Gallery Visit With Little Monsters & Angels
- Valerie Lee Tong
- Dec 8, 2017
- 4 min read
My favorite month of Christmas has come, it's December already! There's no better way to start the month with a good old art exhibition visit . . . but this time . . . it's with a group of students! Teacher Honey decided to bring our students for a gallery visit, for them understand and to plant a seed of creativity in their mind, to let them know "Art" can be express in many ways . . .
Reflection From My Heart
A Solo Exhibition of Cheung Pooi Yip
Waiting for the school van to pick us up, the kids were all excited to go for this trip, some of them holding their hands, some jumping around and some just standing around smiling . . . and one of them is me I guess. After loading all the students, parents, needed material and food to the van, we begin our 20 minutes drive to Wisma Kebudayaan SGM (SGM Grand Culture Center). This is a few stories building where different exhibitions will go on in different floors. I was very pleasing to see such amazing exhibition that were organized for the "Journey 50", the way they exhibit the paintings, the setting of the place and the book that they published were all wonderfully done. It's really a nice space to do art exhibition.
**For more information about SGM,
please do click the image for their webpage.
After reaching our destination, we waited for another group of students to join us for the "Awakening of Love" exhibition. We noticed there was another exhibition going on at the ground floor. It was a solo exhibition by one of Malaysia's well known Penang Chinese self-taught artist, Cheung Pooi Yip. In his early times he was a frame maker and practice his art at the same time to support his living and art painting. With his job as a frame maker, he was able to meet many artist. Able to share and learn new experience from them, he soon emerged in local art scenes. Most of his works used oil and acrylic medium. From Nanyang style painting he slowly moved towards landscape that were nearly in abstract forms!
I really love his later works, the way he simplify the landscape., using layers of acrylic to create dreamy colors as the base, on top of that were forceful stroke of oil paint added, creating the feel of depth and ideal forms for viewer to figure out how the landscape look like.
Mr Martin and Teacher Honey started to explain what is abstract painting and what's the meaning of Nanyang Style. Students were really paying attention to all the explanation and I have to say, they are all fast learners indeed. Of course they came looking for me to ask some more questions of the artworks and I happily enjoy telling them how brilliant this artist is. I'm also glad that Mr. Martin shared his thoughts about Cheung Pooi Yip with me as this will really helped me if I wanted to focus my career path in art critics.
Awakening Of Love
The Female Figures As Subjects In Art
We continued moving on to the 7th floor where the main event was held. With everyone gathered, we started a small briefing for the students and parents. There were 2 speakers of the day, one in English explanation and another one a Chinese explanation for the parents. The exhibition was about artist who used female subjects as an expression for love. The whole exhibition was split into 4 categories, 1) Motherly love, 2) Myth and Legends, 3) Individual Uniqueness and 4) Devotion of Women.
We begin with Myth and Legends on that day, where the speakers told stories of the sculptures that were displayed. There were sculptures of Goddesses of Venus by Salvador Dali and Arman and Chinese myths sculptures and Chinese scrolls from China. Moving to the Motherly Love with Paintings and sculptures too, with one of the sculpture "Motherly Love" by Zhu Qingtang that were used as the main cover and picture of the books and banner. Devotion of Women consist mostly paintings and the Individual Uniqueness has sculptures and paintings. All the works were related to women and their relationship with love. Stories of how a mother would love their children, how a Princess get married to bring peace and love for both nations and how the Goddesses save the world because they love the people of the world.
We had our lunch after we had finished the story telling section and continued on with worksheet activities! I'm so proud of each and every participant of this event because not only they were paying attention and not running around during the whole storytelling section, but they also got so involved in searching answer of the worksheet that were given to them! That's why I've always have this love hate relationship with these little monsters and angels.
It was definitely a successful event, I'm so glad that all the students stayed open-minded and asked question when they were curious about how and why. I think this is really a great activity to let students know that art can come in many forms. It is also a great way to let parents know that art doesn't mean that children has to learn how to draw or paint perfectly. Art is a way for artist to express their idea and thoughts, through art they are able to share their stories and creativity. Creativity is what important in every child's mind, that is where their imagination and world of fun going on. I hope that for the next trip there are more children and parents participate, to interact and absorb new knowledge together.
I bought a book about the "Awakening of Love" exhibition as it was well designed, affordable, very informative and honestly speaking, it's a really cute book! The next day was as usual, I was desperately and wanting to look at the book that Mr Martin bought from SGM about Cheung Pooi Yip! It was definitely a good read indeed . . . another great way to spend my Monday morning with new discovery...
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