TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 171
6th September 2022
Dear friends and colleagues
The butterflies of Ibabao
It’s the rainy season here. During it, every year, flying termites emerge from the flower bed outside our dining room. Fat little grubs with wings attached. They crawl out of the ground and then take flight, rising upwards into the air. In increasing numbers they rise – like the fallen angels rising in Hell at Satan’s call – Milton’s Paradise Lost in miniature.
I hate them. I find them disgusting. Later, at night they will circle the outside lights till dropping to the floor, shedding their wings and wriggling under the door.
But in the daylight, we watch them rising from the flower bed inexorably, taking flight – and then a swift is among them gliding through, effortless, so quickly, snaffling one as he passes, taking his meal on the wing. More termites fly up, trying to get higher, trying to catch the wind. And then, like the 7th cavalry in some old Western movie the swifts are there in force, twenty or thirty of them, swooping and diving, skimming above the ground, weaving between the trees and bushes, swallowing the termites without any diminution of speed, without a moment of hesitancy. What athletes they are! So fast, such acrobats. As certain in their flight as the hand of a master draughtsman making a complex, sinuous curve.
But the rainy season brings out the butterflies too. Sometimes there are forty or fifty of them on the big bush outside our front door. They love these small white flowers. Some small, some large – some very large! Some are drab – coloured like dead leaves as camouflage, others glow with colours.
With their frantically beating wings, their sudden shifts of direction they are so difficult to photograph. One appreciates the incredible skill – and patience – of wildlife photographers.
In Manila. Some questions about curating
Maya Munoz
My last day in the galleries before flying to the UK. Pushpins or bulldog clips? At Art Informal Stephanie Frondoso was hanging a show of paper works by Maya Munoz, an artist I had worked with in Slovakia (see Far Away but Strangely Familiar in my web site). Hiding in the province of Bicol for the pandemic Maya had become fascinated by the way religion, both Christian and folk, was practised there. One work showed a man with a dead chicken placed on his head as a way of diagnosing an illness. But what struck me more was the clear and bleaching light of the sun in these works – not unlike that of early Diebenkorn or David Park – Bay area artists. Was the light here an echo of California where she had once lived or is that just the look of things in Bicol.
Having agreed clips were visually irritating – or more so than push pins – Stephanie and I talked about where the text should be in an exhibition. My view has changed. I was once always for text free exhibitions. Now in a “paperless” world we are paradoxically even more submerged with texts. On the web, twitter, Instagram, increasingly scanned off a digital code pasted on the gallery wall. If texts are all around us make a good one readily available. Make it part of the exhibition sometimes, not an optional add on.
It ultimately has to be the artist’s decision. Is he text an integral part of the work, of how we should experience it, or related but separate? The curator or writer may discuss it, advise, even write it, but it is the artist who must take ultimate responsibility for where it goes – on the wall, or hidden, or half hidden in the catalogue or website.
Stephanie & Yael
There too I met my old friend Yael Buencamino who had curated the Philippine pavilion at Venice this year. She suggested the very good idea of making an Exhibition of art made by Filipinos living in Europe. We know about Filipinos living in the USA from Alfonso Ossorio to Manuel Ocampo to Jennifer K. Wofford who is currently showing at Silverlens, but how do Filipino artists respond to the much more diverse culture of Europe?
Upstairs was a little confusing: this was an artist with two very different ways of working: figurative terracotta sculptures and vessels and someone with a yen for black and black frames. Of course, it wasn’t it was two separate artists whose works though so different looked good together.
Terracottas by Salvador Joel Alonday; works in black frames by Christina Quisumbing Ramilo (whose friends know as Ling Quisumbing) see interview in arttalksea.com
Ling and Martha
I hear Ling was coming in later so I came back later to meet with her and with Martha Atienza who was making an excursion up from the island of Bantayan where she lives. Ling showed me a set of new books she has made – what a prolific artist she is! Martha and I talked about how stressed out we were about flying after three years of flight-free isolation – I am coming back to Europe she is flying to New York for an exhibition there. Installation day may not be the best day to see art, but the best day to meet old friends.
