Asian Art Report: January 2007 - Contd...

Land
Land has always been a contentious issue in the Philippines, tied up in oligarchies and agrarian reform. Manila’s Galleria Duemila’s January show, “Land” collects a dozen young artists, mainly from the University of the Philippines, to survey the implications of the nebulous title and to define the contemporary Filipino landscape. From Nona Garcia’s sculptural volcano to Pettyjohn’s earth installation to Villaruel’s epic panorama, the show navigates personal topographies and architectural fictions through various mediums. Other artist include: Juan Alcazaren, Miguel Aquilizan, Lyle Buencamino, Lena Cobangbang, Jed Escueta, Lara de los Reyes Jet Melencio, Gary Ross Pastrana, Paulo Romualdez Vinluan, and Maria Taniguchi. Showing until 31 January and visit www.galleriaduemila.com

2007 Hong Kong City Festival is in full flight. For Festival previews, interviews and reviews head to Arts editor Alexandra Carroll’s blog http://blog.aziacity.com/alexandracarroll/ for the scoop on what’s hot … and what’s not! To highlight but a few projects: The Economist Gallery are presenting Weave a Maze sculptures by Hong Kong-born artist Annysa Ng exploring the structural and metaphoric potential of found materials such as bra straps, silk, hair, metal locks and coat-hangers – until 20 January. The Economist Gallery is also the launching point for bzb Art Outing tours of artist’s studios including the Fo Tan Artist Village, the Kwun Tong Artist Studios and Cattle Depot & Shanghai Street Artspace (Kowloon) and studio visits through January. For more visit The Fringe Club, http://www.hkfringeclub.com 

Body Talk
China has a history of censorship. This exhibition of Chinese artists – Yan Huang, Qiang Wang, Zhichiao Yang and new talents Huan Zheng and Dagong Zheng – explores how the body can be used as a site for protest and expression, charged with memory and tension. “Body Talk” moves across mediums from performance-art to body-art and is a very cool looking show. Catch it at Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai, until 10 March or visit http://www.eastlinkgallery.cn

WORM HOLE episode5
Tokyo’s magical ARTROOM presents Takuma Ishikawa and Kohei Takahashi this month. Ishikawa uses photography to construct uneasy images that leave one as witness to 'an incident' while Takahashi uses video in an equally unsettling manner with their stop-motion image, frozen as a steel photograph, prompting the question what are we looking at? Showing through 17 February visit http://www.magical-artroom.com - its worth a look at this funky space.

Taiwan Avant-Garde Documenta III
“Taiwan Avant-Garde Documenta (TAD) is a biennial exhibition that gathers, selects, and extensively documents recent works from the avant-garde of Taiwanese art.” The exhibition is curated from open submission and focuses largely on works produced in alternative art spaces and independent projects. With over 100 individual artists displayed across a series of spatially unique public venues, including cyberspatial links, TAD plays off this inter-connective flexibility of the cyber era furnishing venues with partition units, easily manipulated for installation or collaborations. As their press says, “TAD is not a piecemeal exhibition project, but intends rather to catalyze ferment throughout the artistic macro-ecology. The integral presentation of each year's new work allows for an emergent focal point that may sustain creative intensity and enhance the development of a vivacious public discourse on art through systematic research, public forums, seminars, lectures and dialogue that will, it is to be hoped, serve as an important index and productive mechanism in the development of the avant-garde in Taiwan.”  A mouthful … but laudible. C06 spreads seven exhibitions across various venues, including the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Details on this project are vast so visit the TAD website http://www.tad.org.tw  Exhibitions continue until 25 February.

Between
Gallery VER in Bangkok has been doing some interesting projects since it opened last year. It is currently presenting the work of the young Thai painter, Thakon Khao sa-ad. Thakon’s work is about a cerebral, metaphorical and physical journey that collects images and memories from varying sources, translating them to painting. “Between” is a reference caught between the resource and the result, the place for emotion and imagination that is the medium itself - painting. Showing until 7 February, check out Gallery VER at http://www.verver.info if you haven’t already.

Emerging artists hit Thai TV
For the first time in Thailand nine emerging Thai artists have been invited to create and show their works related to new media on TV. By using mass media, Hit & Run TV Art Lab explores a new space for artists collaborating with Whale Co. Ltd. and Beyond Channel, and broadcast on ThaiTV 7 from December through January. Artists still to screen include: Prachya Phinthong on 18 January and Soraya Naksuwan on 25 January (Thursday, 9.00-9.30pm). Program produced by Natthapong Rattana and curated by Thanavi Chotpradit.
 
