Dear friends and colleagues

I spent much of last Tuesday with Sunaryo in Wot Batu.

So, you may ask, who is Sunaryo and what is Wot Batu?

Sunrayo who has now turned 71 is a sculptor trained at ITB – the art school first set up by the Dutch in Bandung and which originally had a...

Dear friends and colleagues

What is this image “shape shifting cancelled”? Is it some post-conceptual work? An artist working with photographs? Or someone working in a way influenced by John Baldessari perhaps? No, it is an image from the Economist I bought in KL airport on the way back from Malaysia late last Tuesday. As Malaysia has become more hard line in its imposition of...

Dear friends and colleagues

In 1963 the poet W.H.Auden wrote a preface for a book of English translations of Hungarian poems. ‘I have had to listen in my life to many discussions of the role of the artist in society and very boring and fruitless they all were. Every writer has, of course, certain social and political duties and responsibilities as a citizen like other citizens: what these...

Dear friends and colleagues

This was the third time I have been to Jai’s studio: I am curating a show of his opening 20th March so it is getting near the deadline!

I always enjoy going to his studio. It is like the traditional sort of painter’s studio you used to see more often – i.e. a bit messy. Maybe I like this because I’m...

Dear friends and colleagues

I have to admit I remain somewhat bemused.

Talking to artist friends in the Philippines recently they all remarked how rarely curators and critics make studio visits to them.

This is not the first time I have heard this complaint. When I first came to...

Dear friends and colleagues

The Art Fair Philippines has only been running since 2013. Dissatisfied with other fairs in the country, three young collectors (Trickie Lopa, Dindin Araneta and Lisa Periquet) set out to make something that was both more selective and much cooler. The first thing you would notice when entering their fair is that it is in a multi-story car park, the second that on...

Dear friends and colleagues

As I said last Tuesday, I want to talk about three artist’s projects, including one I curated and one I am appearing in.

Firstly, two suggestions or observations.

One, that in an area with very little state support for art and where collectors are generally...

Dear friends and colleagues

My friends in Indonesia and the Philippines tend to be dismissive of Singaporean artists, believing them to lack passion and to be unduly molly coddled with residencies and Arts Council grants. That isn’t fair: there are several interesting and serious artists in Singapore. Singapore is a very strange place, and as a supposed model of the technocratic future...

“You’re going to Bali?”

“Yes.”

‘Weren’t you there last year too?

“Yes, twice.”

“You lucky bastard. I’d love a holiday in the sun like that.”

Dear friends...

“…after the pope visit.’

Dear friends and colleagues

Once when I worked in Sotheby’s I asked one of my colleagues there what his favourite city in the world was. He was a well-travelled man with a real love of art and I expected him to say, “Venice,” or “Paris,” or “Salzburg.”...