We’re pleased to announce that the report on Meja Bulat: Sidang Suara Seni is up online.
The report is based on a roundtable we co-organised with CENDANA last November, which was streamed on FB Live and attended by over 60 participants from across Malaysia.
It was a great opportunity for taking stock, addressing questions of “what artists want”, the state of support systems for art in Malaysia, not just in KL, and what may be envisioned for our visual arts landscape in the future. With negative and positive points to take away, we hope the report will be useful to policy-makers, the visual arts community at large and anyone interested in the health and future of our cultural infrastructure.
Thank you to CENDANA for initiating this project and inviting us to be involved. We plan to take Meja Bulat forward as an independent regular platform for discussion, and look forward to broader collaborations and conversations soon!
Read the report, scrutinise the transcript, watch the footage.
Narratives in Malaysian Art Volume 4: Perspectives/Naratif Seni Rupa Malaysia Jilid 4: Perspektif, will be launched this September. This fourth and final volume looks at how we look at Malaysian art, and the forces and motivations that have shaped our understanding of its role and development. More on the volume when we get to the launch date.
We kicked off the NMA project 10 years ago, as an effort to bring together different voices and broad and diverse knowledge on art practices, history and infrastructure in Malaysia, and to help stimulate further research and discourse. We’re thrilled (and relieved!) to be finalizing the series, and will be celebrating its completion with a limited edition box set (100 in English, 100 in BM). We’re pre-selling the boxset for RM 180 to help fund the production costs for NMA4 – please do contact us if you’re interested in putting in an order.
The NMA project is really a gotong royong effort, and wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of its sponsors and supporters, and enthusiasm of the editorial team and many contributors. Thanks to everyone involved for their continued patience and support.
Do visit the project website, though it’s currently being updated, and visit Gerak Budaya, our official distributor, for more info on where to buy the books.
RogueArt Other News 2018/2019
We’re honoured to have played a small part in the exhibition Chang Yoong Chia: Second Life, which ran from 26 November 2018 to 24 February this year at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur. Beverly was part of the curatorial team with Tan Hui Koon and Teoh Ming Wah and RogueArt helped a little with planning and outreach. It was such a wonderful show to work on, with long-time friends and colleagues, and to get to know better and be inspired all over again by Yoong Chia’s magical work. We were really heartened by the overwhelming and positive response from visitors. For those who missed the show or would like to revisit it, the artist has uploaded exhibition views and texts on his website.
Beverly has also been busy on other books, co-editing with Yasuko Furuichi the third and fourth volumes of Japan Foundation Asia Center’s Art Studies Series, Condition Report: Shifting Perspectives in Asia, and Imagining New Ecologies, both focusing on the work and ideas of an emerging generation of curators in Southeast Asia and Japan. It’s been an honour and an education working with the JFAC, the contributors, co-editors and forum moderators, and of course the legendary Furuichi-san.
Rachel represented RogueArt at a Korean Contemporary Art Symposium, Korea Research Fellow 2018, last September. Hosted by Korean Culture Information Service and directed by Daehyung Lee, the symposium focused on Art and Technology and Contemporary Art and Its Variables. Rachel spoke on Narratives in Malaysian Art: A Knowledge Project. The symposium document is due to be released later in the year.
RogueArt are currently working on the third volume in the Helutrans Collectors Series, to be launched in Singapore this November. (We obviously like series, for their sense of continuity!). Where the first volume we worked on, Southeast Asia/Contemporary, explored the idea of regionalism through four private collections, this new volume looks more intimately at a single private collector’s process and engagement with contemporary art.
In the area of Collections, we have been focusing these past two years on helping with the conservation and management of Sime Darby’s collection of mostly Malaysian modern art, including its key collection of works by Ibrahim Hussein.
Find out more about our past and present projects at www.rogueart.asia, follow us on Instagram, Facebook.