Dear friends and colleagues

I have returned to that pile of books I spoke of two weeks ago and have been reading Art after War 1948-1969 by Patrick Flores. It is part of a series of five books that he is writing collectively entitled Philippine Artscape dealing with art in the Philippines from 1928 to the present.

In the publicity for the...

Dear friends and colleagues

Apparently, I come from a cool country.

Welcome to the New Year and many thanks to those readers in other parts of the world who have sent me images of triangles or cones masquerading as Christmas Trees. Obviously, it is a trend one can see all around the world. Even in countries where real trees are available...

Dear friends and colleagues

I really like Christmas. Whenever I think of Christmas, I think of my Christmases back home in the West Country with my parents and brothers: midnight communion, walking home feeling the frosty air, a warming drink round the log fire, my children leaving messages for Father Christmas, waking up hoping for snow, roast turkey, crackers, stupid paper hats, opening...

Dear Friends and colleagues

At the start of the day I either read the Guardian News or BBC news on the internet – or sometimes both. Last Thursday I was reading a very interesting BBC report (http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/dec/02/louvre-abu-dhabi-guggenheim-art) about the growth of art museums in...

Who lives in my patch? What sort of people live in Maritime South-East Asia? (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore).

As I understand it, and it is very complex and many details are in dispute, there is a vestigial negrito population – small, dark skinned people that arrived maybe fifty thousand years ago and are called orang asli (original people) in Malaysia, Igorot in the...

Dear friends and colleagues

As I related last week, I went to the Thirteenth Jogja Biennale, curated by Rain Rosidi and Wok the Rok, held in the Jogja National Museum – which is the building where the art school (ISI) used to be. The show was entitled Hacking Conflicts. I presume the word “Hacking” refers to breaking into computer systems not to having a bad cough: the catalogue...

TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 44

24th November 2015

Dear friends and colleagues

I was in Jogja (Jogjakarta or Yogyakarta) last weekend to see some artists and go to the Jogja Biennale.

Before I went to the...

The new National Gallery in Singapore opens this week and last Friday I attended a pre-opening opening. I want to talk about that, but first I want to say something about what my old friend Brian Allen – who used to run the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art in London – has been saying. (see ...

Dear friends and colleagues

I have just got back from Taipei in Taiwan. We normally think of it as Chinese – the PRC certainly does! – but in a way it is also South-East Asian.

It is the “urheimat” from whence came all the Austronesian people (called...

Dear friends and colleagues

Do you hedge your bets? I often do.

I was reminded of this the other day when I left the HDB in Hougang where I stay when in Singapore, to go to work in the National Library. There was a banging and a crashing of drums and gongs. I looked around and there was a void deck funeral going on. That familiar...