-like, from the difficulties of democracy that followed the People Power revolution of 1986. Homegrown art fairs include have helped to consolidate the contemporary art market: ManilArT has just celebrated its fifth birthday, and this February saw the inaugural edition of Art Fair Philippines. The museum sector supports this, with the Philippines Metropolitan Museum of Manila

Detail from The Wedding Present Andreas Barrioquinto

announcing this year that its acquisitions policy is now focusing on both national and international contemporary art.

Why attempt to achieve the impossible?

It is clear from this brief introduction that the four countries and the artists representing them in this exhibition are very diverse. when the proposition of gathering artworks from four Southeast Asian countries was first made by my colleagues in Singapore I was struck with the intricacy of the challenge inherent in presenting a series of artworks with a coherent narrative. Very soon it became clear that a single direction

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would not work. How do you tell a story about a vast area that not only embraces a number of countries that have within their borders a multitude of cohabiting cultures, but also has a number of colonial legacies that – whether through assimilation or conscious rejection – weave their way through the societal, cultural and artistic developments in the geopolitical region as a whole?

The phrase ‘squaring the circle’ seemed to sum up this difficulty very neatly, and so the eponymous title was born. The mathematical heritage of this phrase was not my first point of reference. Its generic meaning was: squaring the circle means trying to achieve the impossible. with further research the history of the phrase was compelling in itself – a rollercoaster ride through concepts that for nearly four thousand years tied geometers in knots. The problem posed was how one could construct a square of exactly the same area as a circle using only a compass and straight edge in a finite number of steps; this was an impossible task because pi is an infinite and transcendental number and therefore the Detail from Rumah (Home) Yudi Sulistyo

precise area could not be constructed geometrically with these tools. However, an approximation of pi – for example using 3.14 – makes the task possible. To take the analogy back to the subject of this exhibition, the pragmatic use of imprecision enables us to sketch out a narrative that tells us something about the artistic directions being taken by contemporary artists in these four countries.

The visual image of squaring the circle was also a spur in choosing the phrase as the theme. The circle intersected by the square, its corners projecting beyond the ring’s embrace, seemed an apposite representation of how Southeast Asian art could be understood from the outside. The overlap of the two shapes – a round-cornered square – is their shared heritage, culture and references as manifested in artistic practice; the four external triangles with their concave hypotenuses are the characteristic qualities by which each country’s output can be identified; and the four thin demi-lunes are the arched bridges that join them and allow new ideas to flow back and forth.

It is a useful image with which to construct a framework of understanding. As a w westerner my question is forever this: what makes a work of art identifiably Southeast Asian or, more precisely, Singaporean, Indonesian, Malaysian or Philippines? what hat visual clues give away its origins? The answer can occasionally be found. Artworks by Heri Dono – who featured in the Romancing Indonesia exhibition last year with his work Future Dialogue ((opposite opposite top) – can be recognised as Indonesian if the viewer knows the visual forms of wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre), the characters of which inhabit much of his work.

More loosely, Chang Fee Ming’s heightened realism in the depiction of local people in their batik robes undeniably belongs to Southeast Asia – but which country? Unless one has an encyclopedic knowledge of the batik patterns from individual regions, his paintings only point to the wider geographical area.

Yudi Sulistyo’s contribution to this show, Rumah (Home), is identifiably Asian because he represents the particular wooden shacks that are seen everywhere in the region, but the subject is a departure from his usual motifs of fantasy vehicles and war machinery, which are far harder to place.

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Heri Dono Future Dialogue, 1998

And what of the artists who deliberately transcend national boundaries in their work? Artists like Singaporean Jane Lee, who is steeped in the internationally acknowledged practice of focusing on process alone. Hers is an ascetic and intellectual pursuit that produces sculptural paintings that are lush and invitingly tactile, but it would be impossible to work out by visual analysis alone where they were made.

These questions go round in circles, sometimes answerable, often not. what has been enlightening in this project is how guest curator woho w weng has interpreted the theme of squaring the circle. Having w been told nothing of my reasons for choosing the title, and the intrinsic impossibility of finding its resolution, he has constructed a solution to the problem in a completely different way. By ignoring national boundaries, looking at the particular themes presented by each artist, and moving the frames of reference away from the viewpoint of w western art while acknowledging its influence and subsequent subversion, he identifies four ‘nexuses’ of creative impulses in Southeast Asian contemporary practice.

His essay forms the basis of the layout of this catalogue and sheds light on the multiple modes of interpretation of the region’s artistic output.

Copyright © 2013 Viv Lawes

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A Square, Circle or Shifting Shape?

Circumscribing Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia By woho weng, Curator Introduction How does one square a circle? This is the theme that One East Asia has chosen for its third exhibition of contemporary Southeast Asian art in London. It is the gallery’s first show to include four Southeast Asian countries, expanding from its previous two on Indonesia to include Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

The exhibition features works from eight accomplished artists well known in their respective countries and the wider region, and deserving of promotion in the best art centres in the world. Clearly the ‘dot’ of attention has expanded beyond one national boundary into Southeast Asia as a whole, and with this move comes the complexity and the task of connecting the dots. what is unclear (and intriguing) is the shape that these four dots make. The theme of the exhibition suggests two possible frames to circumscribe contemporary art in Southeast Asia: the square and the circle. Do the dots create the four corners of a square, a shape known for its stability and sharp definition? Sizing up the works of the eight artists within the square is analogous to measuring them up against, and easing them comfortably into, certain strands of the Euro-American model established within the international art arena. Or do they resist such a Eurocentric framework and instead make their own marks along the infinite number of points on the rim of a circle, a form known for its fluidity and its untraceable beginning and end?

Southeast Asia consists of a widespread and fragmented land-mass ‘lying south of China, east of India, north of Australia and west of the South Pacific islands’. Its collective name has been dismissed as ‘an arbitrary imposition arising from the territorial preoccupations of European colonialism’ and its ‘identifying features’ are defined more by its ‘diversity... [and] lack of a regional consciousness’ than a commonality in culture, ecology, history, ethnicity and social structure.1 If this is the underlying context of Southeast Asia, coupled with the diverse nature of art production and the different ways in which modern art has been transmitted, resisted, absorbed and transformed in this part of the world, then a summative analysis of contemporary art cutting across the region can turn out to be overly convoluted, highly reductive or even untenable.

Fortunately there is a neat solution to the conundrum proposed once again by the theme. The answer lies in squaring the circle. This does not mean fitting a square peg forcibly into a round hole while its centre still rests with a Euro-American reference, but rather laying the square frame over the circular one and finding common discursive points, the centre of which now shifts to the Southeast Asian context.

This essay uses the occasion of One East Asia’s balanced and rich selection of fourteen thoughtful and well-made works to deduce four nexuses of creative impetus that drive the imagination and direct the energies of contemporary artists across Southeast Asia. Their works will feel at once familiar and refreshing, falling in line with international contemporary practices while charting new trajectories in artistic endeavours.

Paul H. Kratoska, et al, ‘Locating Southeast Asia’, in Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2005), p.1–3.

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Four Nexuses of Creative Impulses in Contemporary Southeast Asian Art Squaring the circle is an age-old problem of geometry, which calls for a square to be inscribed onto a circle with both shapes bearing the same area. This enigmatic puzzle has proven to be impossible to solve. But in c.1490, Leonardo da Vinci managed to illustrate an elegiac approximation of a solution with his famous drawing of Vitruvian Man, who was inscribed within both a square and a circle.

