So I am back in Georgetown Festival. Now hopefully I can make a trip down in Singapore for the Biennial Festival as I did two years ago.

This year festival was better than last year. It had a lot of variety, very artsy and for those who are not too artsy, there are was an interesting opening event which I will blogged about it at the end.

Here are the few of the things that I went for:

Memories of Gold
Tiao Nithakhong Somsanith had two galleries, one for his more traditional work and the other is for his contemporary work.

Let’s begin with the traditional work first.

Nith was going through historical context of the clothing. Traditional embroidery is very intricate and it doesn’t do justice to this picture. Nith gave an interesting historical background to the outfits. The top material is silk from china and for those clothing which has songket, the songket came from Malaya. And if you noticed the bottom of the skirt, that gold embroidery differentiates whether this comes from Laos or Cambodia. Cambodia do not have embroidery at the bottom of the skirt.

Oh dear, what a blur photo that I took and this was the only photo I had. This was one of my favourite clothing. Very earthly colours, interesting songket, mandarin collar and bronze buttons. You should see the back of the shirt (which I didn’t take unfortunately) had a small dragon at the back and dragon in Laos means that the person have a royalty lineage. Nice and subtle.

Now we shall talk about some of his contemporary work because he wants it to be accessible to the rest.

This was the Penang flower motif that was done by David Cheah but embroidery was done by Nith, David Cheah had an exhibition for Perkalongan Batik last year. This year he was not exhibiting anything but he was helping Nith out. It was great meeting David Cheah and we were talking about Luang Prabang, buses from 1Utama to Penang and a whole lot of other topics.

These are made with real leaves. What Nith did was to put the leaves there, embroidery the gold or silver thread on the leaves, then removed the leaves. The stem still remains which I think it was a nice touch to it.

Love the prints and patterns and intricacy. Look at the amount of gold thread there.

I love how they mish mash the different materials together. Chinese silk, malay songket and Laos embroidery. Fusion is not something modern but something that has been in the past because of trading.

This is my favourite piece from his contempory works. I love how delicate it looks and how the village houses now have antennas. Hahaha. We are all slowly getting connected aren’t we?

Attending Nith workshop on stencilling. At first I thought I could not join his workshop because I miss the registration date but Nith and David graciously invite me to join though the registration was full. I even told them that I might leave earlier because I had a bus to catch and they were alright with it. I’m truly grateful.

Strange Paradise in China House by Anurendra Jegadeva
I shouldn’t have been to chicken to take photographs of the exhibits but it was interesting to see how some artworks used Enid Blyton books and also have art pieces which I could talk about. Also, I grew up with Beanie and Enid Blyton so it did strike a chord in me.

This art piece is from a Mahathir art piece. There was a painting of Mahathir and there were matchstick boxes stuck in a few columns chronologically where it talk about the highlights of Mahathir’s 22 years rule in Malaysia such as declaring Malaysia as an Islamic state and reformation. I took this photo of the matchbox of Douglas Gomez because I didn’t know this part of history of Mahathir.

This was one of my favourite pieces there because there were Beanie characters. Heheh.

Par Fumare
I couldn’t get much of what this installation was saying as they didn’t show much how before the festival. I did not have high expectations but was pretty happy how it turned out because it was my first time experiencing it.

This is a chart to show how perfume is made. Interesting because I never delve so deep into perfumes before. In this installation, what you have to do is to watch 8 short films and go to the tables at the side to smell the the different scents of each film.

This is the a sample of the scent description for Lust and Caution.The four smaller apparatus is the four different smells related to the short scenes of the movie and the bigger apparatus is the mixture of the four smells combined in certain percentages.

The favourite scent comes from the film ‘Paradise Road’. I think the weirdest scent came from ‘Ice Kacang Puppy Love’ since it smelled like ‘Neslo’ (combination of Nescafe and Milo).

Liuli glass art
Honestly speaking, it did wowed me because of the glass but other than that, it felt like another high class exhibition. And the funniest thing was when I try to listen to the explanation of the art piece in mandarin, I end up interpreting differently. Oh no. I discussing with my boyfriend who had went through Chinese school and I realised how oversimplified I have made the meaning to be.

I like how they manipulate art to make it look solid and fluid at the same time.

Domestic Evolution by Tim Craker
Most of his exhibits are made with household items but after looking at price, I think I can make them myself.

Guess how much this cost? Add in workmanship + creative costs too.

Wheels on floor.

I really like this and make this as a feature project in the house. No, I’m not asking Tim Craker to do it. I’ll do it myself.

101 Kittens
I have complained enough in the other blog about how disorganised 101 kittens were. In short, we had to call the organisers to find out what was going on and they said the kittens are only up by 22 June. Oh what a waste of time looking for other missing kittens.

I really love this kitten being framed by the red 2d kittens. I like it better than the big cat.

The big kitten which everyone was talking about.

I mistake this kittens as part of 101 kittens. By the way this was found outside Cozy in the Rocket, which I have yet to ask whether the owners are fans of Grey’s Anatomy or Psapp. (the kittens look like how the Psapp style illustrations)

Wire art

This was not part of the kitty, but it was interesting how they give a new paint job but maintaining the wire art.

This was one of the most interesting that I have found because it had hints of yellow. Most of the art were in black. Not only that, this is really found in this obscure lane, a lane that I missed last time.

Postphone
An interesting concept but the phones seem not to work. An uncle tried to help us but somehow the phones weren’t working.

You tell your story at one end…

… and your friend listens to it at the other end.

Instructions on how to use it.

Next up: Taking Off event.