Dear friends and colleagues
Last Friday I went to Mo Space in Manila. I wanted to see the show by Nilo Ilarde and, of course, chat to my friend Mawen Ong who runs the space.
Ten or fifteen years ago there were quite a few alternative spaces in Manila. The market was very conservative and the commercial galleries were unadventurous. So, the only way young artists could get to show was to open their own spaces. But in recent years the market has got larger and more ready to show experimental work. As a result most of the “action” now is in the commercial galleries and most of the alternative spaces have disappeared – though a couple of new ones have opened recently.
Mo Space was opened in 2007 by Mawen who is herself an artist (having studied at UP with Roberto Chabet). Located in a smart part of town on the second floor of an up-market furniture shop which she herself runs. (It’s the place in Manila where you can go to buy Tom Dixon stuff.)
Early last year I curated a show there entitled “Do you believe in angels?” which mixed artists from Singapore, Indonesia and the UK with artists from the Philippines. It was a good experience – maybe I’ll tell you about it another time.
Installation shots of Do you believe in angels? 2014
Nilo, who is in his mid-fifties now, was a student of Chabet too. Chabet and his ex-students, including Ringo Bunoan who wrote the blurb for this show, have been the main conduit for information and ideas about conceptual art in the Philippines. It is no surprise therefore to see that his show looks a bit like a Lawrence Weiner installation with the words cut out of the plaster, exposing the gyproc underneath. There is a different humour to it however that one might identify as typically Filipino – a very gentle humour.
Nilo Ilarde at Mo Soace, 2015
Blurb by Ringo Bunoan for Nilo Ilarde show
For someone like myself it is always interesting to see the difference between the art scenes in Indonesia and the Philippines. One obvious difference is the scarcity of female artists in Indonesia and the prevalence of them in the Philippines. Another key difference is that Conceptual art never really happened in Indonesia – or certainly in this “hardcore” linguistic mode. You will never see a show like this in Jogja and I suspect very rarely in Bandung. The “death of painting” never happened there!
Clearly, very few people in Indonesia during the Seventies knew what was happening elsewhere, whereas in the Philippines, because the middle classes speak English and because several artists, especially Chabet, spent time in the USA there was a much better sense of what was going on.
Chabet, and we will talk about him more on another occasion, was a committed and charismatic teacher. Moreover, in a culture where direct criticism is rarely heard, he was outspoken in his views and reactions. As a result he was adored by some, but others loathed him. His principal bete noire was social realist painting, a strong tendency in the Philippines, not painting per se – in fact, much of his teaching was about ways to approach painting – systems, grids and collage. Much of the dynamic in Filipino art is still that tension between social realist or socially engaged art and both conceptualism and a range of painters and installation artists profoundly influenced by a conceptual training.
It is worth mentioning in this context that as well as making linguistic or self-referential installations like this Nilo also makes small and beautifully considered collages.
After looking at the show together Mawen and I sat in her office and chatted. She ordered me a turkey sandwich – people in Philippines are always worried you may be hungry. As my taxi had taken over two hours to get me there the sandwich was very welcome.
We talked of how she would like to produce a book to document the hundred or so shows Mo Space has hosted. It has a very good web site (http://mo-space.net) so you can see images and documentation for every show there. What could a book offer instead? A more informal history, I suggested, of running the gallery and the changes, social and aesthetic, it has seen. It could be a “user-friendly” way to show what has been going on here. I talked of how much one learned from the book produced about Antwerp’s Wide White Space 1966-1976.
We talked also of the project she, with Nilo and others has worked on for five years, a book on Chabet (who died in 2013) which will be launched this Friday.
There is no disputing that Chabet was a very influential figure in Philippines art both as a teacher and as a curator. How good an artist was he though? I’m travelling through Singapore, Taipei and Jogja the next month but when I get back to Manila I’ll get a copy of the book and let you know what I think.
Have a good week!
Tony