Every time I attend  a show by our local artists, I never fail to be amazed by the talents and the passion of these people. These are people who care and embrace their talk by literally letting their works speak for themselves. It was  a Light Show shown  in the dark and the only  glare would be the brilliance of the works here and I would go on and on to expound their intents and further words about their talents. But that is a given already.

The fascinating thing for me is the merger of their talents with their practical day to day lives and hence the production of all the works that was shown. This show is on until the 3rd of May 2009 at the The Annexe Gallery.The premise of this show is to light the path (couldn’t resist this pun ) for viewers on the importance of recycling,   environmental consciousness , how and to what extend we use and discard mundane day to day things that we take very much for granted . It is also ingenuous in the usage of some of these subject matters or objects because it definitely enlightens one to all sorts of possibilities , if one cares to think about it.

Each artist showed their own fascination and interpretation of light .

Bernard Chauly (film director and TV series creator, think Gol dan Gincu and coming soon, Pisau Cukur 2009 in cinemas)

His Muzium Lampu a series of light bulb starting with  a  giant dome shaped bulb that was being lit up with palm oil and looks like a  giant translucent spaceship that pulsates with light at regular intervals.  After all his Muzium Lampu theme is a “…collection of light objects from a possible future”.

Next fairy light that saved from a  tree at Dataran Merdeka with a bunch of kelapa sawit and energy source.

Carolyn Lau, landscape  architect and sometime set designer, a mother and home keeper decided to use “daily discards from my kitchen-centre of nurturing and nourishment, source of the most household waste” in her Nourishment 2009.

So she created a  giant hanging light made from milk cartons with clever sculpting ,  floor lights from “Vitagen” bottles and tin cans from cat food. Not to mention the now quintessential product in most households , 3 in one aluminium foils which fashioned into some sort of wall hanging robe.

Next were the  “…assortment of lampshades which she mounted on empty whisky bottles  which were found beside a deserted guard house” , (thanks for that clarification, for  a minute there I thought someone was big teetotaller). The whisky bottles were “… an apt base to imply the inebriation of trying to forget to remember and to remember to forget.”

Her ideal is that people are able to appreciate the frugality of living and use creativity and dexterity of thought when looking at these mundane household discards.

Fabian Tan in his Gu-Light 2009 series , yet again salvages used wood boards from wooden crates and other junk material , but this time with child like delight he mounts his favorite childhood game, gulis or marbles on them . His mondrian like wall piece  and his wall hangings used the interplay of lights against the marbles inner beauty to create nostalgia.  His Eelctrolyte light pieces from old computer parts with coils of glow in the dark wires were  beautiful in an eerie sort of way. They seem like  lights reaching out to you and speaking a silent plea but of what….

Farah Azizan , landscape architect and architect by training; she apparently made her first statement  by making a chair from  yellow pages and recordings of conversations with their more sinister advertisers. Her Drumlight series included a tall standing light, floor mounted lights  and suspended lights all mounted into oil drums . The beauty of these lights were, they were all illuminated through used glass bottles from a now bygone  derelict soft drink factory. The bottles were a collection of 1960s  soda pop brands like Peacock  Cola , Sinalco and RC Cola, yes definitely a part of history,  but made into fashionable and and utilitarian furniture. The  soft drink factory has since been cleared out and will be replaced by another  “consumerist monument” as Azizan puts it. But she has salvaged a moment in history in her drum series and all that it stood for in the movement towards modernization.

The couches (Ah Fook and Ah Fatt ) named after their craftsmen were cut  from oil drums and the inter-connecting table and suspended lamp set with pulley effect that enables the table and lamp to be raised or lowered simultaneously in opposite direction is gorgeous with excellent workmanship and thoughtfulness, I wish for one.

Next came Jazmi Izwan Jamal , who is an interactive  designer and sound  artist. Graduated from Multimedia University , his main interest is in interactive  installations , music technology and generative art.  What he did for this Kunang Kunang 2009 series is to highlight the dying art of shadow puppets using technology. The projection surface is made from drinking straws and the interactive element is the movement of the human body. Basically the faster or the more movement one makes in front of it , the more lights will flow down the screen.

Softscape 2009 is basically lots of discarded  materials such as plastic bags and office paper. Cast as  a medium scale  interactive installation projection on  a soft surface, movements detected by sensors and a camera will trigger rhythmic sounds and visual patterns projected on  the soft surface. The soft garden at first glance looked  a bit like a garbage dump but it lights up when one jumps on each one.  The objective is create an indoor interactive playground for the public. It is meant to be the imaginative “soft garden” nurturing culture and innovation.

“City of Lights” in seascape 2009, Lisa Foo once again marvels with her sea creatures from the dark abyss. Fashioning a string of mini plastic stingrays that seem to be floating in space or water and the giant coiled up sea creature from plastic bottles (PET) bottles  , a continuation from her LFSS (re-think, reduce, , reuse project) . These clear transparent creatures showed the strength of the sea in a soft ethereal way, actually kind of like Lisa in a way.

Mah Su Sim, the co collaborator with Lisa Foo in their LFSS project decided to design based on the inspiration  from the natural environment , tapping on her resource as a landscape designer. She decided on luminosity in the form of cascading ceiling light called asper and rossette pendulum to speak of an alternative green environment. She grew formed a garden with her own hands by manually crafting  the materials using domestic tools and stationery as she aspires to  generate worth and ethereal charm out of mundane plastic bottles.

Last but not least , and one that speaks to me loudly are the Headlights 2009 by Richard Lau(currently lecturer at ASWARA in Film Production). He decided to scavenge and reuse the most common and aethestically plain plastic bags (PPE, PEP and what have you) . His reason was simple enough, he wanted to look at mundane objects from a different perspective. He refused to allow a plastic  bag be just a plastic bag.

So he ironed them together to see  their maximum potential. Then he decided that putting them on a ball would be just to flat and he made used of a wooden mould from a head form he had been using  to be the base. The end result is a spectacular collection of heads of fused plastic bags with myriad of colours and  designs . The message of  these colorful ” heads  talking” together was deliberately left open  to anyone’s interpretation. My take is each head just screams silently the convoluted  and tortuous thoughts of the human mind and complexity of life, the torment and the passage of life. They come  alive and never more so then when lit.

MORE PICTURES:
More of Fabian Tan’s Gu-light series

More of Su Sim’s artworks:

More of Lisa’s sea scupltures”

Close up of Carolyn’s works:

More of Farah’ works:

This show was produced by Carolyn lau, Farah Azizan and Lisa Foo, will be on at the The Annexe Gallery until 3rd of May, 2009. Catch it and see the light! Sorry could not resist that one….

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