MOON BAT H I NG
Tony Twigg
Crossing Over: Two Decades in Asia – Gina Fairley
front cover:
Yella Moon Risen enamel paint on timber construction 107 x 107 cm / 2012
KUALA LUMPUR
17 Jalan Pawang 54000 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia T +603 4251 4396 F +603 4251 4331 kl@taksu.com SINGAPORE
43 Jalan Merah Saga #01-72 Workloft @ Chip Bee Singapore 278115 T +65 6476 4788 F +65 6476 4787 sing@taksu.com BALI
W Retreat & Spa Bali Jalan Petitenget Seminyak Bali, Indonesia T +62 361 4738106 F +62 361 4738104 bali@taksu.com
MOON BATHING TONY TWIGG
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ISBN 978 - 981- 07- 4118 - 1 PAPERBACK
978 - 981- 07- 4119 - 8 E-BOOK
The question most often asked of Tony Twigg is, “So Tony, where are you based?” While the question is usually just friendly banter, for him the answer is consequential. As he says,
“It attaches me to a place and defines me within nationalistic structures that govern ideas such as Australia’s cultural politics, but also the kind of global art rhetoric that identifies artists such as myself as peripatetic - born here, lives there, lives and works. For me it is a much broader geographic experience that has little to do with cartography or categories. It is about space.”
Tony Twigg’s engagement with Asia began with a fleeting visit to Manila in 1993. For him the experience of the city was galvanising. He recalls,
“The chaotic shanties that encrusted the city evoked a romanticism of cubism, and the dilapidation seemed to be dissolving into Robert Rauschenberg assemblages bathed in light. It was the film set of an alternate life where, it seemed, the rules weren’t remembered. I wanted to play a part.”
While the idea of translocality At that time Twigg’s films and art installations examined an Australian hangs its hat on the neutrality of the in-between, it is this very space ethos and were largely a critique of that, for Twigg, has become the colonialism. Twigg quickly realized point of definition in his art making. that there was no place for such Speaking with him he described, narratives outside of Australia, and his art took on more universal themes, what he describes as “Asia brought an abstraction to my ‘abstractions of existence’. While this work that allowed for a greater move from figuration to abstraction is a fascinating consideration, spatial engagement, a kind of it perhaps overshadows a more slippage between Singapore’s revealing shift in the work, one we colloquially refer to as ‘head space’. ordered verticality and the intuitive This twenty-year passage traversing rhythms of Filipino or Malaysian Asia has reached far beyond 1 aesthetics or intention. Twigg has structures for example. What I was embedded himself so deeply in the reading was the ricochet between fissures of living between places that they are no longer discernable to him. positive and negative space, and it Simply, while Australia could be said is this pulse that I sort to find in to have defined his physical form, Asia has given his heart a pulse. my constructions today.” The two are one.
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We first started to see the emergence of this vertical energy in Twigg’s outdoor installation and ephemeral works as early as the 1999 Baguio Arts Festival (Philippines) where he planted bamboo forms directly into the earth. It translated to later outdoor projects in Australia, such as Sydney’s iconic Sculpture by the Sea (2004), where the forms became more articulated constructions in timber and yet their physical connection with the landscape remained paramount. These forms quickly found their way into galleries and museums as site-responsive installations, turning that organic landscape into a layered visual and physical passage that the audience could pass through. While the Philippines may have been the catalyst, this architectural engagement however really found its expression in Singapore.
A residency at Rimbun Dahan on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur threw up a new proposition in Twigg’s work in 2005. As he explains,
“My work had become a graphic echo of images I found in Asia such as walls, fences, or walkways and other urban structures. In Malaysia, however, I started making work from objects that had been made by another person; things that have a history and a spirit separate to my own. It seemed to me that I was making collaborative works and that my process underlined one of the great truisms of abstract art, that artists share the authorship of their work with the materials used to make them.”
