Manifesto

MANIFESTO TONY TWIGG

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MANIFESTO TONY TWIGG

_ ISBN 978 - 981- 09- 9836 - 3 PAPERBACK

978 - 981- 09- 9837- 0 E-BOOK

TAKSU is a leading contemporary art gallery and specialist in Southeast Asia. Representing selections of fine art with distinctive urban edge, we are at the forefront of contemporary art in this region. TAKSU works to forge a platform for established and emerging artists to share their pool of creativity and knowledge through its residency programs and exhibitions. Encapsulating the true meaning of the word TAKSU; divine inspiration, energy, and spirit.

Suherwan Abu Director, TAKSU Galleries

Graphic Design Jeffrey Lim / Studio 25 Printer Unico Services Artworks & Images Š 2016 Tony Twigg This publication may be reproduced in any form for academic, editorial and/ or non-commercial purposes without special permission from the artist(s) and gallery, with acknowledgement of the source. For other purposes, prior consent is needed.

Recently I have been looking backwards as well as forwards in my work, forwards to what it might become and back towards it’s past. Or rather looking backwards through the past at the premise of my art. Looking with hindsight and with permission to alter the past.

I’ve been fixing some mistakes. Going over old ground, revising to improve a piece, scrapping other works and taking audacious risks with some, all with the aim of reconciling my past with my present.

Establishing connections, those found and those forged across decades that merge fact and fiction. The oldest work here dates from 1987.

I can remember what it looked like then but what remains is fact, fragments surviving past memory into the future.

Orwellian “New Speak” parodies a revision of the past so that it matches the requirements of the future. Politicians devise a similar switch by judging the past by the standards of the present.

Contemporary culture abandoned the constraints of that liner narrative in favour of an associative structure. It’s a kind of time-travel that allows the passage of time to become a single object. I walk across my studio to the storage racks, pull out a picture from say 2006 and begin with it again. Was it a day or a decade that past? Of course it’s yes on both counts. The picture is a collapsed body of time that accommodates both fact and fiction in a single moment.

Not surprisingly we find the past reflected in the present. One is the consequence of the other. But we have to remind our selves that the past is measured by the present. In my work this has become an accommodation of what is seen and what is not seen. It permits the observation of intangible elements that might have been there once– that perhaps will be there in the future but currently can only be observed as the consequence of tangible objects.

A visual trick, an enigmatic object that shifts through space in response to our own movement, a mode of working that when applied to a personal history blends fact and fiction. If it exists, it exists and if it appears to exist it also exists. I would like to manipulate this phenomenon into the work of art, the job of seeing what is not there, that is - visionary sight.

10 Sticks and 5 Voids Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 185 x 70 cm / 2016

previous page, left; 15 Sticks in 3 Places, Then When Now Oil and Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 140 x 140 cm / 2016 previous page, right; 15 Sticks in 3 Places, Twang Oil and Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 140 x 140 cm / 2016 right; 15 Sticks in 3 Places, Vanishing Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 75 x 210 cm / 2016

previous page; Grove Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 278 x 173 x 106 cm / 2004 – 2015 Like A Tree Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 195.5 x 64 cm / 2016

previous page, left; Wedge Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 215 x 28 cm / 2003 – 2015 previous page, right; Heirloom Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 243 x 48 cm / 1999 – 2015 right; T’ai Shan (Monastery) Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 148 x 91 cm / 1995 – 2016 next page; 15 Sticks in 3 Places, Stepping Enamel Paint on Timber Construction 75 x 198 cm / 2016

Tony Twigg (b. 1953 in Australia) has a strong international practice with over 40 solo exhibitions presented in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and the U.S.A. Over his long career Twigg has also been known for his multi-disciplinary and film works, included in the iconic Cannes Film Festival. He studied painting in Australia and received his Master of Visual Arts from the College of Fine Arts, Sydney in 1985. He was a recipient of Australia Council Manila Studio Grant (1996), Rimbun Dahan Malaysian residency (2005), TARP Residency TAKSU Kuala Lumpur (2009), and traveled to Beijing to complete a residency with Red Gate Gallery in 2012. Twigg’s work is held in major museum collections and in private and corporate collections across Southeast Asia and Australia. In March this year a retrospective survey of his practice was presented by Annandale Galleries, Sydney, whichincluded a restaging of his collaborative performance work, “Life still”.

MANIFESTO TONY TWIGG

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_ ISBN 978 - 981- 09- 9836 - 3 PAPERBACK

978 - 981- 09- 9837- 0 E-BOOK