Noosphere – getting exchange right!
The Ateneo Art Gallery teams up with The Philippines-Australia Studies Centre at La Trobe University to present an exhibition by Neil Fettling, following his time as Visiting Professor at the Ateneo Fine Arts Program to present an Art Management course, "Art in Context: Profession and Practice." "Noosphere” plays with the notion that contemporary art is borderless and posits the absence of territories of the imagination, perhaps most evocatively illustrated by the genre of the landscape. Landscape is a synthesis of the ideas we construct about place, space and reality and how we place ourselves within that order of things. His images take a look at Australia’s vast interior, a desolate and largely unpopulated space quiet the antithesis of the Philippines. Fettling’s exhibition of photographs is the second exhibition in the Gallery’s “Engage” program initiated in 2005 to work with significant artists from overseas to connect with their permanent collection of modern Philippine art. “Fettling's work engages on many levels with the imagery of two artists in Ateneo's permanent collection: the late pioneering expatriate Filipino modernist Nena Saguil, whose mindscapes transpose her journey from the material world to the spiritual; and the sculptor/installation artist Junyee, who simulates primordial topographies.” (Ateneo) "Noosphere" is part of the 2006-09 Ateneo-La Trobe Arts Linkages project. Mid-2007 an exhibition "My Country: Abstract Interpretations of the Australian Landscape" will travel from the La Trobe University Art Museum collection to the Ateneo Art Gallery, and the Ateneo Art Awards Australian residency in 2007 will include a visit to La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre in Bendigo. Fettling is the Coordinator for Visual Art and Design at La Trobe University-Mildura. His exhibition at The Ateneo Art Gallery continues until 31 January. For more visit www.ateneoartgallery.org

Delia engages Singapore landscape
Singapore artist Delia has collaborated with National Parks Singapore in an ambitious project that opens this month and continues through October 2007. Stretching across three locations “PleinAir” comprises oversized forms inspired by common objects, like lost, found and reconstructed ‘containers’ scattered along the shore at East Coast Park as though deposited by the tide. At Fort Canning Park Delia gives us three groups of sculptural installations and at One North Park a giant ‘flying carpet’ high on a grassy slope engaging with motorists, passing trains and surrounding buildings. Keep you eye out for her work next touring around Singapore. Visit www.pleinair.com.sg

Syed Thajudeen @ Pelita Hati
Initially criticised for its ‘Indian-ness’, Malaysian artist Syed Thajudeen’s work found testimony as a statement of modern Malaysia and has since been recognized for its place in the development of the arts movement there. With a distinctive style fusing elongated figures and indigenous motifs and symbols filtered from his Indian heritage, Thajudeen’s exhibition “Cinta tercipta … and there is Love” at Pelita Hati Gallery Kuala Lumpur has all the colour and hybridity of facets of Malaysian art. Showing through 3 February visit www.pelitahati.com.my

Quick hits ‘round the region
Tran Van Thao at Vietnam’s Galerie Quynh showing through February; Hamidi Hadi’s exhibition “Alum” at Weiling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (http://www.weiling-gallery.com/Alun.htm); and how about checking out Plum Blossom’s group show to kick off the year, featuring a kick line up: Ding Yi, Dominic Lam Man-Kit, Guo Wei, Ju Ming, Lois Conner, Peng Wei, Tran Trong Vu , Wei Qingji, Zhang Dali and Zhu Wei. Showing in their Hong Kong space until 6 February visit www.plumblossoms.com And for those interested in new media, check out “Play> - An Experimental Video/Play Project” a forum and group exhibition at the Kao Yuan Art Center, Kao Yuan University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan until 21 January. Curated by Phoebe Chingying Man and Yukyiu Ip for more visit http://km.kyu.edu.tw/art

Malam Buka Panggung
Oh no! Not another arts centre! – Former editor of Malaysia’s kakiseni arts website Pang Khee Teik has directed his energies and charisma into steering Kuala Lumpur’s new Central Market Annex – an arts centre for exhibitions, performance, multidisciplinary projects and workshops. Whilst this might sound a bit of a yawn to some of us with excessive access to the arts, this venue plays a vital role in taking the visual arts in Malaysia to a more ‘ground roots’ engagement. Opening 17 January with performances by Hishamuddin Rais, Juliana Yasin, Ray Langenbach and Marion D’Cruz among others, be sure to take time out from your next KL Shop-over to check out what’s happening at The Annex.