The breakthrough came from a simple change of perception, which saw a shift of the centres: the groin of the man fixes the middle of the square while his navel pinpoints the core of the circle. This shift involves acknowledging the possibilities of two centres, one for the square and the other for the circle.

It is this perceptual shift together with the need for multiple entry points that informs the method of analysis in this essay. The examination of these artists’ works also takes a regional perspective instead of subscribing to the concept of the nation-state. This is an approach that has been gained from the insights of prominent Asian curators such as Iftikhar Dadi, who urges a practice of not ‘adopt[ing] a fixed perspective that presents an abstracted nation-state as the sole viable framework, since to do so would obscure other important perspectives’2, and art historians such as Patrick D. Flores, who regards ‘Southeast Asia... as a geopolitical field, the scene of colonial expansion’.3 Therefore a regional approach to art study produces an open discourse by tapping into the confluence of the shared legacies of colonialism and routes towards nationhood, encounters with Modernist western practice, and pre-existing cultural traditions from the great Chinese, Indian and Islamic civilisations.

These considerations result in the locating of four nexuses of creative impulses. Each artist’s work is examined under one nexus based on what is perceived as its most striking formal feature; it can also be seen through other lenses of examination because of the multi-coded nature of contemporary art.

The first two nexuses put artistic productions on different bases – one rooted in societal concerns and the other formulating new ideologies of art. The next two are oppositional forces – one compelling artistic production to secure a cultural and national identity, the other transgressing borders to make the collective context invisible or irrelevant.

Iftikhar Dadi, ‘Curating South Asia’, Guggenheim UBS Map: Global Art Initiative, http://blogs.guggenheim.org/map/ curating-south-asia/ (accessed Sept 10, 2013).

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Patrick D. Flores, ‘Southeast Asia: Art History, Art History’, Guggenheim UBS Map: Global Art Initiative, http://blogs.guggenheim. org/map/southeast-asia-art-history-art-today/ (accessed Sept 10, 2013).

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Nexus One: Mobilising the Vernacular Yudi Sulistyo (born 1972) and Maria Indria Sari (born 1976) are placed together because the works presented here transform common and recycled materials into sculptural forms that tell us about ordinary people from low economic or social strata.

Both artists were raised and educated in the Javanese city of Yogjakarta, Indonesia, and are now based there. If viewed under the lens of w western estern art canon, their works can be tied to a Constructivist or assemblage art lineage. However, they share little of the underlying ideologies of these movements; instead they reflect the artists’ passion for low technology methods of art making. In a way, their works are emblems of a resistance to Modernism, recalling a pre-colonial past where art and craft, culture and life, and art-making and vernacular practices were not differentiated in any meaningful way. while hile the artists share empathy with ordinary people and a preference for handiwork, they produce works of markedly different formal qualities and subject matter. Their body of works is a literal contrast of yin (feminine) and yang (masculine) expressions.

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Yudi Sulistyo Yudi Sulistyo’s most recent sculpture Rumah (‘Home’) is hard-edged and bullish. while it is a departure from his usual oeuvre of replicating war machinery and military equipment using the unlikeliest of materials – cardboard and recyclables – he maintains his characteristic exactitude in producing hyper-realistic objects. The difference is in the subject matter, which has changed to ‘dilapidated wooden houses’ of both the indigenous poor and the immigrants who eke out a living in big cities.4 The centrepiece of the sculpture is a miniature model of wooden houses hazardously stacked to form an eight-storey tower. This ominous building is encased within a cylindrical rocket head ready to be launched.

In Yudi’s explanatory notes, he writes of people moving into the cities in the search for ‘jobs that would hopefully ‘rocket’ them to a better life’, yet the reality on the ground is stark: even finding shelter in ‘simple and poorly built’ houses is considered to be a great comfort.5 The gulf between the rich and poor in Indonesia is startling: makeshift home shelters are found side by side with luxurious modern bungalows. The sculptor takes the economically deprived and socially disenfranchised, and equips them with a rocket in the hope of launching them out of their poverty, away from their societal displacement. His work also sends a scathing message to an incompetent State that is unable to lead its people out of their everyday struggles.

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Quoted from Yudi Sulistyo’s email, translated from Bahasa Indonesia (dated Sept 1, 2013).

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Ibid.

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Yudi Sulistyo Rumah (Home) 2013 Paper, PVC tubes, acrylic, wooden boxes, recycled material, paint 180cm x 105cm x 105cm

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Maria Indria Sari In contrast toYudi Sulistyo’s assertive sculptures, Maria Indria Sari’s creations are soft and homely, needing the backing of a canvas or plank for support. Her textile reliefs are colourful collages that use easily available ‘fabric, threads, buttons and zippers’6, caricaturising the private world of a mother in her comfortable home. Domestic scenes capture small moments, such as a child playing or slumbering on a bed, a mother and her child passing time together, or household chores. In Mother’s Moment a woman shares a treasured moment with her unborn child at bedtime.

Indria Sari’s works are autobiographical: they are as much about her domestic life as her artistic practice and thus are inseparable from one another. The fabric collages are themselves an extension of her colour pencil drawings, dealing with the same themes but with the added choice of rendering her subjects achromatic. while some works build a picture of domestic bliss, others describe the constant demands of a mother’s life at home. The domestic sphere can be hard and oppressive. The artist lets slip some of the darker aspects in several of her earlier works, with titles such as I Want to Break Free, Ocean of House Chores and Sandwiched. In Compartmentalised, she shows how she feels torn apart by her dual roles as artist and mother, which she deals with by keeping them separate. As a woman artist Indria Sari suffers a double blow: she is both a stay-at-home mother and an artist who uses the craft of sewing in her work. Neither is given adequate respect: society undervalues the role of the mother at home and the art world views sewing – traditionally seen as a female domestic occupation – as an applied art rather than a fine art form. It is through her conviction and persistence that Indria Sari has produced a substantive body of works. In doing so, she has elevated the status of domesticity and craftwork. And she handles such contradictions with the same wide, benign smile as we see in her art.

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Maria Indria Sari’s biography provided by One East Asia.

Maria Indria Sari Compartmentalised 2013 Fabric, sponge, thread, buttons on plywood 158cm x 94cm

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Maria Indria Sari Mother’s Moment 2013 Fabric, thread, button on canvas 150cm x 100cm

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Nexus Two: Forging an East-west Syncretism Singapore is often described as a melting point of cultures. And so it is with the art produced by two Singapore artists, Teng Nee Cheong (1951 – 2013) and Lim Tiong Ghee (born 1955). Their works make an exemplary case study of how western art traditions have been assimilated into local practices and, in doing so, have generated a new visual language which suitably expresses Southeast Asian subject matter.

Both artists reveal a balanced blend of Asian and western influences: the subject of the works on display is still life; the style of representation meets at mid-point between naturalism and abstraction.

Both artists can be said to be continuing the legacy of the so-called Nanyang style. The term Nanyang literally translates to ‘southern seas’. It points generally to Southeast Asia, where large groups of Chinese immigrants settled during the colonial period.7 It marks the first emergence of modern Singaporean art in the 1940s. This genre is concisely described by art historian T.K. Sabapathy as, ‘an experimental approach, using styles and techniques derived from two sources: Chinese pictorial traditions, and the School of Paris’.8 Teng and Lim have both added their personal spin to this hybridised mode of expression to the extent that each artist’s subject, technique, style and composition are distinguishable from that of Nanyang’s pioneers. As a result, they have further enlarged on the visual idioms of this syncretism. It is indicative of their consistent interest in this genre, and of it enduring appeal, that the paintings in this exhibition are the latest in a style that both artists have honed over careers that span 30 years.

