Tuesday in the Tropics 164

2nd April 2022

Playa La Caleta in Bataan
Playa La Caleta in Bataan

Dear friends and colleagues

It has been just over two years since I sent you a Tuesday in the Tropics and the time has come to restart.

In the last two years I have rarely strayed from my home beneath Mount Maculot. I have not been on a single airplane flight and very rarely been to a gallery in Manila, or anywhere else. After 43 years mainly committed to contemporary art, I needed a break. I have read and read, but mainly art history and history. I have become a glutton for biographies. Now to return to what is happening now.

However, I can’t manage a letter every week any more, even though I plan to get to the galleries more often and visit studios once again. I will not be flying as much as I once did. Before the pandemic I was doing up to 50 flights a year which took its toll – on me and the climate! I will aim to do one on the first Tuesday of each month.

Where to begin?

Where better than the beach?

Playa La Caleta in Bataan, a secluded cove that you reach by a cart-track over the mountains. Clean yellow sand and calm water – so calm the sea water was clearer than I ever saw through before. So many types of fish!

aolo Icasas, Gregory Halili, Geraldine Javier (Giving vote for Leni Robredo sign) Marionne Contreras, Ling Quisumbing (Christina Ramillo), Christina Dy, Yasmin Sison, Marino Ching, Myself, Lena Cobangbang at Playa la Caleta, Bataan
Paolo Icasas, Gregory Halili, Geraldine Javier (Giving vote for Leni Robredo sign) Marionne Contreras, Ling Quisumbing (Christina Ramillo), Christina Dy, Yasmin Sison, Marino Ching, Myself, Lena Cobangbang at Playa la Caleta, Bataan

A beach holiday with nine artist friends of mine. The first meeting like this for two years. Swimming, talking, exploring, eating, drinking.

Sculpture by Dex Fernandez

The little island is called Oyster Island – you can walk across at low tide – but there are no oysters there anymore. “Is there a coral reef?” the divers among you may ask enthusiastically. Alas, no, the reef was 90% destroyed by fishermen with dynamite. Migs the owner of the cove, in an attempt to restore the reef, is commissioning artists to make sculptures that can be placed on the remains of the reef and that coral can grow on. Here is such a sculpture waiting to be placed in the sea. It is by Dex Fernandez who we met in Tuesday in the Tropics number 4. I asked Migs how long before the sculpture is covered with coral. Fifty years he reckoned. Can I suggest you make a date for 2072 to go to see it and others in the underwater sculpture garden?

Art Fair Philippines (AFP) has long been a key date in the Filipino art year. Last year it didn’t happen. This year it sort of happened, but spread out across five commercial galleries in Manila. I am sorry but this didn’t really work as an art fair. It just looked like gallery stock shows. An art fair like a party needs people to all come to the same place at the same time – ask Boris Johnson, he knows how a party works.

Silverlens gallery

On the way back from the beach we went to the section of AFP at Silverlens gallery. Geraldine wanted to check out her own painting Pink Jarman which was included. It is discussed in length in an interview (“Geraldine Javier Paints a Painting 2021-2022”) in arttalksea.com. So, please go there for more info!

Geraldine Javier, Pink Jarman, 2017-2021, fabric, thread, acrylic, powdered pigments, encaustic on canvas, 213.4 x 165.1 cm
Geraldine Javier, Pink Jarman, 2017-2021, fabric, thread, acrylic, powdered pigments, encaustic on canvas, 213.4 x 165.1 cm

It was nice to see how well the detail showed up her – for example the plants below Jarman’s chair. The gallery lights are stronger than those in the studio!

Geraldine Javier, Pink Jarman, 2017-2021, fabric, thread, acrylic, powdered pigments, encaustic on canvas, 213.4 x 165.1 cm

Many good works by good artists were shown. If one other thing stood out it was a two-metre-high sculpture by Gregory Halili. Made with a heterogeneity of objects it still made a powerful and dynamic image. One so rarely sees good sculptures here that one was especially pleased to see it.

Gregory Halili, Comet III, 2021, mixed media (stone, steel, hardwood, crystal, brass, quartz, shells, aluminum, plaster, soapstone, plastic, bone, sponge, baroque pearl, fossil, oil paint, epoxy, silver and glass), 200.03h x 142.24w x 43.18d cm
Gregory Halili, Comet III, 2021, mixed media (stone, steel, hardwood, crystal, brass, quartz, shells, aluminum, plaster, soapstone, plastic, bone, sponge, baroque pearl, fossil, oil paint, epoxy, silver and glass), 200.03h x 142.24w x 43.18d cm
Gregory Halili, Comet III, 2021, mixed media (stone, steel, hardwood, crystal, brass, quartz, shells, aluminum, plaster, soapstone, plastic, bone, sponge, baroque pearl, fossil, oil paint, epoxy, silver and glass), 200.03h x 142.24w x 43.18d cm

And then on to see Paolo Icasas’s one man show at Art Informal. We can argue about it, but most contemporary art looks better if each artist has the whole gallery or at least a room of their own. You can enter their world, their vision, their whatever…

 Paolo Icasas, The Boatman, 2021, oil on canvas, 243 x 572 cm.
Paolo Icasas, The Boatman, 2021, oil on canvas, 243 x 572 cm.

When first I saw Paolo’s paintings six years ago they were crepuscular landscapes, often of building sites. He had inherited his father’s construction company and often thought, he told me, of his workmen going home at dusk, tired after a day’s work. His paintings have got a lot bigger, bolder and on the surface more abstract. My initial thoughts were Turner’s storm-scapes or the Norwegian Peder Balke’s storm scapes, or Fifties abstract paintings but hyperactive. Then these paintings started to remind me more of Anselm Kiefer in his pomp. They have a similar density. They never lose that landscape reference, there is always a horizon line. It will be interesting to see how this will develop. There is a lot of passion here – see the slash and cut in a detail of the Architect Unknown – but also a control, a sense of structure that makes them satisfying to look at.

Paolo Icasas, Architect Unknown, 2021, oil on canvas, 142 x 178cm.
Paolo Icasas, Architect Unknown, 2021, oil on canvas, 142 x 178cm.
Paolo Icasas, Architect Unknown, 2021, oil on canvas, 142 x 178cm.

But the main thing I have to tell you today is that my website is finally up – to repeat it is arttalksea.com. Apart from the interview with Geraldine there are interviews with Juan Alcazaren, Leslie de Chavez, Elaine Roberto Navas, Jill Paz, Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, Gerry Tan and myself. And in the archive the first forty Tuesday in the Tropics. More to follow.

Welcome back and check it out

Tony

  Tony Godfrey serving Bellinis on the beach
Tony Godfrey serving Bellinis on the beach (Photo Gregory Halili)