JOURNEY 50 & Art Expo Malaysia

JOURNEY 50 MIA Alumni Art Exhibition 2017

Malaysian Institute of Art is one of Malaysia oldest art institute, founded by Chung Chen Sun (Gratuates of Nanyang Academy of Fine Art) during 1967. To gather mentors and alumni of past and present, Soka Gakkai Malaysia (SGM) and MIA Alumni Association (MIAAA) organised this exhibition to celebrate MIA's 50th Anniversary.

I was invited by my teacher/boss, Teacher Honey, to the opening ceremony. Teacher Honey is my art teacher since I was 6 years old and now I'm working part time at her art studio. Both Teacher Honey and my university lecturer, Miss Helen, are proud alumni of MIA. Their artworks were exhibited at Wisma Kebudayaan SGM together with other artist and mentors.

I decided to ask my mum to accompany me to the event after my work at the art studio. To avoid traffic jam (Since the place was located in KL), we decided to take the LRT (Light Rail Transit) and MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) to Bukit Bintang and walked 15 minutes to the location. My bro decided to join in since we were going to hang around Pavilion till night. We started our journey at 2.15pm and reached the place around 4pm. The place was crowded! Artist, mentors and visitors were talking and discussing about the art. My mum and bro were like speed boat, browsing through the paintings and kept walking while I, stop and looked closely at interesting paintings which made me a slow-poke. I enjoy having my bro around, he made the atmosphere much more cheerful with his sarcastic jokes. I finally saw Teacher Honey, said hi to her and took a picture with her next to her painting. I spot Miss Helen's painting but didn't see her. I contacted her through Whatsapp and thought she didn't come for the event. At the end before leaving, Miss Helen replied and said she was there! I found her and took another picture next to her painting.

Here are some of the work I find it quite interesting:

We went back to Pavilion and had our tea break, my bf Des then arrived (he decided to join in for dinner). We walked around Pavilion and the street of Bukit Bintang after our dinner. Maybe because we were not really a shopaholic kind of person so we started to feel kinda bore by 8pm. Des drove us back home with our legs exhausted from all the walking that we had . . .

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Art Expo Malaysia Plus 2017

The next day was another Art Exhibition day . . . it was the last day of Malaysia's biggest Art Exhibition, The Art Expo Malaysia Plus 2017! Not only it was the biggest in Malaysia, but also one of the longest running international art fair in Southeast Asia. In this exhibition, you can able to see paintings, sculptures, photography and installation featured by established galleries and groups from 25 countries. This year was Art Expo's 11th edition and I have to say, it was better than last year's because there were more different things to see compared to last year's one. Last year 2016 was a little disappointing, I have seen some of the works during 2015's exhibition.

Previous 2 years I went there with my classmates like a kind of school trip. This time, I went with Des, another joker of the day . . . When driving there I was a little worried whether we could able to get parking because today was the last day of the exhibition show, but my bf went "Who would wake up early on a Sunday morning and come to visit exhibition". As we reached our destination, the car park was almost full and he was surprised that there would be lots of visitor. We reached MATRADE Exhibition and Convention Centre at 11am, just when the door was opened.

We went in after registration and the place was already filled with lots of visitor. Few paintings were already took down and wrapped, I guess those are the ones that were sold and ready for delivery. We started walking around the left section of the exhibition first. There were lots of Chinese ink painting or sure. The first painting that caught my attention was these. Ink painting on canvas by Simon Wee (Art Blue Studio), I admire the way he used brush to create strokes, forming a kind of spiritual shapes, simple yet the movement was strong when looking at it. I love the first one where a shape of a human could be form.

We continued and found another series of work related to music and orchestra. Anne Koh created a series of work. One of her work called the 1812 Overture (the one with different shades of gray), was a story about the Russia's stand against the undefeated army of Napeoleon Bonaparte. Instead of painting armys and war, she used orchestra to brilliantly captured thee desperation of a war in a cold Russian winter.

We moved to the Embassy booths, a row where one artist will be represent by their country. I got attracted by one who used Plaster of Paris for his work. I forgotten where was the artist from and didn;t know the artist name because there were no description about him at the booth. I love the texture that were created and I'm always curious on how does a Plaster of Paris works and feels like. His series of works normally depicts flowers that were simplified and has this dreamy kind of feel.

I saw paper cutting works that were using similar techniques that I used for my Diploma's Final project. The artist is from Taiwan and she was at the booth, cutting painted papers in to small circles for kids to stick on the back wall. Her works are really surreal and playful at the same time. I find it quite interesting with the way she hand her paintings, it kinda looks like Chinese painting or a batik clothe. Most of her humans were all covered with a black bucket, probably to depict the bad people in our society as they were baseball bat.

We stopped halfway for lunch. The food there was definitely expensive (literally over priced) but we had no other choice, Des was too hungry and couldn't wait any longer HAHA.

We continued on and I found a series of works that were painted by a Japanese, Kazuko Neishi. There were lots of Japanese works being displayed this year and this is the one I found most interesting, maybe because of the naive child-like painting which I like. The colors that were monochrome, although using happy colors like orange and yellow, but the outcome actually turned out soft and peaceful. I think the artist was trying to paint back his/her childhood memory, what kids usually do and spent lots of time with their family. I feel quite happy after looking at his/her works, those painting really reminds me of the kids that I taught.

Towards the end of the whole exhibition, I found the last series of work which I quite like. A Philippine artist, Migs Villanueva's Right Of Way series. Reminding her grandchildren, she painted kinds in their innocent and playful manner. Using simplest from to depict how simple and children's world is. The name "Right of Way" is to remind adults that they should let children to explore and have fun during their childhood in this world where innocence can be destroyed easily. Her watercolor color work seem to look a little darker than the ones using oil paint, but I tend to like her watercolor series more, probably because of the sketchy and simple visual qualities. Des thought these oil paintings would be perfect for a children or baby room . . .

We came to the end of the exhibition and here are some other works which I found it quite interesting but didn't have enough description:

This would probably be my last time visiting Malaysia Art Expo as I will be in Taiwan during the next one. I'm glad Des could able to accompany and not only that, he didn't show any bore expression during the whole exhibition, letting me taking my own sweet time looking at those paintings. We walked back to our car with out exhausted legs and didn't know his next challenge had began which is . . . the traffic jam at the exit of the MECC . . .

#ArtExhibition #FineArt #Art #Malaysia