7 Emelia Ong, ‘The Nanyang Artists: Eclectic Expressions of the South Seas’, in Imagining Identities: Narratives in Malaysian Art Volume 1, ed. Nur Hanim Khairuddin, et al (Malaysia: RogueArt, 2012), p.59.

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Ibid., p.63.

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Teng Nee Cheong In Teng’s first monograph, curator and writer Low Sze wee noted that the prevailing subjects of his paintings revolved around still life and human figures rendered in styles as varied as naturalism, in the early years of his practice, to Impressionism with Fauvist and Surrealist expressiveness in his later years.9 The oil still life painting From Pekalongan sits between a naturalist and Impressionist style.

However, the subject of the painting is unequivocally Southeast Asian, as evidenced by the cluster of red hibiscus flowers (which are found only in the tropics), the backdrop of Batik fabric and the earthenware vessels of Eastern origin. The source of these items is in the title of the painting, which is the name of a city on the north coast of Central Java, Indonesia. Like the Nanyang artists, Teng ‘did not merely express Southeast Asian subject matter using styles from the School of Paris or styles from western academic art... [but searched] for a visual vocabulary suitable for the expression of Southeast Asian subject matter through the appropriation of styles from the western tradition’.10 From Pekalongan shows the vessels from an overhead perspective rather than eye-level. Teng disorientates the viewer by representing the textile as a flattened form and further dispenses with the illusion of depth through the absence of shadows. with the vessels appearing to float against the Batik cloth, he subverts what could have been a traditional still life painting into an image that disquiets and intrigues.

9 Low Sze Wee, ‘Between the Real and the Imagined’, in Nee Cheong: Those the Gods Love Grow Mightier (Singapore: Teng Nee Cheong and Gajah Gallery, 2010), p.11–12.

Low is currently the Director (Curatorial & Collections) at the National Art Gallery, Singapore. For a quick but substantive reference of Western art terms named here or elsewhere in the essay, refer to: Ian Chilvers, The Oxford Dictionary of Art & Artists, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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Ong, op. cit., p.66.

Teng Nee Cheong From Pekalongan 2009 Oil on canvas 43cm x 48cm

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Lim Tiong Ghee In his characteristic paper collages mounted on canvas, Lim Tiong Ghee brings an individual nuance to East-west syncretism. He does so unexpectedly by manipulating style and form in opposite directions.

At one end, he pushes an impressionistic style of representation further towards a form of abstraction consistent with western art developments: objects are severely flattened with no suggestion of volume, and all surfaces are rendered in blocks of colour with no tonal gradation. His collages thus appear two-dimensional and are reminiscent of abstract colour field paintings. In Heliconia, colours and shapes run riot along an elongated horizontal plane in the form of muted or negative silhouettes of the tropical heliconia plant superimposed on large textural blocks of colour.

At the other end, Lim takes the subject, composition and material of Chinese ink painting traditions.

In the series Best with Tea (opposite), Persimmons, Spring Night and Mandarin New Year (not illustrated), he focuses on Chinese food and festivities. The associated items are scattered along an elongated scroll format, leaving many unfilled spaces, while enlarged Chinese seal prints take up strategic positions in the space. All these forms are constructed on rice paper, painted in acrylics and mounted onto canvas, a mishmash of Chinese and western media. what is most surprising about the artist is that he had no formal art training except for some basic art lessons taken before university.11 This accounts for his highly inventive and eclectic way of making work, which exhibits a free-spiritedness in the vein of Art Brut by having few of the pre-conceived ideas of institutionalised art.

11 Nurhaizatul Jamila Jamil, ‘Lim Tiong Ghee’, Singapore Infopedia, http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/ SIP_1421_2009-01-16.html (accessed Sept 13, 2013).

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Lim Tiong Ghee Best With Tea 2012 Collage on canvas 30cm x 90cm

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Lim Tiong Ghee Heliconia 2012 Collage on canvas 72cm x 200cm

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Nexus Three: raising an Asian Consciousness The bold application of elaborate and traditional motifs of identifiably Asian origin is the aspect that stands out when one encounters the paintings of Chang Fee Ming (born 1959) and Andres Barrioquinto (born 1975). For Chang, a Chinese born in Malaysia, the prevailing feature in his watercolour paintings is the Malay batik; for Barrioquinto, a Philippines artist, the dominant feature in his oil paintings is Japanese motifs and patterns inspired by Hiroshige’s prints. The amplification of distinctive Asian elements suggests an, ‘anxiety about homogenisation and cultural erasure under globalisation’, so an effective strategy is to delineate distinct East and west identities by ‘identify[ing...] ‘authentic’ traditions and sensibilities to reinforce this division’.12 The danger of such a response is that the work could be seen as decorative, nostalgic or essentialising.

A worse accusation would be that it promulgates an inverse Orientalism by milking the exotic and imagined uniqueness of national or regional cultures, traditions and heritage for an international audience.

Fortunately this is not the case here. It could certainly be said of Chang and Barrioquinto that the ‘choices made in the present frame and articulate particular traditions, as the past is reinscribed and given new meaning in the present through this process’.13 Guest curator Apinan Poshyananda in the seminal 1996-97 exhibition Contemporary Art in Asia: Tradition/Tensions at the Asia Society, New York, perhaps summed it up best when he declared that, ‘tradition should not be interpreted as the opposite of contemporaneity’.14 raising the profile of a tradition should not be seen as recalling the past but rather as securing a positive way of living because it continues to be of relevance in the present.

12 Gennifer Weisenfeld, ‘Reinscribing Tradition in a Transnational Art World’, in Contemporary Art in Asia: A Critical Reader, ed. Melissa Chiu and Benjamin Genocchio (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2011), p.388.

13

Ibid.

14

Ibid., pp.371–374.

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Chang Fee Ming A self-taught artist, Chang’s mastery of watercolour is astonishing. Capturing the minutest details of colour, texture and light, the recurring subjects of his paintings are the people and places of Southeast Asia. He empathises particularly with villagers from remote areas whose ways of life are steadily being eroded.

In After Dawn, Mahakam, a woman wearing her batik sarong and large, conical straw hat, sits back on her heels as she goes about her business along a bank of the Mahakam river in Indonesia, which is overgrown with water hyacinths and weeds. while this scene is associated with rural life, it is also a common sight in urban areas of a developing country such as Indonesia. The painting focuses not on the woman as an individual but on the patterns of her sarong. In meticulously recording this cameo of life in accented realism, Chang accentuates the tradition and culture of a people and laments their displacement. This parallels his conviction that he should stick to a form of traditional painting practice as a means of resistance to contemporary trends. It is an embrace of neo-traditionalism. writer Simon Soon, in an online essay for the Visage exhibition at Valentine willie, Singapore, in 2010 (which is a departure from the artist’s oeuvre), points out that, ‘realism is never synonymous to plein air painting despite its naturalistic style of representation, but requires the artist to compositionally frame, direct and stage his paintings’.15 Therefore his paintings are not just faithful copies that capture a fast changing reality but are carriers of charged meanings.

