Dear friends and colleagues
I had hoped to send a report of a reunion meeting of the SBW (Surrounded By Water) group. But with the pressure of Christmas and the New Year that has been postponed. Therefore, the most notable things I have looked at this last week are the mountain opposite where I am staying in the Philippines and my laptop as I try and write. I attach a snap of the mountain but not of my laptop – that would be too boring!
Many thanks to all of those who emailed me back after the first of these missives. Please email me if there is any question you want me to answer. And please also give me the email address of anyone else who might find this weekly letter of some interest.
I have been asked why I came to Asia in the first place and why I decided to stay. For the record, I was asked in 2008 by Eugene Tan (now director of the National Art Gallery in Singapore) to help teach on an MA programme In Contemporary Art run by Sotheby’s Institute in Singapore based on the programme that I and Anna Moszynska had initiated in London in the early Nineties. Initially I did a couple of two-week stints but when Eugene left for another job in Hong Kong, I was asked to run the second semester. I was enjoying myself and, to be honest, felt stale in London so I agreed. It was in that second semester that I took the students to Indonesia where the critic Enin Suprianto led us around artist’s studios.
Erin and Alfi
Painting by Alfi in background
One of the artists we met was Jumaldi Alfi, at a space he shared with other members of the Jendela group. (Jendela means “Window” in Bahasa. The group began in 1997 and now comprises five artists all from Sumatra and sharing the same local language – Minang.) Seeing works by Handiwirman, Alfi and Yunizar and hearing Alfi and Enin talk made me realise that though before this I had only ever heard of two Indonesian artists (Heri Dono and Jim Supangkat) there were many interesting artists here. I wanted to learn more about this world and I wanted to do something to make them better known. It seems wrong in a global world that “foreign” artists still need to come and spend time in London or New York to be recognised.
Works by Yusra Martunus, Handiwirman Saputra, Yunizar. 2009
I was also asked, what are the specific issues in South-East Asia? I would need a book to answer that properly! But briefly, firstly, the lack of opportunities in both the region and outside. There are very few museums or kunsthallen here. With the notable exception of Singapore there is almost no state support for art. Very few artists get to show in the West and when they do it is normally under the moniker “Indonesian Art,” or “Art from the Philippines”. These too easily of course become ghettoes where artists are pigeonholed as types not individuals. (Apologies for the mixed metaphors.)
Secondly, the lack of a good critical press here has been a big issue too. There is no significant art magazine in the region. The audience is neither big enough nor rich enough to sustain serious book publishing. Exhibition catalogues are useful but their texts inevitably tend to be over laudatory. Groups such as Jendela and SBW certainly helped create some critical discourse. And here, Jumaldi Alfi has in recent years been exemplary in using the money has made from his art to set up an Office for Contemporary Artists organising debates and residencies. Like other artists he has never denied his background but has sought to also be understood at an international level: hence the use in his art of English rather than Bahasa. Hence his reference in recent work to both Kippenberger and the Mooi Indies painter Basuki Abdullah. (Mooi Indies – Beautiful East Indies – is the term used to describe cheerful and bland landscapes made for Dutch landowners and tourists in the Colonial period.)
Jumaldi Alfi 2010
Like any serious artist everywhere he grapples with both local and with international issues. And, of course, local issues tend to find equivalents elsewhere. For example, artists from other colonised countries will recognise the bland and comfortable exotic images made of them and their world by their colonisers.
Jumaldi Aldi. Melting Memories Rereading Landscape, Mooi Indies 06, 2014
Alfi Studio c2010
Next week to Malaysia!
Wishing you all a very good new year: may all your projects come to fruition.
Tony