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The Star Online: Lifestyle: Arts & Fashion

Posted: 30 Sep 2012 02:17 AM PDT

The leading gallerist will be closing his businesses in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

IN a move that has surprised some, prominent dealer and champion of South-East Asian contemporary art Valentine Willie is closing the business that made his name.

The Malaysian gallerist is winding down his four-year-old Singapore branch in Tanjong Pagar Distripark – an industrial area he helped transform into an arts hub – from next January, in line with a plan to scale back his operations in South-East Asia.

The 58-year-old, who is known for his gutsy programming of emerging and established artists from the region, says he is closing shop because of financial reasons and to go full-time into helping influential collectors in the region set up private museums.

His Valentine Willie Fine Art galleries in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Yogyakarta and Manila made about RM2mil on average a year, which was not enough to cover the costs of running them, he says. The Malaysian branch brought in the bulk of the sales, with the Singapore arm making about 20% of the revenue.

Willie's galleries in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Yogyakarta will start scaling back next year, and will host about four shows each, down from the usual 12. They will eventually cease operations in 2014, when he plans to "leave the commercial world".

Only the Filipino branch, Manila Contemporary, will carry on with business as usual. Together with his two business partners there, he will continue to run a full programme of 12 events a year next year. He says that the Manila gallery may continue without him after 2014.

As a museum consultant, he hopes to help private collectors in South-East Asia showcase their artworks and build their collections. He adds that he is now in talks to set up a private museum in Penang dedicated to Malaysian art.

The Sabah-born lawyer-turned-gallerist opened his first gallery in Kuala Lumpur in 1995, one of the first galleries to show contemporary South-East Asian art. Over the years, he built up a reputation as a leading art dealer, and has been on Singapore Straits Times' Life! Arts Power List for the past two years.

In 2008, he expanded his operations to Singapore, Yogyakarta and Manila, hoping to build bridges between the different art markets. In Singapore, his annual show of local artists, Singapore Survey, often with strong political themes, is one of the highlights of the visual arts calendar.

Known for his straight-shooting style, Willie is also one of the more colourful personalities in the art scene. In January this year, he famously fought with Maria Elena Rudolf of the contemporary art fair Art Stage, over an incident in which she accused him of insinuating himself into a group of collectors she was taking around Indonesia.

In response, she had ripped out a page of Sangkring Art Space's guestbook to prevent him from "stealing" the information. Sangkring is the Malaysian branch of Willie's business in Indonesia.

On his latest move, Willie says over the telephone from KL: "I've been in the business for almost 20 years. Now that the gallery system in South-East Asia is coming along nicely, with more galleries showing edgy stuff, I don't feel as obliged to be around."

Asked if it was because the gallery scene is getting too competitive, especially with the recent opening of the Gillman Barracks arts cluster of top international galleries in Singapore, he says: "I don't see them as competition. I'm thinking of the artists – do they have platforms to show? Now there are more galleries willing to do non-selling shows. So I'm not sad about leaving. I don't feel I'll be missed as much as in the past."

What is lacking in the South-East Asian art scene is the "institutional infrastructure", he adds, which is why he wants to "identify the right collectors and build museums".

He says: "In any cultural city, the top of the pecking order should be the museums. In South-East Asia, the auction houses and certain collectors are calling the shots and setting the trends. There is little scholarship and serious writing about the arts. That's what we need to develop."

Indeed, he hopes to promote academic scholarship on South-East Asian art and be an advocate for it overseas.

"I've been asked to do a tour of the Australian museums and talk about South-East Asian art as someone who has been on the inside. When I finish with the commercial world, it frees me up to do a bit of that."

As for closing a business that has made his name, he is "not sentimental" about it. He says: "I'll be 60 in 2014. It's time to get out of the commercial. But I'm still very much in the art business. I'm just wearing a different hat now."

Next January, in Singapore, he will close the 158 sq m gallery and let go of his staff of two. He will continue to rent the space for pop-up shows running for three weeks to a month next year, including the annual Singapore Survey, which has nurtured the careers of local artists such as Genevieve Chua.

Willie says that he will curate a few more editions of the Singapore Survey and leave Helutrans, the art-handling firm that manages the gallery space, to organise the subsequent ones.

In Malaysia, he will also close his 139 sq m venue in upmarket Bangsar Baru in KL, and move the office to a smaller 111 sq m space in the same area. As with Singapore, the space will be rented on a project basis next year.

In Indonesia, exhibitions are already hosted ad hoc at the 929 sq m Sangkring Art Space in Yogyakarta.

The news of Willie's departure from the gallery business surprised the art community, with many expressing dismay.

Artist and curator Alan Oei, 36, says Willie understands that "art has to be bigger than just a gallery or business", and adds that "this was especially pertinent in Singapore's case, where our artists had no real market before him."

Oei has participated in several of the gallery's group shows and had a solo exhibition at the KL branch this year.

He adds: "Before he came in, most of the galleries and collectors here would rather work with saleable artists from China, Malaysia and Indonesia. Nobody really cared about Singapore artists and whether our art reflected the moment here.

"He really made a difference to the Singapore scene. Now that he's closing, I'm not sure which galleries can or want to take on that sort of mantle."

Singaporean artist Heman Chong says Willie has played a role in nurturing young South-East Asian artists, including Malaysians such as photographer Yee I-Lann and multi-disciplinary artist Wong Hoy Cheong at the start of their careers. They have since gone on to be established names in the art scene.

