I went to my bank last Wednesday to use the ATM and noticed on both sides of the bank there were long snaking queues of people waiting in the sun. You can see in my photo that the queue carries on along the other side of the river. People were dutifully waiting in their thousands for up to ten hours to file past the coffin of Lee Kuan Yew.
Fernando Botero. Bird. 1990. Between UOB bank and Singapore River. People queuing to see LKY cofffin.
The sculpture is by Botero. For reasons I don’t quite understand he is very popular here and in Indonesia. There is a fairly substantial population of public sculpture by Cragg, Plensa and others here in the CBD (Central Business District). I will on some future occasion talk about them – and the curious shining up and shining down of a Henry Moore.
In the evening I went to a lecture by Indonesian critic Jim Supangkat at Lasalle College of Arts and once again sat for a minute’s silence before the lecture could begin. As I left I noticed that placed in the centre of the college’s hyper-modern building, with so many lights focused on it that it glowed like an alien artefact, was a bronze head of the departed leader.
His funeral was on Sunday but I missed it as I had flown out to Manila. Once there I went to the gallery 1335 Mabini where I spent time looking at an exhibition of photographs by MM Yu. She photographs everyday things but presents them in a conceptual way: ganging them together or combining them. Sometimes she mounts them in small glass blocks and spreads them out on a shelf. In this show, as you can see, she used all three modes of display. Often, though not in this case, they seem like a sort of diary. Many of the images were of the temporary structures made by homeless people in Manila – alas, there are many homeless people in Manila. On the one hand it celebrates their ingenuity in improvising such homes – something akin the Richard Wentworth’s Making do and getting by. On the other hand, it documents some dire poverty.
MM Yu, in transit at 1335 Mabini
I was just nipping out for some coffee when I bumped into Poklong Anading who was also showing in the gallery. (You can see by the photo of Poklong that 1335 Mabini is a very nice old building.) So, I went back in to talk with him about his show. Like MM his work derives from bricoleur ingenuity, in this case the scaffolding, trestles and tables that builders here make up from scrap wood. Having found an interesting example, he will photograph it and measure its individual elements, then have it remade with chromed steel wrapped round it. Oddly, once so impeccably covered, they look like prototypes or ideal forms. They are curious objects, neither sculpture nor furniture.
Poklong Anading in 1335 Mabini
Scaffolding in Batangas on the side of what will be my library
The collectors in South-East Asia are generally focused on paintings, so these are two artists who struggle to sell much and, as they don’t seem to be ever invited to teach and there are few residencies out here, they have problems making a reasonable living. Poklong laments he is seriously behind with his rent.
They were both students of Roberto Chabet at UP (University of Philippines) as were many of the other leading artists including Mariano Ching, Geraldine Javier, Alwin Reamillo, Yasmin Sison who we met a few weeks back. Of all the conceptual artists from the Seventies in the region it seems he was the only one who became a teacher. This is in contrast to the West where many conceptual artist, from Baldessari to Burgin, became influential teachers. Perhaps partly as a result it is only in the Philippines that we see conceptual art or post conceptual art that has some of the rigour and concern with ontology and epistemology that we associate with “hardcore” conceptual art.
Chabet was a charismatic teacher but dismissive of those he disagreed with, above all the social realists, who were very prominent here once, and who accused him of being a formalist. This is wrong, but he certainly put self-exploration before banner waving.
Many writers and curators in the region today seem equally uncomfortable with art as art; instead they are keen, desperate even, that art should always have “messages”. This has led to several recent exhibitions promoting South-East Asian art being fixated on politics and identity. Unfortunately, this excludes most of the best artists as they are not avowedly political. This is a serious issue I will have to return to on another Tuesday.
Poklong and MM may not be wearing their political hearts on their sleeve or be engaging directly with the community but they are embodying a profound problematic: making elegant art from images and forms initiated by the poor.
In the final resort their work is not only more aesthetically pleasing but also more troubling than most avowedly political work.
Have a pleasant Tuesday
Tony