Malaysian Art, between Kuala Lumpur and London

12Malaysian Art, between Kuala Lumpur and London

Dr. Sarena Abdullah, Universiti Sains Malaysia, is the inaugural recipient of a research award offered by the Paul Mellon Centre and Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong). Here she describes her recent investigation into exhibitions of modern Malaysian art held in London during the 1950s and 1960s.

Nationalistic narratives of modern Malaysian art have always located Kuala Lumpur at their centre. But my work as part of the London, Asia Research Award has uncovered the complex relations between Kuala Lumpur and London in the 1950s and 1960s, which profoundly impacted Malaysian artists and art institutions.

Archival collections at the National Visual Arts Gallery in Malaysia contain catalogues and brochures that document exhibitions of modern Malaysian art held internationally. These shows were mainly organised in the years immediately following the Gallery’s establishment in 1958, and today are not very well known. The records reveal that at least two such international exhibitions took place each year, primarily through channels of “soft power” or arts-based diplomacy. Often, they were organised and co-organised by high commissions or arts councils in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and France. In London, my research has focused on the exhibitions of Malaysian art that were held at, or organised by, the Commonwealth Institute during the 1950s and 1960s (its former building today houses the Design Museum in South Kensington). Established in 1888 first as the Imperial Institute, and renamed in 1958, the Commonwealth Institute played a key role in the creation of a perceived transnational Commonwealth community.

Brochure cover design for the exhibition Malaysian Art, held at the Commonwealth Institute in 1966.

Malaysia had gained independence just a year before the establishment of its National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur in 1958. Yet styles and ideas associated with modern art were easily accepted and even promoted in postcolonial Malaysia, and this internationalisation reflects the larger dynamics of new nationhood, as well as the commonwealth identity advocated for Malaysia by the British. Artists such as Tay Hooi Keat, Syed Ahmad Jamal and Yeoh Jin Leng, for example, adopted the Abstract Expressionist style in depicting Malaysian and Southeast Asian regional landscapes. Chuah Thean Teng, a pioneer of modern batik painting (which adapted a traditional dying process to painting), was given two solo exhibitions at the Commonwealth Institute in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Previous spread: Syed Ahmad Jamal, Tulisan (Writing) (detail), 1961. Muzium and Galeri Tuanku Fauziah (MGTF), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). Opposite: Chuah Thean Teng, Fruit Season (detail), 1968. National Visual Arts Gallery Collection, Kuala Lumpur.

During these decades, some Malaysian artists were also sent to the United Kingdom to pursue their art education. After graduating, most came back to Malaysia and helped to set up local art departments, such as the Specialist Teachers’ Training Institute in Cheras, and later the Art and Design programme at the MARA Institute of Technology (ITM) in Shah Alam. The establishment of Malaysian art schools reflects the influences and changes in art education at the time, particularly those that had happened in London. The diploma programme at the School of Art and Design at ITM, founded in 1967, was developed after the Bauhaus model, an approach spearheaded at the Hornsey College of Art. After a one-year foundation, students were required to major in subjects such as Three- Dimensional Design, Graphic Design, Textile Design, Fashion Design or Fine Art.

Familiarity with this model was brought to the Malaysian context by Hornsey graduates Redza Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa, who together with other major Malaysian artists, such as Choong Kam Kow, Hashim Hassan, Joseph Tan, Ahmad Khalid Yusof, Latiff Mohiddin, Tan Tuck Kan and Yeoh Jin Leng, joined early as its academic staff.

Archives of visual materials are very new in Malaysia, and the fellowship has been an occasion to engage with this particular research method. Not many of the exhibitions of Malaysian art held in the 1950s or 1960s have been studied, and this fieldwork has offered me a unique opportunity to demystify this history.

Yeoh Jin Leng, Seberang Takir (detail), 1964. Muzium and Galeri Tuanku Fauziah (MGTF), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).