Architecture could be said to possess the same qualities of collaboration. It is not so unusual then that Singapore offered Twigg the opportunity to take that dialogue to a larger scale – the scale of buildings. In 2006 Twigg showed a suite of constructions made from kampong crates at Sculpture Square’s Citylink project. While at the time it was a ‘foot in the door’ to a city he found deeply interesting on its own terms, in hindsight it spoke more about the kind of embedding of artworks within site that would dominate the next few years. It had a very different conversation than Twigg’s wedged bamboos or sticks in the Philippines. Simply, it had moved from an intuitive improvised exploration of spatial rhythms to a sophisticated form that echoed the modernist lines of tropical architecture – forms articulated and compressed into a singular dialogue. In 2007 Twigg worked with Singaporean architect Ko Shiou Hee of k2ld on a domestic commission at Sentosa Cove, a huge installation
Most recently that desire to measuring 4 x 4 meters constructed experiment and push his forms from found and milled wood and into new materials - new spatial suspended in vertical space twoengagements - saw the realization stories high. It triggered a chain of of two milestone projects in Twigg’s commissions that continue today, large-scale works that are embedded career: a suite of standing sticks for a hotel in Hyderbad India, in conversation with the site Avasa, and a run of 165 fiberglass its sustainability, materiality, ‘sticks’ for a rooftop lounge at and modernist lines. Among the Kuala Lumpur’s Aloft hotel. more ambitious have been Armada Working with Singapore designers (2007) created on-location from Poole Associates, the artwork and the root-ball of a 100-year old very fabric of the building become Tampusu tree, its shards standing one. Twigg’s screen of standing over 2 meters tall hugging the hip sticks each measuring 320 cm of the site and in dialogue pivot, alternating between an with Shiou Hee’s lofty domestic awning and a screened walkway. architecture. Another, for a Both projects will be launched beachfront house in Phuket (Thailand, 2009) Moonwalk, captured late 2012. the moon’s midnight shimmer on Commenting on the piece Twigg the still waters of a dark night, the observed, “Physically we live in an construction’s surface built up over 30 layers of paint so that it appeared architectural space, while we inhabit the space of art, in a metaphysical almost liquid, velvety, sensuous. sense. I'm interested in how Twigg has come to intuitively read this spatial duality is realized in the dynamics and energy of utilitarian structures. It is the basis a location so that his constructions of a visual language common to my become the bridge, if you like, drawings constructions, and large between the natural and scale installations.” constructed worlds.
Increasingly, Twigg’s abstract meditations share a common structure in compositional form. That is, the whole is a dialogue of formal opposites: straight / curved, black / white, positive / negative, here / there – simply all is held in poetic balance and stems from life itself. For two decades now Tony Twigg has charted a path unpredictable, organic, rewarding, and engaging - but one that has been exclusively on his own terms. This journey between places is no longer about ‘crossing over’. It is about a continual arrival and it defines the landscape of Singapore.
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Elegy to the Spanish Colony enamel paint on timber construction 115 x 185 cm / 2012
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Orbit enamel paint on timber construction 98 x 182 cm / 2012
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Morning Star enamel paint on timber construction 162 x 93 cm / 2012
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Guadaloop enamel paint on timber construction 52 x 162 cm / 2012
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Compressed Disc
Oval
enamel paint on timber construction 56 x 33 cm / 2012
enamel paint on timber construction 53 x 28 cm / 2012
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Expanded Disc E (A) enamel paint on timber construction 107 x 129 cm / 2012
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Moon Bathing in Black and White enamel paint on timber construction 107 x 138 cm / 2012
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Eclipse enamel paint on timber construction 117.5 x 211 cm / 2012
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top left;
bottom left;
top right;
bottom right;
Monument
Disc
Quarters Of The Moon
Repeated Disc
enamel paint on timber construction 57 x 25 cm / 2012
enamel paint on timber construction 42 x 56 cm / 2012
enamel paint on timber construction 58 x 54 cm / 2012
enamel paint on timber construction 31 x 70 cm / 2012
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right;
This Evening Again (B) enamel paint on timber construction 128 x 134 cm / 2012
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Moon Bathing enamel paint on timber construction 118 x 125 cm / 2012
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Split Disc enamel paint on timber construction 71 x 46.5 cm / 2012
QUALIFICATIONS
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SOLO EXHIBITION