15 Simon Soon, ‘Face Value’, Valentine Willie Fine Art, http://www.vwfa.net/sg/exhibitionDetail.php?eid=140 (accessed Sept 14, 2013).

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Chang Fee Ming After Dawn, Mahakam 2012 watercolour on paper 76cm x 56cm

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Andres Barrioquinto The paintings of Andres Barrioquinto are an assault to the senses because the experience they invoke swings from one extreme to another. They are at once elaborate and sublime, seductive and disturbing.

He depicts the divide between quiet external appearances and internal anguish. As art historian Gennifer weisenfeld notes, contemporary artists use ‘a range of strategic operations in the rhetorical deployment of ‘tradition’, from the lucrative commodification of difference in a neo-auto-Orientalisation mode to the most biting and ironic forms of postmodern critique’16 Barrioquinto is a case in point in the latter observation. The appropriation of Japanese prints is only cosmetic: it is a veil to hide flawed relationships and inner conflicts. A viewer is at first drawn to his painting for its intricate, beautiful motifs and patterns, but upon close scrutiny is faced with claustrophobic imagery.

The Wedding Present is inspired by an old Japanese story of a new bride who makes a secret arrangement with a samurai to attack her groom on their honeymoon. The Samurai knocks out the groom and leaves but the groom is found dead in the morning. In his own words, Barrioquinto explains that he is ‘highlighting... basic flaws in human nature’.17 This story of furtive relationships is captured in the painting. Two men poise for a duel in the depth of the night while a woman with white-caked face watches over. Equally enigmatic is a Filipino artist’s choice of visual references: is he assimilating the heritage of a foreign culture or masking his own identity? One never knows for sure.

But one clear outcome is that he has found a visual idiom to pry open the façade of human nature, relationships and one’s own inner world.

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16

Weisenfeld, op.cit., p.372.

17

Andres Barrioquinto’s email (dated Sept 2, 2013).

Andres Barrioquinto The Wedding Present 2013 Oil on canvas 91.5cm x 91.5cm

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Nexus Four: Free-floating in a Transnational world The paintings of Singapore artists Hong Sek Chern (born 1967) and Jane Lee (born 1963) are a counterfoil to those of Chang and Barrioquinto. Their highly abstracted and minimalist forms offer the barest of visual cues and resist a quick reading of their meanings. Their obscure or multi-layered cultural, historical and national contexts render them resistant to easy or single interpretations. Their titles may point to some references that aid understanding, but they also further complicate matters and add to the intrigue. A viewer seeking a definite point of view will only find ambivalence.

Yet ambiguity means pliability, enabling the free-flow of multiple interpretations, ideas and dialogue.

It promotes an open discourse. T.K. Sabapathy, in writing about the Nanyang artists adopting the approach of the School of Paris (an early phase of abstraction), observes that their appropriation, ‘provided… [the artists with]... a variety of pictorial schemas in which the obligations of traditional iconography were either minimised or neutralised by formal and technical considerations. The absence of such an iconography released the need to root the art object in a clearly defined ideology or value system’.18 Likewise, because of the indeterminate forms and shifting contexts of their practices, Hong and Lee are free to select subjects suitable to the site within which they present their works. The world becomes their stage.

At the same time, an individual’s experiences with the world are now multifarious; they are accelerating hyperbolically with globalisation, mobile communication, easy travel and migration. Artists in today’s world are not bound by nation-states, national and cultural identities or dominant ideologies. Art academic Clare Harris, who has a long working relationship with Tibetan artist Gonkar Gyatso, observes that, ‘the transnational suggests the interpretation of different cultural modes and a repositioning of the core/periphery model in order to indicate that Eur-America is not always the central axis around which all cultural activity rotates’.19 The massive movement of people and confluence of cultures, the freedom of artists from any form of label – be it their ethnicity, nationality or religiosity – has levelled the playing field and opened up new possibilities that cross boundaries and continents.

18 T.K. Sabapathy, ‘The Nanyang Artists: Some General Remarks’, in Pameran Retrospektif Pelukis-Pelukis Nanyang (Kuala Lumpur: Muzium Seni Negara, 1979), p.44.

19 Clare Harris, ‘The Buddha Goes Global: Some Thoughts Towards a Transnational Art History’, Art History Vol. 29 No. 4 (Sept 2006), p.699.

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Hong Sek Chern It is difficult to place Hong in any single context with her latest Chinese ink paintings No Where Like Home and Nerone Bruciali Tutti (translated as ‘Nero burn them all’), which were made in the context of exhibition sites in London and Europe. A descendant of a Chinese diaspora that settled in Singapore, trained in a local art institution with approaches from the School of Paris and Chinese ink traditions, and later in Goldsmiths College in London, Hong is tenacious in practising Chinese ink painting because of its affinity to her cultural roots, yet she also experiments with its techniques in the vein of western abstraction. She is now exploring world issues because she is ‘greatly affected by current affairs and mass media images proliferating in the internet’.20 Indeed she is a good representative of a transnational artist who is ‘bilingual, multicultural and global in their aspirations and influences’.21 These multi-faceted dimensions are reflected in her experimentation with techniques and themes.

In the current works she has again pushed the boundaries of Chinese ink painting practices: on the front of the paper, alum solution used for producing snowscapes is applied methodically stroke by stroke to create a white textural surface; on the reverse, an inverted image is painted using Chinese black ink, which is allowed to bleed through to the front to produce a muted and unpredictable imprint. The images selected for the two paintings are a housing estate allocated to immigrants in Stockholm, Sweden, and the roman Colosseum. The theme arose from two separate but connected incidents that coincidentally took place in May 2013; the first was a riot by immigrants in Stockholm and the other a racist taunt by opposition fans at an international soccer game in Milan. Both incidents reflect complex issues of migration, racism, economic disparity, nationalism and identity. They reveal the uncertain effects of globalisation and the irony that more channels for connectivity raise a greater propensity for fragmentation.

20

Hong Sek Chern’s biography provided by One East Asia.

21

Harris, op. cit., p.718.

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Hong Sek Chern No Place Like Home 2013 Ink, pigment, alum on rice paper 129cm x 140cm

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Hong Sek Chern Nerone Bruciali Tutti 2013 Ink, pigment, alum on rice paper 107cm x 134cm

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Jane Lee Lee’s artworks can only loosely be defined as paintings, in the sense that they do not have the qualities of ‘normal’ paintings. Even in the most ‘abstract’ of abstract paintings, the focus is on a tone or some visual element. Hers move away from all of that. Instead she shows what paint can do by highlighting the processes and techniques. Her singular reference is the medium itself. In an online essay, gallery director and writer Tony Godfrey notes that ‘the way that its emphasis on the objectness of the painting... seems to develop out of both Minimalism’s (a) discourse on the ‘thinginess’ of the art object and (b) aversion to compositional complexity’.22 Thus it is a representation of itself: it needs no outside references but is wholly self-referential and therefore autonomous. In the spirit of art for art’s sake, this is a utopian state.

The identity of practitioners of this philosophy is thus irrelevant. And so it is with Lee who comfortably joins an international fraternity of artists today ‘who explore that fact and its many permutations [...]

