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The Star Online: Lifestyle: Arts & Fashion

Posted: 10 Jul 2011 01:56 AM PDT

The minds behind Datum Showbox build a bridge between those who create structures and those who live in them.

DATUM:KL has flourished. What started in 2003 with a few participants has, in the last couple of years, attracted thousands of architects and students from around the region.

Past success set the foundation for this year's month-long Datum:KL – Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival. Organised by the Malaysian Association of Architects (PAM), the event casts its net even further to bridge the gap of understanding between architect and non-architect, to make the people of KL more aware of and interested in their surroundings, and more involved in its direction.

Datum Showbox is the ice-breaker; three exhibitions at one venue (the MAP@Publika), it gives visitors a broad view of what architects do and how they think, and guides us to pause and examine KL's "unseen" architecture.

The exhibition titled House@SEA showcases modern homes designed in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore. It presents challenges architects are likely to find and the creative solutions reached.

Show curator Ang Chee Cheong says young architects are used to getting the same brief: "Here is a small plot of land, now build me a big house." A couple of Singaporean architectural firms have solved this problem, resulting in astonishing homes that appear to be tiny link houses from the street, but which open up into bright and airy spaces, indoor forests and rooftop gardens.

"Most architectural innovation comes from houses," adds Ang. For example, a particularly unusual house in Indonesia is the result of a four-year-old "client" who wanted an easy way to get downstairs. The curving concrete slide built into the house has become one of the resident family's favourite features.

Wan Azhar Sulaiman, one of the architects of CODA (Collaboration Office of Design & Architecture), says the firm's contribution to this exhibition, the Half House, was built for someone with a large extended family. One half of the house is for permanent residents; the other welcomes relatives to stay and contains a large function room for family events, which are a regular occurrence.

If Datum Showcase wanted dialogue, this was an immediate measure of its success.It was fascinating to hear the architects talk about the thought process behind the Half House.

I come from an old neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur where those who can afford to immediately demolish their old homes and build new structures that overshadow and shame their neighbours'. The half house, although large and graceful, is of similar height to the houses around it and the design is kept simple and unornamented. In this humble way, it still belongs to its neighbourhood and is part of the community.

CODA is unusual in that it builds as well as designs. For its Saw is Law installation,the blades of over a hundred saws were removed from their plastic handles and then attached to metal poles of different lengths. All the blades face outwards, cutting side down, as in a salute.

The installation is part of another of Datum Showcase's exhibitions, Build Your Manifesto. Here is where architects have constructed a message for visitors, mainly by using the materials and tools of their trade. Here is where they speak to us.

Sketchbook by C'Arch Architecture and Design is a house made of hundreds of sketches and doodles on yellow draft paper, the brainstorming process of one of their jobs – to build an old folks home. The floor inside and out is littered with crumpled balls of the same paper, the many ideas spawned and rejected until they get it right. This installation invites the audience to talk back, to enter the house and add their own sketches, ideas and comments.

Risk Reduction Techtonics by Mercy Malaysia's Technical Team puts playfulness aside and speaks to us directly with a tower of bricks and concrete. Ang likes this piece because he feels it is a reminder that "the basic function of architecture is to protect and shelter". Thick metal springs towards the top show how this structure is built to withstand earthquakes.

In the third exhibition, reviewKL, photographers were asked to turn their camera on the structures that make the city. There are some truly splendid works, all for sale, and part of the proceeds will go to charity.

Erna Dyanty has taken numerous stark, unsentimental photographs of the soulless buildings that house our uniformed classes, a grim commentary on how we see and treat our soldiers, police officers and teachers.

I am particularly drawn to the work of Lim Thian Leong, a poignant series of trees at dusk.

The branches have been chopped off, leaving the trunks as armless as ancient Roman statues. In the background of these photos are the bright lights of large cranes at massive construction sites.

Accomplished photographer Eiffel Chong has caused quite a stir with his work. Blurring the line between what is real and what is not, it is impossible to tell whether his photographs are a wide view KL's condos, parks and skylines or a close-up of an architectural model. I know because I asked him, but I challenge you to figure it out.

The idea for this series came about when Chong was thinking about all the natural disasters that have been affecting the region. He wanted to do some city shots from God's perspective, looking down on our cities as with a magnifying glass.

He also thought about how kids use magnifying glasses to burn insects and from the perspective he gives us in his work, it does seem it would be terribly easy to wipe out the entire thing with a sweep of your hand… or a tsunami.

However, when you get close, really close, to the photographs, you see people (are they real?) doing things that make them individuals, interesting, unique.

You form an interest and an attachment, you become curious about them and hope that they are real and that they will go on with their lives, having many more days like this one.