Willie was also a pioneer in another way: his was the first gallery to move into the Artspace@Helutrans, a warehouse space in Singapore set aside by Helutrans for art appreciation.

Soon, other galleries followed and the industrial-looking area transformed into an unlikely arts hub.

Helutrans' managing director Dick Chia, 52, says: "He will be missed. As much as we would like him to stay, since he's one of the top South-East Asian gallerists, I know he's been talking about slowing down for the past few years."

Chia says Willie's departure will not affect the arts cluster. He adds that a new Indian gallery is moving in next year and a Japanese auction house will also hold its first sale in Singapore in the space. – The Straits Times, Singapore/Asia News Network

Simply profound

Posted: 30 Sep 2012 02:15 AM PDT

The common chilli continues to inspire an artist, who has moved from paintings to sculptures to home accessories.

CHILLIES are simple yet profound. They're so tiny and you may not notice them, but they have the power to consume everybody. They're capable of making something ordinary extraordinary," says Kumari Nahappan, whose art is wrapped around that little vegetable.

Whenever the artist visits a new country, she makes it a point to stop at the local market to look for chillies. However, "I don't eat them because I love them too much," she says.

This love is obvious in her paintings and sculptures of chillies. Now, it has "flowed" into a range of home accessories, which sit enticingly in a new concept space at G Tower Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. This is the same swanky hotel where her 5m bronze sculpture, entitled Wild Chilli Couple, stands tall in the lobby.

The Chilli Boutique is the brainchild of Kumari and her son, Ravi Nahappan, who share a passion for all things beautiful and elegant.

Using his engineering background and an eye for design, Ravi has created functional, lifestyle products with an artistic flair, which now share space with his mother's creations.

"The boutique was born out of conversations with my mother when I first saw her chilli artworks," says Ravi, 31. "I started working with materials to translate her designs into functional products and over the last 18 months, we've been defining the shape of the boutique."

Kumari interjects: "Actually the idea started when I created the ring of infinity (a napkin ring) to raise funds for charity four years ago. It generated a lot of interest and people started asking for more. I was not so comfortable doing this because I was more interested in serious art works, but I felt someone else could do it. Then Ravi stepped in to explore the possibilities."

"My mother is involved in the creative direction but there are different manufacturers who make the products," adds Ravi.

The boutique's range of home and lifestyle accents blends simple organic forms with different materials, embodying artistic values with contemporary craftsmanship. Among the items are chinaware, greetings cards, napkin rings, silk table mats, table runners, jewellery and digitalised prints - all with a hint of fiery, multi-hued chillies.

"This is a new dimension of my work and the evolution of over two decades of art. Each piece has a story and its own symbolism," Kumari says.

In a career spanning 22 years, she has moved from acrylic and abstract paintings to installations and bronze sculptures. The sculptures consume most of her time and in between, she tries to paint. The boutique caries a limited selection of paintings; anyone interested in seeing more of Kumari's works will have to head to her gallery in Singapore.

"Casting the sculptures, holding exhibitions and travelling take up a lot of my time so I don't paint as much. I need 120% silence to paint," adds Malaysian-born Kumari, now based in Singapore.

She received the United Overseas Bank Painting of the Year award in 1998, and the Philip Morris Group Asean Art Award. Kumari is also the first woman and foreigner to be awarded the Ksatria Seni Award in 2004 by Museum Rudana in Ubud, Bali. Last year, she was among the nominees for Artist of the Year at the Shanghai Art Fair 2011, for her Happy Tango chilli.

Kumari describes her art as a ritual and, as such, her creations entail artistic ritual. She excels in installations which offer the viewer a sensual, spiritual experience, combined with a feeling of inner peace.

"When I was working on my post-graduate research, I started using Hindu rituals and offerings to show time. I used turmeric powder, chillies, seeds and pods. I found chillies held a sense of mystery and I was driven by it. The chillies have kept evolving since. I never knew it was going to dance, which is a celebration!" says the 59-year-old artist.

Simple yet profound themes such as time and energy form the basis of her works. The cyclical nature of time, and infinity, are often reflected in their layout and her installations often comprise simple elements put together with potential to extend beyond the confines of any space.

As Kumari describes it, "I see my works as a continuum. They build and layer from one show to the next."

She draws inspiration from her daily moods, feelings and everyday life. Her chillies come in all shapes, colours and sizes. The slender ones have a touch of grace while the obese ones exude a cheeky yet innocent twist. Some are connected at the stem while others, at the bottom. Her latest collection is entitled Heatwave, which shows a fan chilli, a spiralling chilli – "it's running away because it doesn't want to be eaten" – and the revival chilli.

"Whether the heat is inside or outside, it's up to the viewer to interpret," the artist adds with a twinkle in her eye.

Products at the boutique are painstakingly created. For example, the "imperfect" finish of a hand-made fine bone china platter (inspired by her Asana chilli sculpture) reflects the unique creation process. Similarly, the jewellery collection comprises earrings of different shaped chillies in black, rhodium-plated sterling silver or pink, gold-plated sterling silver.

"Sometimes I may only make one sculpture, but if it's a small piece, I may do additions. It's boring to keep doing the same thing again," Kumari says.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 30 September 2012