Jane Lee’s work is as inventive and as resourceful as any of them’.23 Given the long history of painting and what it has been shown to accomplish, artists subscribing to this practice have little room for further innovation. Therefore it is testament to Lee’s imagination and skill that she continues to find new ways to push ‘the limits of the materials and techniques used in painting’.24 In previous works, Lee’s painting ‘is made to move, to fall, to follow, to unroll, to hand, to droop’.25 In Déjà vu, she makes the paint do more: it has now bunched up into a mosaic of colourful compacted paper streamers, fused together like large Impressionist dots. while each bulb of textured paint is small, together they have become a monumental and awe-inspiring tapestry of varied textures. Déjà vu is living proof that painting is not dead.

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22

Tony Godfrey, ‘Dancing with Jane Lee’, http://www.janelee.sg/pages/press (accessed Sept 14, 2013).

23

Ibid.

24

Jane Lee’s biography provided by One East Asia.

25

Godfrey, op.cit.

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Jane Lee Déjà vu 2013 Acrylic paint, mixed materials on epoxy canvas 105cm x 600cm x 8cm

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Conclusion This essay has aimed to find a way of looking at contemporary Southeast Asian art. In changing two paradigms, the search has generated multiple perspectives. The proposition of four lenses of looking is only the start. One change in paradigm is the shift of centres from basing observations against the western canon to anchoring it to a Southeast Asian context – a change from the figurative frame of reference of a square to a circle. It has been argued that while new visual idioms of Southeast Asian art are founded by their encounter with western practices, a complete assimilation has never taken place because the region inherently carries its own cultural legacies. The other change in paradigm is taking a regional approach rather than looking from the perspective of a nation-state because one sees a shared legacy among them. Fresh perspectives are generated from taking this position.

This change in paradigms has opened up the discourse on modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art. In locating artists’ creative impulses we see a wide spectrum of motivations and ideologies fueling their imaginative energies. These driving forces very often stand in opposition to one another, and artists are driven by multiple forces (and not so neatly delineated under the four categories in the essay): Sulistyo, Indria Sari, Chang and Hong root their production in societal issues and the plight of ordinary people; Teng, Lim and Lee philosophise on ideologies of art through art; Chang, Barrioquinto, Teng and Lim amplify cultural or national identities; and Hong, Lee and Barrioquinto cross borders and continents. In a circular frame of looking, each perspective is tangential to the centre and of equal significance. They confirm that contemporary art in Southeast Asia carries a distinct inflexion of its own.

Note: I am indebted to Ms Rohaya Mustapha and Viv Lawes for copy editing.

Copyright © 2013 Woho Weng

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ArTISTS’ BIOGrAPHIES ANDrES BARRIoQUINTo Born 1975 Lives and works in the Phillippines

Unexamined Failure/Disorder, west Gallery, 48 west Ave., Quezon City

Education

Strangeways, January 2008, Utterly Art, 20B Mosque St. Level 3, Singapore

Fine Art (Painting), University of Santo Tomas, 1998 Fine Art (Painting), University of the Philippines, 2000

2007 Broken, August 2007, west Gallery - Megamall, Mandaluyong City

Artist’s Statement

2006 Traces, September 2006, SM Megamall Art Center (west Gallery), Mandaluyong City

‘My work is perhaps more sharply individualised than that of the realist, therefore is more dramatically my own, sometimes to the point of eccentricity. Its individuality becomes more natural when I’m interested in probing my own soul rather than reflecting the world of ideas, and in expressing my inner world rather than revealing a basic harmony around us. I paint images so exaggerated or distorted that they take us away from the familiar world into one of emotion and feeling. In their most extreme, these expressions may even become hysterical or nightmarish. I also try out new means of expression, seeking new directions, exploring new mediums and methods of working.’

Personages, April 2006, Utterly Art, 20B Mosque St. Level 3, Singapore 2005 Your Face Is As Mean As Your Life Has Been, August 2005, west Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City Altered States, June 2005, Utterly Art, 20B Mosque St. Level 3, Singapore

Solo Exhibitions

2004 Ugaling Baboy, Ugaling Aso…Third World!!! west Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City

2012 Andres Barrioquinto: New Works, November 2012, Ayala Museum, Makati Ave. corner Dela rosa St., Makati City

2003 Fhamventah Hezpesyal, May 2003, west Gallery, Glorietta 4, Makati City

Black Days, August 2012, west Gallery, 48 west Ave., Quezon City

2002 Ripe (with decay) October 2009, The Drawing room, Makati City

2011 Shadow Dancer, November 2011, west Gallery, 48 west Ave., Quezon City

Sorrow In The House Of Beauty, west Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City

2010 The Squalor of the Mind, July 2010, west Gallery, 48 west Ave., Quezon City Black Tendencies, March 2010, Utterly Art, 20B Mosque St. Level 3, Singapore 2009 The Gods of Small Things, October 2009, Blanc Gallery, Mandaluyong City Dolores, May 2009, Utterly Art, 20B Mosque St. Level 3, Singapore Dead Can Dance, February 2009, Tala Gallery, Kamuning, Quezon City 2008 Everything Towards The End, October 2008, Blanc Gallery, Mandaluyong City

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2001 My Love Gone Wrong Songs, Big and small Art Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City Stop Killing Me, west Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City Selected Group Exhibitions 2013 Art Fair Philippines 2013, February 2013, c/o west Gallery, The Link, Makati City 2012 reVIEw 2012, December 2012, BENCAB Museum, Baguio City 2011 Manila Art 11, August 2011, c/o Blue Line Gallery, NBC Tent, Taguig City

CHANG FEE MING 2010 Faith and Reason, May 2010, Manila Contemporary Gallery, Makati City 2005 Dog God, UST Travelling Show 2004 13 Artists Awards CCP 2001 The 10th International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, r.O.C. Who Owns Women’s Bodies? (Traveling show) 1999 The 9th International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, r.O.C.

Born 1959 Lives and works in Kula Terengganu, Malaysia, and Bali, Indonesia Chang Fee Ming was born in February 1959 in Malaysia, in the small town of Dungun in the coastal state of Terengganu. He is self-taught, and works entirely in watercolour, pushing the medium to its limits by combining wet and dry techniques to create intense and meticulously worked paintings with a sense of heightened reality. His subject matter is the human figure, landscape or still life, and he is best known for his striking half-figure compositions that often include all three elements.

Although based in Terengganu and on the Indonesian island of Bali, Fee Ming regularly undertakes epic journeys that he uses to gather material and sketch ideas for series of works produced at home in studio.

The subjects of these series are the lives of the people and communities he encounters in remote areas, whose traditions and ways of living are increasingly under threat. His travels have taken him along the length of the Mekong river, Burma, India and the Swahili coast of East Africa.

Nokia Arts Award - Asia Pacific, Singapore

His work is eagerly collected in Southeast Asia, Europe, the US and Australia.