2001 Spontaneous Architecture, 1985 Master of Arts (Visual Arts) 2012 Moon Bathing, TAKSU Singapore Ray Hughes Gallery, Australia Sydney College of Advanced Education. Moon Bathing, Galleria Duemila, Manila, 2001 Spontaneous Architecture, 1981 Graduate Diploma in Professional Philippines Galleria Duemila, Philippines Art Studies - Alexander Mackie College 2012 A declension of sticks, 1999 Intersections, Galeria de las Islas, of Advanced Education, Sydney South Hill Gallery, Australia Philippines 1976 Diploma in Painting - Sydney 2011 Elegy to a Spanish Colony, 1998 Set Port Play, Ray Hughes Gallery, Technical College (Canberra School of Art) Damien Minton Gallery, Australia Australia 2010 The entropy shuffle, 1997 A Book of Pages, GRANTS & AWARDS Galleria Duemila, Philippines Sir Herman Black Gallery, Australia 2012 Red Gate Residency, Beijing, China Ricochet, Damien Minton Gallery, Australia Self Cannibal Ray Hughes Gallery, 2009 TARP Residency, TAKSU Kuala Lumpur, Nightride, SLOT, Australia Australia Malaysia 2009 Vib-ra-fon, Taksu, Singapore 1996 A Book of Pages, Australia Center, 2008 Australia-Malaysia Institute Grant, Vib-ra-fon, Taksu, Malaysia Philippines to produce the book Encountering the Object 2008 Standing Sticks, Galleria Duemila, 1995 A Shadow that Speaks, 2005 Artist in Residence, Rimbun Dahan, Philippines Ray Hughes Gallery, Australia Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2007 Expanded discs, Taksu, Singapore A Shadow in our Tree, 1996 Artist in Residence Drawing, 2006 Perforations, Galleria Duemila, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia Canberra School of Art, ACT, Australia Philippines 1991 Five Years, Ray Hughes Gallery, 1994 Australia Council, Visual Arts Board, The Aesthetics of Addiction, Australia Studio Residency, Manila, Philippines Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia 1990 On a hiding to nothing, 1988 Australia Council, Theatre Board, 2005 No Borders, Galleria Duemila, Ray Hughes Gallery, Australia Production Grant of Learning to Swim, Philippines 1987 For One Year, Ben Grady Gallery, 1987 Australia Council, Visual Arts Board, 2004 Incidental Placement, Australia Professional Development Grant Ray Hughes Gallery, Australia For One Year, Ray Hughes Gallery, 1983 Australia Council Grant, Grove, SLOT, Australia Australia Theatre Board, Production Grant, 2003 Houses Under Construction, 1985 The Waiting Room, A Puppet Company Galleria Duemila, Philippines Garry Anderson Gallery, Australia Sugar Ballads in Bamboo Sticks, 1982 A Sail, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Australia Pinto Gallery, Philippines 1975 1975, Abraxas Gallery, Canberra, Australia
GROUP EXHIBITION
2012 Dua: Sabri Idrus + Tony Twigg, TAKSU Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Peninsular & Island, TAKSU Singapore 2012 Trans/portable, MO Space, Philippines New Acquisitions, Atenoeo Art gallery, Philippines Variable Truth, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Australia Five Bells: An ode to Sydney, Damien Minton Gallery, Australia 2010 Guitar Shaped World, Tamworth Regional Art Gallery, Australia 2009 Beyond Frame: Philippine Photomedia, Ateneo Art Gallery, Philippines Philippine Abstraction, SLOT, Australia 2004 Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, Australia 2003 Daet International Eco-Arts Festival, Philippines Ngonian, Legaspi Art Festival, Philippines 2002 Silent Talking, Ray Hughes Gallery, Australia Silent Talking, Galleria Duemila, Philippines 1999 Baguio Arts Festival, Philippines 98-99 Recent Acquisitions, Ateneo Art Gallery, Philippines 1992 Reference Points: A New Perspective, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia 1990 Writers in Recital, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
1990 20 Australian Artists, Ray Hughes Gallery at Galleria San Vidal, Italy A New Generation, National Gallery of Australia 1989 Expressive Space, Australian Sculpture in the 80s, National Gallery of Australia 1987 17 Australian Artists, Ray Hughes at Galleria San Vidal, Italy 1987 The Third Australian Sculpture Triennial, Melbourne, Australia Contemporary Art in Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia 1977 ACT 1, Australian National University, Australia
back cover;
Moon Bathing Near Here enamel paint on timber construction 106.5 x 128.5 cm / 2012
PROJECTS
COLLECTIONS
2012 Avasa Hotel, India /Aloft Hotel, Malaysia, Pool + Associates, Singapore 2001 PIPAF: Philippine International Performance Arts Festival, Philippines 1999 Shining Moon, The Australia Centre, Philippines 1997 Still Life, Australian Film and Television School, Australia 1991 A Parade, Australian Film Commission, Australia 1991 Learning to Swim, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia 1991 A Passion Play, The Australian Film Commission, Australia 1988 5 Sticks to Live, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Australia 1983 Ubu’s Chair, Canberra Dance Ensemble, Australia 1984 A Prelude to Now, Art Gallery of South Australia, Australia A Suite of Futurist Plays, Victorian Centre for the Arts, Australia 1983 A Prelude to Now, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Australia 1982 Rainbow Serpent, Semour Group, Seymour Centre, Australia Mansions, Sydney Dance Company, Sydney Opera House, Australia
Art Bank, Australia Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia Ateneo Art Gallery Collection, Philippines Ayaland Collection, Philippines BenCab Museum, Philippines The Carlos Oppen Cojuangco Art Collection, Philippines Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Australia Griffith University, Australia Jaime Ayala Collection, Philippines National Gallery of Australia, Australia University of the Philippines, Los Banos, Philippines Newcastle University, Australia Queensland Art Gallery, Australia Rimbun Dahan Collection, Malaysia Spencer Stuart Corporate Collection, Australia Wollongong City Gallery, Australia
Born 1953, Brisbane, Australia. Lives and works in Sydney, Australia and Manila, Philippines I would like to thank Gina Fairley and TAKSU team for the unfailing generosity of their help in producing this exhibit. Tony Twigg
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
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All rights reserved. No part of this brochure may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior consent from the artists and gallery. Artworks and Images Š 2012 Tony Twigg Essay Gina Fairley Catalog Design Jeffrey Lim / Studio 25 Printer Unico Services
MOON BATHING TONY TWIGG
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ISBN 978 - 981- 07- 4118 - 1 PAPERBACK
978 - 981- 07- 4119 - 8 E-BOOK