All three exhibitions give visitors a lot to think about, especially the fact that much of our world, before it became what it is, first existed in the mind of an architect.

> 'Datum Showbox' is on till July 18 at Map@Publika (Solaris Dutamas, Block A5, JalanDutamas 1, Kuala Lumpur). For details, call 03-6207 9732 or go to datumkl.my.

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Hub of art

Posted: 10 Jul 2011 01:19 AM PDT

From things that would usually end up in landfills, comes quirky entertainment for eye and heart.

UPSTAIRS in Ken Marquis's art gallery and framing shop in Pennsylvania, you'll find a strange, cloistered world populated by a toothy dog chomping on a Frisbee, an enigmatic mermaid reclining in a pool of oil, and some guy named Barack Obama superfluously announcing that "I AM A PRESIDENT".

It's all a bit disorienting. Maybe that is the point, considering these works of art began life as ... automobile hubcaps?

The humble hubcap, it turns out, makes an excellent canvas.

Over the past three years, Marquis, 60, has persuaded artists from every American state and 52 countries to transform discarded metal and plastic wheel coverings into objects of wonder and whimsy. He's filled two rooms and a hallway with more than 800 works to date, dented old metal given new life and meaning by fertile minds and talented hands.

Some of the art is purely decorative: enormous roses, intricate sundials, abstracts and landscapes. Other artists make political statements, drop cultural references, or get personal.

There are pieces that demand to be touched, rocking and spinning and making noise. And others that make you smile, like the "pasta machine" that extrudes long, fat tubes of ziti (tube pasta).

"Almost every day, some art arrives from somewhere. It's a real treat to open up a box not knowing exactly what's in it," Marquis says with relish.

Beyond the wow factor lies an environmental message.

Reclamation artists have long used junkyards and trash heaps as source material, taking someone else's garbage and turning it into something beautiful or strange or provocative. The goal of the Landfillart Project, Marquis says, is to get people thinking about the amount of trash they generate – and, perhaps, to reduce it.

"Old rusted hubcaps, or even old plastic ones, eventually have no use. They end up in landfills or in people's backyards," he says. "So it made perfect sense to use this as a basis to create art on."

Vincent Romaniello, 57, of Philadelphia, was inspired by images of this year's Egyptian uprising, especially a photo of stone-throwing young protesters using scrap wood and other objects as shields. His still-unfinished piece envisions the hubcap as camouflaged helmet, perched on top of a pair of battered goggles. An old cell phone and rocks complete the tableau.

"I don't think it'll be very difficult for people to understand the meaning behind it," Romaniello says from the studio behind his house, where he's brushing on the last bit of paint. "These people are fighting for freedom ... for their voices to be heard."

Pattie Young, 57, of Idaho, contributed the largest piece in Marquis's collection. The Raven stands more than 2m tall, weighs almost 300kg, and uses five hubcaps, a pair of truck wheels, a huge spring, a running light, a fender and other materials scavenged from a salvage yard. "I got a little carried away," she says.

For Young, working with reclaimed materials serves a dual purpose. It promotes sustainability, and it feels right artistically.

"There's something about picking up (an object) that's already been used, the wear on it, the way it has a lot of character," says Young, who got several other artists to participate in Marquis's venture.

Not every contributor is a professional artist. About 20% of the hubcaps in the collection were supplied by amateurs ranging from disabled veterans to prison inmates to people with Down syndrome and autism.

Why hubcaps? The idea came to Marquis at an auto show where he had stumbled on a cache of 41 rusted disks. "It was one of those eureka moments," he recalls. "I saw a hubcap and I thought, 'I think I can get this repurposed."'

Marquis scooped them up for US$82 (RM251). A few weeks later, he bought 1,000 hubcaps from a collector. They came from every imaginable make of automobile, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Packard, DeSoto, Mercedes, Rolls Royce and many more, from the 1930s through the 1980s.

Marquis, who's been in the art business nearly four decades, called a dozen artist friends and pressed them into service. Then he began prowling the Internet, e-mailing artists who caught his eye to gauge their interest.

A typical reply, Marquis says, went something like this: "'You want me to find a hubcap in my own country and pay for that, and you want me to pay for (the materials to make) this piece of great art, and then you want me to ship it to you at my expense, and then you want me to gift it to you? Am I understanding you correctly? Okay, yeah, I'm in.'"

"I've had that conversation hundreds of times," Marquis says. "Artists get it."

Still about 150 pieces short of his goal, Marquis hopes to complete the project by early next year. After that comes a coffeetable book and a touring exhibition of 200 representative works.

For now, it can be viewed on Marquis's website, landfillart.org, and in person at his gallery in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. – AP

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Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 10 Julai 2011