Awards

Solo Exhibitions

2009 Aces Award, Award for Continuing Excellence, Metrobank Foundation

2013 Touring exhibition, From Bali to Jogjakarta: A Private Collection, Bamboo Gallery, Bali; forthcoming: One East Asia, Royal Opera Arcde Gallery, London (June 2014)

2003 Thirteen Artists Awards, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila 2000 Best Entry / Lithography Print Association of the Philippines Benavidez Award, 389th Anniversary (1611-2000) University of Santo Tomas 1999 Benavidez Award, 388th Anniversary (1611-1999) University of Santo Tomas Honorable Mention, 9TH Taiwan International Biennial Print and Drawing Com petition Juror’s Choice, 52nd Annual Art Competitions, Art Association of the Phil. (AAP) Juror’s Choice, 1ST Nokia Arts Awards Asia Pacific Singapore 1998 Grand Prize, 15TH Young Painters Annual National Painting Competition, Metrobank Foundation 1997 Third Prize, 50th Annual Art Competition, Art Association of the Phil. (AAP) Honorable Mention, watercolour Category, 30th National Student Competition, Shell Art Awards

2010 Visage, Valentine willie Fine Art, Singapore Sketching Through Southeast Asia, Valentine willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur 2008 Touring Solo Exhibition: Mekong, Exploring the Source Valentine willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore; Vanessa Art Link, Beijing 2005 Swahili Coast, Valentine willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Art Singapore 2005, Suntec Singapore 2004 Touring Solo Exhibition: Mekong Galeri Petronas, Kuala Lumpur; Chiang Mai University Art Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand; Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta Pusat, Indonesia 2002 Journal: Small Works & Sketches, Valentine willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur 2001 Chang Fee Ming: Asia in Watercolour, Galeri 678, Jakarta 2000 Chang Fee Ming: Bali in Watercolour, KomanNeka Fine Art Gallery, Bali, Indonesia

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HoNG SEK CHErN 1997 Portraits of Terengganu, GaleriCitra, Kuala Lumpur

Born1967 Lives and works in Singapore

1995 The Road to Mandalay, Centre for Strategic & International Studies, Jakarta

Education

1994 Exotic Tropicals, GaleriCitra, Kuala Lumpur 1990 2nd Chapter, Galeriwan, Kuala Lumpur 1987 Chang Fee Ming: First Solo Exhibition, GaleriCitra, Kuala Lumpur

National University of Singapore - MA South East Asian Studies, 2004 Goldsmiths College: University of London (Under the Chen Chong Swee Overseas Art Scholarship) – Masters in Fine Art, 1998 Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts – Diploma in Fine Art, 1995 Institute of Education (Singapore) – Diploma in Education, 1990 National University of Singapore – Bachelor of Science (under PSC Teaching Bursary), 1989 Hong Sek Chern graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and went on to complete a MFA at Goldsmiths College, London. She worked as an art educator at NAFA for many years before becoming a full-time artist in 2007. Her work, which is primarily rendered in Chinese ink, explores issues relating to urban environments.

Hong has exhibited her paintings both in Singapore and overseas and she was selected to participate in the President’s Young Talents Exhibition organised by the Singapore Art Museum in 2001. She also represented Singapore at the 25th Sao Paolo Biennale (2002) and the 5th International Ink Painting Biennale of Shenzhen (2006).

Her other acheivements include several national painting prizes and the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council in 2000.

Solo Exhibitions 2011 Raised Tumpal/Art2 (Singapore) 2010 Constructed Interiors/Utterly Art (Singapore) 2009 Artist Feature/Art2 (Singapore) 2008 On Borrowed Skies/Jendela (Visual Arts Space by Cristal Caritas Trust/Singapore) 2000 Portrait Sayang/Utterly Art (Singapore) 1999 Modern Monuments/Telok Kurau Studios Gallery, Selected Art Selected Group Exhibitions 2013 Made in Singapore - Three Quarters of a Century: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Singapore) 2012 Home and Beyond - Recent Ink Works of Chua Say Hua and Hong Sek Chern: Art commune Gallery (Singapore)

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Singapore Survey 2012 – New Strange Faces: Valentine willie Fine Art (Singapore)

2002 25th Sao Paolo Biennial/Sao Paolo (Brazil)

Still Building: Contemporary Art from Singapore: Selasar Sunaryo Art Space (Indonesia)

2001 President Young Talent Show/Singapore Art Museum (Singapore)

2010 Singapore Survey 2010 - Beyond LKY: Valentine willie Fine Art (Singapore)

Awards

2009 NUS Alumni Art Exhibition: NUS Cultural Centre (Singapore) 2008 Lost City II: Sculpture Square (Singapore) 2007 Gossip: 139 Selegie road (Singapore) – collaborative show with photographer and architect Singapore Art Exhibition – curated section at the Singapore Art Museum Tales of Skylarking: Jendela, Esplanade (Singapore) Peranakan III: Evolutionarily Diverse: NAFA Art Galleries NUS Arts Festival Open Art Show at University Cultural Centre Foyer (13 - 18 March 2007) Escape Clause: NAFA Art Galleries 2006 Madly in Love Madly in Art: TKS Gallery 5th International Ink Painting Biennial of Shenzhen: Shenzhen (POC) WithDrawing: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Gallery 1&2 (Singapore) 21st AIAE: Singapore Art Museum (Singapore) 12th International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibit 2006/rOC: Taipei Fine Art Musuem

2007 UOB Painting of the Year: 26th UOB Painting of the Year Award by UOB Group (Singapore) 2006 1st Prize representational Category UOB Painting of the Year Award

by UOB Group 2000 Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council (Singapore) 1999 Honourable Mention (2 awards) ‘1999 Singapore Turf Club Art Competition’ Juror’s Choice: Singapore Art Awards 99 by the Philip Morris Group of Companies 1998 Juror’s Prize: Singapore Art Awards 98 by the Philip Morris Group of Companies 1997 1st Prize (representational Category): 18th Painting of the Year Competition by the United Overseas Bank Group 1996 Juror’s Choice: Singapore Art Awards 96 by the Philip Morris Group of Companies

Spectrum: Telok Kurau Gallery (Singapore)

1995 Top Prize: Philippe Charriol Foundation Contemporary Art Competition 1995/6

2005 Celebration: Telok Kurau Gallery (Singapore)

Chen Chong Swee Overseas Art Scholarship by Chen Chong Swee Foundation and NAC

New Works: TKS Gallery

1st Prize (representational Category): Expression in Art by Singapore Telecoms

Txtrapolis: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Gallery 1 (Singapore) 2004 Heartland Karuizawa Drawing Biennale 2005: Japan wakita Museum of Art Tokyo Lost City: Utterly Art (Singapore) 2003 11th International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibit 2003 / ROC: Taipei Fine Art Museum (rOC)

Collections Singtel Singapore Art Museum Taipei Fine Art Museum National Arts Council (Singapore) United Overseas Bank, Turf Club (Singapore) Oriental Hotel (Singapore) Ascott Singapore raffles Place Private collections in Singapore and overseas

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MArIA INdRIA SARI Born 1976 Lives and works in Yogjakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

Homo Ludens II, Emmitan Contemporary Art Gallery, Surabaya, Indonesia

Education

Exhibition of selected contemporary art works from Bandung Contemporary Art Award competition (BaCAA), Lawangwangi Art & Science Estate, Bandung, Indonesia

Indonesian Art Institute, Yogjakarta, Indonesia (Faculty of Media recording Arts, Film Major, specialising in Artistic Direction) Maria has won numerous fine art competitions and in 2011 was one of the top 25 artists selected for the Bandung Contemporary Art Award Competition (BaCAA), held at the Lawangwangi Art & Science Estate, Bandung, west Java. She has participated in several group shows, including Expansion: Indonesian Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition at the National Gallery of Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2011, and Homo Ludens #2, at the Emmitan Contemporary Art Gallery in Surabaya, East Java.

