Art Monthly Australia published my review of the art fair ART/JOG12 with the title “Montmartre of the east” in the Summer Issue 2012/2013.
Read MoreTag "jogjakarta"
I just moved to Melbourne and, of course, before even having a place to call home, I visited the National Gallery of Victoria.
I was particularly keen to see the exhibition “Rally: Contemporary Indonesian Art”, featuring Jompet Kuswidananto and Eko Nugroho.
Actually, the choice of just two artists to represent Indonesian art is interesting.
I’ve found the show very useful for my researches, as the Australian perception of what contemporary art in Indonesia is.
Angki Purbandono in one of the artists from Indonesia that take the photography further and stimulate the discussion around it.
He was one of the founder of MES56 and a very appreciate international artist.
Before meeting him I thought his photography was all about aestetic
values. I found out that is not completely true.
Actually, to make people look at something from everyday life in a
different way is already a conceptual act.
Defamiliarisation of common objects, weird associations of items,
giantisation of small findings. Through Angki’s swiftian attitude one can
discover that the Beauty and the Strange are not so far from what we
experience in our daily life.
I’ve seen Angki’s scanner. It’s a normal scanner, not pretentious at all.
I asked Angki when and why he started using a scanner instead of a
camera:
Most of Agung Kurniawan’s artworks are based on memory. In his famous charcoal work “Very Very Happy Victims” , part of Singapore Art Museum’s collection, he uses a raw irony to depict the situation under Suharto regime, from ’67 to ’98.
He explained me the genesis of this work during my visit to Kedai Kebun Forum:
“I made Very Very Happy Victims in 1995. I was still a young an angry artist. It was a portrait of myself and the society at that time because at that time Indonesia economy was one of the best in Asia. At the same time we lived in a kind of fascist regime. Everything was controlled by the government. Indonesia was the copycat of Orwell’s book 1984.
I asked my friends if they feel ok and they reply “Yes, I feel happy, I can eat at McDonalds, school is not expensive, I can have very cheap prize” . So I portrait my generation that felt very happy even though was oppressed by the government. This is the reason why I called it “Very Very happy Victims”. We were happy because we didn’t realize we were victims. If we realize it we can fight, that’s the idea. ”
More about Agung activities on: kedaikebun.com
Read More
Looking at the sheets of my Indonesian reportage stained with Java tea I really start missing Yogyakarta.
In these days I’m in my hometown Sorrento surrounded by mandarini’s smell, writing the first draft of my book about Contemporary Art in Indonesia.
I’m trying to recollect the memories of these days in Yogya, from the amazing studio of Heri Dono to the taste of the Pisang Goreng, the fried banana with melted javanese sugar and chocolate.
We don’t have original Java tea here in Sorrento; I’ve to content myself with the Lipton version.
Whatever, tea is tea. As Proust teaches: “As long as you have a madeleine, a pancake or a fried banana to be dipped in tea, you could recollect memories”, or something like it.
I feel like adding to Proust’s statement that all the contemporary art starts from a substantial breakfast. Definitively I’m on the good track.
Actually, can I have extra chocolate on my Pisang Goreng?
