My boyfriend and I were actually planning a trip to Singapore for Andy Warhol exhibitions, but we decided to scrape the plan as it was more expensive to go to Singapore. Then he told me about the Georgetown Festival in Penang and I was like, “Why not?”

After all, it is good to support the local art scene. I wished I could be there for most performances and the exhibitions, but it was inconvenient. Oh well, at least I still had fun there.

Here are the few things that I went for:

Trails of Light

Trails of Light is a collaborative art installation by LUMA. Going through this installation gives me mixed feelings. There a sense of pride because these are all done by our own Malaysians. Truth to be told, I expected better quality stuff. I knew the message about this installation but the trail did not have enough ‘reflective’ feel to it. I remember seeing Takagi Masakatsu’s work. It was just a video projected in a dark room and I was sitting there absorbing his sounds and his intricate motion graphics. To me, I believe arts in any form should revoke some emotions then make peopke think and reflect.

I digress, but let me go through some parts of the trail.

I like how they have little cue cards along the journey, written by Gina Yap. It would be better if the boxes are more obvious. There were ten cards in total. Take a card, view the videos and art pieces, and then move on.

Hong Yi’s work using coffee stains. View more of her work over at her website and I personally like her Mark Zuckerberg portrait (not shown in Trails of Light). Getting ideas from architecture and creating a portrait from books is just brilliant.

Old school projector and slides. I miss those.

I forgot to view the paintings in details but I really love how the wind blew this pieces. Really beautiful.

One of the buntings there. Minimalistic, but a lot of truth and impact. Yes, God. I’ll be updating my prayers to you soon.

The multiple screens showing the final dance from Aida Redza. At the beginning of the trail, I didn’t really get the footsteps video until the end. This scene was shot in Francis Light’s grave. She was really bold and expressive in her dance. People who do not know what is lyrical dance would have think she was possessed. I read from LUMA’s site that she is known for being a ‘most controversial and intense’ dancer. After I watch it, I understood why because it did jolt me out from my conservative mode. Not only that, I could feel the emotions while watching this dance because it was so intense.

Mapping Identity by David Cheah

Photo taken from Georgetown Festival’s facebook page.

Since photography was not allowed, I had to take this photo from Facebook. Oh well.

There was not much indication of where David Cheah’s exhibition was. Not being familiar with Georgetown, we simply went into a building (which was the town hall) and asked the person in front whether there was a exhibition going on. We went up and saw some batik pieces and I was fascinated with how David use the map of Penang and made it into a flower. Reminds me of university’s assignment where we have to take a still object and create new objects, patterns or type.

As we were slowly looking at the art pieces, David Cheah just came out and said, “Hi, I’m David, the artist here. Do you me to give the tour around?”

I was a little awestruck to meet the artist there. Most of the time when I’m in the art exhibitions, I have to try very hard to decipher what the artist was trying to say in his/her works. If you’re a design student, you will get what I mean. Having the artist there to give you his works means I don’t have to decipher it myself.

Of course we agreed with the tour and it was very enlightening to listen to him about the history of batik, and where he did his batik in the Perkalongan, Indonesia. He had some pieces which are his own, but some are from other people. That’s why we could not take photos inside. I got very excited when I saw this piece of the west java batik which was wore by men in war in Java because I remember of an art installation called the ‘Java Machine’ which was also talking about Java warriors. Not only that, he talk about his process and thoughts on how he did this batik pieces. Listening to him brought me back to my high school days where I had to study the theoretical side of art, which one of the chapter is about batik.

We had a good chat, from batik to his heritage (his grandfather is a South American), to kebayas (he told us about famous Aunty Kim who does great kebayas), web and facebook (which he is very old school).

Anyway, he told us to attend the batik making session on 8 July, which is also the Georgetown City Day. Admission is free and the best thing is once you learn how to make the batik, you can bring back the batik as a souvenir. I kept getting emails from David but unfortunately I could not make it as my Hebrew classes are starting again.

Ernest Zecharevic’s paintings

He painted a quite a number pictures in Georgetown but I managed to find four (but ended up shooting three). I went to find it as it was rather hyped up online and it was also a chance for me to go around Georgetown and appreciate the culture there.

Armenian Street

Ah Quee street. What is the boy looking at? When I was there, he was looking at nowhere but recently they have updated the painting. Now he is looking at something. Hopefully this painting will still be Georgetown when I go there again.

Muntri Street. The freaky girl. It’s like ‘Honey, I blew up the kid’.

End of part 1. Part 2 will be about Songsang exhibition in China House.