The overarching themes of the joys and difficulties of motherhood and the extent to which they tie women to the domestic sphere implicitly create tension within Maria’s works; sacrifices have to be made as both mother and professional artist, and the artworks themselves bear witness to this conflict. Her choice of materials and techniques adds further layers of meaning: by using predominantly fabric, thread, buttons and zips as materials and employing techniques of sewing and embroidery, Maria makes reference to the traditional female realm and its confines. Sewing and stitchwork are activities associated with women, and are often considered to be forms of craft. Their use in fine art practice raises questions about the lower status they are accorded in the heirarchy of arts. Her work thus further contributes to contemporary discourse about ‘high’ versus ‘low’ art and to the subject of female artists working in a male-dominated sphere.

Contemporary Archaeology Chapter Two, Sigi Arts, Jakarta, Indonesia

1001 Doors: Reinterpreting Tradition, Ciputra world Marketing Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia Closing The Gap: Indonesian Contemporary Art, MIFA (Melbourne International Fine Art), Melbourne, Australia 2010 Arts Liberation Front #2: Tanah Jawa, Taman Budaya, Yogjakarta, Indonesia Melepas Seragam, Ars Longa Gallery, Yogjakarta, Indonesia ArT | JOG | 10, Indonesian Art Now: The Strategies of Being, Taman Budaya, Yogjakarta, Indonesia 10th Anniversary Exhibition of One Galeri, Jakarta, Indonesia Arts Liberation Front #1, Biasa Gallery, Yogjakarta, Indonesia 2009 rang rawa Project, Bayem river, Yogjakarta, Indonesia BIENNALE JOGJA X, Sanggarbambu, Yogjakarta National Museum, Yogjakarta, Indonesia

Solo Exhibitions

Gebrak Guru Gambar, Beber Seni XII, Taman Budaya, Yogjakarta, Indonesia

2012 Un/Happy Motherhood: Narasi Aku dan Ibu, Lawangwangi Art and Science Estate, Bandung, Indonesia

2008 Dinamika Estetika: 45 years of SMSr Yogjakarta, Taman Budaya, Yogjakarta, Indonesia

Group Exhibitions

2007 Fine Arts Exhibition, Sanggarbambu, Tembi Gallery, Yogjakarta, Indonesia

2012 Membatalkan Keperempuanan, Sangkring Art Project, Yogjakarta, Indonesia

Gema Wanita - BEBER SENI IX Yogjakarta, Benteng Vredeburg, Yogjakarta, Indonesia

Domestic Stuff, Salihara Gallery, Jakarta, and Cemeti Art House, Yogjakarta, Indonesia

2006 Ekspresi-Ekspresi Perempuan, Tembi Gallery, Yogjakarta, Indonesia

2011 Talking Textiles, a duo exhibition with December Pang, One East Asia, Singapore

Awards & Commissions

Indonesia’s Crouching Tigers and Hidden Dragons: The Development of Modern and Contemporary Indonesian Art, Artspace Galleries, London, UK Expansion: Indonesian Contemporary Sculpture, National Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia

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2011 Top 25 artists selected for Bandung Contemporary Art Award Competition (BaCAA), Lawangwangi Art & Science Estate, Bandung, Indonesia 1982-1995 winner of 86 regional, national and international drawing competitions.

JANE LEE Born 1963 Lives and works in Singapore Education Jane holds a BA in Fine Arts painting and a Diploma in Fashion from LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts.

2011 Fabrication, Museum of Art and Design, Manila, Philippine Celeste Prize Exhibition, The invisible Dog, New York, USA Jane Lee, Donna Ong, Wilson Sheih, Eslite gallery, Taipei Collectors Stage, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore

Lee’s work examines painting by pushing the limits of the materials and techniques employed. Through her use of unconventional media and innovative techniques, her paintings highlight processes alone.

In drawing attention to the way the paintings have been made or constructed she re-examines the significance of painting and its relevance to contemporary art practice. Lee’s work has been shown in many exhibitions in the region and she has won several awards, most recently the 2011 Celeste Prize in New York. Lee was also the first recipient of the Singapore International residency Art Prize in 2007 and her largest work to date, Raw Canvas, measuring 930cm x 710cm, was showcased at Singapore Biennale 2008 and Collectors Stage at the Singapore Art Museum in 2011.

Re-making Art in everyday, Marina Bay Sand Convention Centre, Singapore

Déjà Vu was recently shown at the Espace Louis Vuitton Singapore (April – September 2013) as part of the Landscape Memories exhibition, which featured the work of four leading Singaporean contemporary artists.

2008 ‘Wonder’, Singapore Biennale 2008, The City Hall, Singapore

Solo Exhibitions 2013 Jane Lee: Secret Garden, Mizuma Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2012 Jane Lee: Beyond, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, USA 2011 Jane Lee: Prelude a L’apres Midi D’un Faune, Osage Soho, Hong Kong, China 2009 Jane Lee, Osage Gallery, Singapore 2006 Transformation/Process, Taksu Gallery, Singapore Selected Group Exhibitions 2013 Painting in Singapore, Equatorial Art Project, Gillman Barrack, Singapore The Realm in the mirror, the vision out of image, Jinji Art museum, Suzhou, China

2010 Popping up, revisit 2D-3D’ Hong Kong Art Centre, Hong Kong, China The Burden of Representation: Abstraction in Asia Today, Osage Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, China 2009 Code Share: 5 continents,10 biennales, 20 artists, The Contemporary art centre, Vilnius

Coffee, Cigarettes, Phad Thai - Contemporary in South East Asia, Eslite Gallery, Taipei Always Here But Not Always Present - art in a senseless world, Singapore Management University, Singapore Awards 2011 winner of Celeste Prize 2011, Painting category, New York, USA 2007 winner of International residency Art Prize, Singapore Art Exhibition 2007 The 2007 Sovereign Art Prize (finalists), Hong Kong 2005 Philip Morris Singapore Art Awards 2005 (Juror’s Choice) Singapore 2003 Singapore-Asean Art Awards (Finalists) other works

Landscape Memories, Espace Louis Vuitton, Singapore

2008 Coin Mat commission work by LTA for circle line art, Bartley station, Singapore

2012 Encounter, Experience and Environment, Singapore, Gillman Barrack

2010 Fun tote bag design, NDP 2010, Singapore

Panorama: Recent Art from contemporary Asia, Singapore, SAM at 8Q

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LIM TIONG GHEE Born 1955 Lives and works in Singapore Lim Tiong Ghee has exhibited extensively at home and internationally.

A self-taught artist, the only formal art training Lim received was at GCE A level. He started painting seriously upon the encouragement of friends when he was enlisted in National Service. His profession as a senior graphic artist at the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation also spurred his interest in art but the major catalyst was when his collage From the Turtledove won the top award in the 8th United Overseas Bank (UOB) Painting of the Year Competition in 1989. His work was selected by a team of formidable judges, including the late Ismail Zain of Malaysia, Professor Jose Joya of the Philippines and Singapore artist Thomas Yeo. Along with a S$12,000 cash prize, Lim was accorded a solo exhibition the following year at the Empress Place Museum.

Group Exhibitions 2013 Two Man Show - ‘Season’s Interpretation’, One East ArtSpace, Singapore 2005 6th Face, MICA Building, Singapore 2003 Singapore Group Show, Karin weber Gallery, Hong Kong Two Man Show, Art-2 Gallery, The Substation Gallery, Singapore 2002 Joint exhibition with Goh Beng Kwan, wetterling Teo Gallery, Singapore

Lim views painting as a medium with which to portray the quotidian.