Next door in the passage way at Drawing Room Eddie Hara from Jogja was showing some of his envelope works. I have always liked these – witty like him, inventive, a bit sardonic at times. He sent me some especially for the book on Indonesian art that I wrote but that – alas – was never printed.
Eddie Hara
Jennifer K. Wofford
I couldn’t see anything Pinoy about the work of Jennifer Walford at Silverlens. (She is a US artist with Filipino ancestry.) They reminded me very much of the paintings of Jonathan Lasker; ironic, gracious and in some strange way monumental. She was in good company with drip paintings by MM Yu – paintings that are getting ever more complex though I always think of her as more a photographer than a painter – and the also witty collages of Dina Gadia.
MM Yu
Dina Gadia
Juan Alcazaren
Monumental, witty. Two words we could also apply to the work by Juan Alcazaren at the large space at Finale Gallery: a field of monuments – in miniature
I must admit I wished he had made this before we did the interview now on my website: I would have loved to ask him some questions. It was planned specifically for this space and fitted perfectly – those years of design work have made him astute architecturally.
Who could buy possibly buy this work? I asked. It needs so much space. No, he is a very pragmatic person I was told. You can choose a set of three sculptures and have them for 25,000 PHP (a bit less than $500). Several sets have sold already – understandably at that bargain price.
This work is like the works he made for the exhibition in Singapore: swans made for cut up monobloc chairs. Only this is more like a sculpture by Calder. It was fun to get down on ones knees at ground level and look at them – in the next case a David Smith-like sculpture. They would both look good in front of any New York skyscraper – a miniature one, of course.
I ended my day at Mo Space where I met with the director Mawen Ong. A full scale interview with her discussing the fifteen years she has been running Mo Space has just been uploaded to the website (arttalksea.com) Have a look! This is their anniversary show entitled This is not Mo Space – 15 works by 15 artists – all more or less site specific. All made especially for Mo. Most of them had been shown at Mo before – even in that first show many years ago.
Mawen Ong in This is not Mo Space
It was a very white show. However, although compendious it was a surprisingly coherent show – one about time, about memory. It was nice to have the old and the dead and the young put together. Works that looked aged or battered, works that had been remade and revivified (a flip book by Juan Alazaren from 2007 remade as an animation) and brand-new works by younger artists. There was a work that Gerry Tan and I had discussed in our interview at Arttalksea.com though this had a new twist in that the work – a movie of the gallery wall with painting projected on to the wall (the camera very, very slowly gets closer to the wall) – was originally made and shown before the gallery was made slightly smaller. The furniture shop that supports the gallery was desperate for some extra storage space.
Gerry Tan. This is not Mo Space
The work was conceptually orientated. Generally minimal. Alas, my photographs have not come out well. See more by going to the newly updated web site for Mo Space (mo-space.net) and find information about all the other exhibitions that have been held there.
As you know I really love postcards so of course I was especially taken with the work by MM Yu – a postcard stand filled with postcards of exhibitions being installed at Mo. The one at the top is of Roberto Chabet, that beneath of Poklong Anading.
Mawen pulled out another one of Chabet.
One work was only in the catalogue – by Nilo Ilarde. His work was remembering all the exhibitions at Mo Space. Yes, I know the antecedents (Seth Siegelaub and an exhibition that only existed as a catalogue) but I would have been happier to see those words written on the wall in some way so it was present with the other 14 works. Maybe I am getting old fashioned in my old age. The catalogue is a parallel space. It is not synonymous with the gallery space, anymore than a restaurant is synonymous with its printed menu.
Anyway, best wishes for October!
Tony
PS I am off to the UK, Italy and Germany in 5 day’s time so in my next letter I will report back on The Venice Biennale and Dokumenta.
PPS Future interviews for the website will include Louie Cordero, Martha Atienza and Dr. Karayom.
PPPS Mawen Ong as sent me a new addition to MM Yu’s postcard rack. I liked that T-shirt but I have no idea where it has gotten to.