During his early career,as a watercolourist Lim focused mainly on familiar scenes in Singapore. Later, he shifted towards developing painting in the studio using collage and acrylic and began to examine critically elements such as shape, form, space, perspective, colour and composition, and he utilised paint to translate them into paintings.

2001 The Watch Has No Numbers, Art-2 Gallery, The Substation Gallery, Singapore

Lim values two-dimensional reality and purposefully flattens his shapes and forms as a way of creating abstractions of his subject matter without completely breaking them down. He believes abstraction in his portrayal of landscapes and tropical flowers can evoke a stronger reaction than purely representational forms can achieve. The abstract imagery subsequently functions as a creative starting point from which he contructs his characteristic rice-paper collages

Abandoned Thoughts, Art-2 Gallery, The Substation Gallery, Singapore

1999 A Brave New World, Soobin Art Gallery, Singapore

1998 Special exhibition in Essen in China exhibition, Museum für Volkerkunde, Munich, Germany Art-2 Gallery, The Substation Gallery, Singapore

Solo Exhibitions

1997 Art-2 Gallery, The Substation Gallery, Singapore

2004 Vermont Studio Centre, United States

1996 Taipei Art Fair, Taipei, Taiwan

2001 Sun Rock, Karin weber Gallery, Hong Kong

Nine Artists in Bali, Art Forum, Fort Canning Hill Gallery, Singapore

2000 Tropical Contemplation, Damasak Asia, The Alchemy Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Singapore Arts Festival ‘96, Atrium Gallery, Singapore 1992 International watercolour Exhibition, Taiwan

1998 Goethe-Institut, Munich, Germany

1991 International watercolour Exhibition, Korea

1996 Art Salon, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

1989 International watercolour Exhibition, Thailand

1992 The Substation Gallery, Singapore

1987 Centenary Art Exhibition, National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore

1990 Empress Place Museum, Singapore

New Direction ‘87, Museum Art Gallery, Singapore

1981 National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore

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1986 12 Singapore Artists, Collectors Gallery, raffles City, Singapore Two Man Show, National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore

YUDI SULISTYo Awards 2004 VSC Freeman Fellowship 2004/2005, Vermont Studio Centre, United States 1989 Top award in the UOB Painting of the Year Competition, Singapore 1984 1st prize in the representational category of the UOB Painting of the Year Competition, Singapore 1980 Special prize, Young Art in Asia Now competition, Hong Kong 1978 Special Award, National Day Art Exhibition, Singapore Collections Asian Business Press Singapore Boeing International Corporation Citibank Singapore Defence Science & Technology Agency Economic Development Board International Enterprise Singapore Janssen-Cilag Orchard 290 Ltd resorts world at Sentosa, Singapore Singapore Airlines Singapore Art Museum United Overseas Bank

Born 1972 Lives and works in Yogjakarta, Central Java, Indonesia.

Education Art Institute Yogjakarta, Visual Communication and Design, 1994 Known for his realistic sculptures, Yudi creates accurate constructions of elaborate forms using mainly cardboard and paper. His subject matter tends towards the militaristic; previous works have included the wreckage of a fighter plane and a military jeep. More recently he has depicted historical objects, specifically from world war II, which are presented as if newly made, without any of the deformation or reshaping common to surviving specimens.

Yudi’s fascination with metal objects and heavy equipment are in complete contrast to his choice of paper for his artworks- a material that is lightweight and warm to the touch. His superb technique lies in his ability to express the exact look and sensation of steel objects, sometimes life-sized, the hyper-reality of which deceive the eye.

His meticulous attention to detail not only shows his great skill but also conveys how the mind perceives certain objects. The viewer thus experiences reality in a disorientating way.

Artist’s interpretation of Rumah (Home) “A house, no matter how simple and poorly built, is an essential infrastructure for one to live in temporarily or permanently. It is a place that protects and at the same time provides comfort to the people who live in it. Everyone needs a house.

I show dilapidated wooden houses to show the life of local urban inhabitants and migrants in big cities. They come from places far away and build these wooden shelters just to protect themselves from the rain and the scorching sun while looking for jobs that will HOPEFULLY ‘rocket’ them to a better life.

I use ‘waste’ papers as the main materials in constructing my artworks, be they war machines or houses in this instance. Now, papers are made of pulp, and hence originally come from wood. But instead of using wood, I make use of discarded papers in my effort to recycle waste materials; in this case I am turning papers back into their original form (wood) – visually, that is.

So, I create artworks using waste materials, with papers (soft and hard) as the main components. Every piece reflects a different story.”

Selected Group Exhibitions 2012 Art Jogja, Looking East: A Gaze Upon Indonesia Contemporary Art, Taman Budaya Yogjakarta, Yogjakarta, Indonesia A Tribute To a Mentor, Gedung Tribakti, Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia Art Stage Singapore 2012, Mon Décor Gallery, Singapore

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TENG NEE CHEONG 2011 Biennale Jakarta #14, National Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia

1951- 2013 Singapore

Flight for Light: Indonesian Art and Religiosity, Art:1, Jakarta, Indonesia Bazaar Art Jakarta, Mon Décor Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia

Education

Art Jogja, Taman Budaya Yogjakarta, Yogjakarta, Indonesia Art Stage Singapore 2011, Singapore Closing the Gap: Contemporary Indonesian Art, Melbourne International Fine Art, Australia 2010 Ethnicity Now, Garis Art Space, National Gallery Jakarta, Indonesia Korea International Art Fair, Mon Décor Gallery, Seoul, Korea Bazaar Art Jakarta, Mon Décor Gallery, Pacific Place, Jakarta, Indonesia Art Jogja, Indonesia Art NOw (IAN), Taman Budaya Yogjakarta, Yogjakarta, Indonesia 2009 Biennale Sastra, Salihara Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia Heroisme, Mon Décor Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia Biennale X, Jogja Jamming, Yogjakarta, Indonesia 2008 Jogja Neo-Nation, Jogja Museum, Yogjakarta, Indonesia Manifesto, National Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia Utopia Negativa, Gallery Langgeng, Magelang, Indonesia Homo Homini Lupus, Mon Décor Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia 2007 1001 Cover Concept, Plaza Senayan, Jakarta, Indonesia Tribute to Young Artist, Sangkring Art Space, Yogjakarta, Indonesia Insert Character, Kedai Kebun Forum, Yogjakarta, Indonesia Awards 2007 Kosasih Award 2003 Finalist, Indofood Jakarta, Indonesia

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Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore Trained under Georgette Chen Nee Cheong studied at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore.

Throughout his productive career he had numerous solo and group shows, exhibiting in France, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Singapore and United States of America. Notable exhibitions include the 19th Asian International Art Exhibition, 2004, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan, and the show Contemporary Art in Singapore – Where East Meets West at the National Museum Singapore and Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1989. His final solo show was Those the Gods Love Grow Mightier at the Gajah Gallery, Singapore, in 2010.

His work is represented in the permanent collections of: the Neka Museum, in Bali, Indonesia; the Singapore Art Museum; The Ministry of Community Development, Singapore; and Embassies of the republic of Singapore in numerous countries.

He was given the Ministry of Culture Special Award (1978), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Alumni Association Creative Award (1982) and Phillip Morris Group (ASEAN, 1993/95/96).

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