In doing so, the lightweight off-roader has essentially come up from behind to beat off stiff SUV competition from two of the world’s biggest German marques, VW and Audi, whose latest mid-size crossovers, the Tiguan and Q5 respectively had also made the final shortlist.
And as well as taking away the top award, the F-Pace also scooped this year’s statute in the design category — an award open to any car nominated in any category.
“The F‐Pace was designed and engineered as a performance SUV With exceptional dynamics, everyday usability and bold design. Winning these two awards endorses the talent and great work of our teams that have delivered the world’s most practical sports car and Jaguar’s fastest selling vehicle,” said Dr Ralf Speth, CEO, Jaguar Land Rover.
However, in the luxury car category, it was business as usual with the Mercedes E-Class scooping this year’s award, ahead of the Volvo S90 and the BMW 5-Series.
Although the World Car of the Year awards are now an established part of the New York Auto Show, this year saw the first award for World Urban Car, a new sub-category introduced to reflect the growing competition and innovation in the city and compact car segment globally.
And the first-ever winner is the plug-in electric BMW i3, which was up against the Suzuki Ignis and Citroën C3. “This award highlights BMW Group’s commitment to sustainable mobility through BMW’s first all-electric vehicle made primarily of carbon fiber,” said Ludwig Willisch, Head of BMW Group Region Americas.
The award for World Performance Car of the Year went to a Porsche, for the fifth time in 13 years — the new four-cylinder 718 Cayman, and its soft-top sibling the Boxster. An impressive achievement considering it was up against the McLaren 570S and the Audi R8 Spyder.
But perhaps the biggest surprise at this year’s awards show is that the Toyota Prius hybrid took home the Green Car Award. It was up against the Chevrolet Bolt — winner of the 2017 North American Car of the Year award and the Tesla Model X plug-in electric SUV.
“Consideration for this award is a testament to our focus on developing products that both stir the emotions and meet the mobility needs of our customers in all corners of the world,” said Jack Hollis, Group VP of Toyota division.
The luxury fashion house Chanel released on Monday the second campaign film for its latest handbag launch, the “Gabrielle“, which is named after its founder, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel.
The animated clip, which stars British model Cara Delevingne, was created by Japanese filmmaker ShiShi Yamazaki using a technique called rotoscoping, which involves tracing over motion picture footage. Chanel’s colourful, Pop art-inspired film portrays Delevingne as a tomboyish skateboarder gliding through a surreal urban landscape, picking the “Gabrielle” bags off tree branches as she passes by.
Cara Delevingne has worked closely with Chanel over the years — as well as appearing in a number of advertising campaigns, she has regularly taken a starring role in the brand’s Paris Fashion Week shows.
This latest movie is the second of four which are slated to be released by Chanel each week throughout April. The first, starring actress Kristen Stewart was unveiled last week, while two more, featuring the model and longtime Chanel muse Caroline de Maigret and the musician Pharrell Williams are still to come.
Asia is a growing hub in the area of luxury lifestyle and Phuket is the next location to venture towards, to enjoy the best that life can offer. From April 28 to 30, an exclusive luxury event called the Blue List Lanta Expeditions 2017 will be held on one of Thailand’s scenic islands.
Of course, the location is an easy choice. Apart from the crystal clear waters that surround the island, the venue is an area that many see as a developing cruising ground in the region. Serving as a preview of what is in store at the upcoming PHUKET RENDEZVOUS, it will bring together 60 high-net worth individuals who share our love for yachting.
Royal Oscietra Caviar from Caviar House
Piper Heidsieck champagne
Phone case from Connexion d’Art
Featuring nearly 20 yachts, opportunities for diving as well as a chance to indulge in the finest caviar and champagne, it is a promising lead-up to the main event in January 2018. To pamper the palate, Caviar House will be offering Royal Oscietra Caviar which will complement the Piper-Heidsieck champagne. Apart from the finest food and drinks on the island, the Blue List Lanta Expeditions 2017 will also be a chance for guests to see and learn more about Connexion d’Art. The French brand, crafts some of the finest phone cases using exotic and calf leather while also providing monogramming services that are done by experts from France.
From sparkling wines to Singha beer the On the first night, guests can look forward to the “Lost in Paradise party”, sponsored by Coldwell Bankers, at Lanta Last resort followed by a party on Saturday at the Pimalai Hotel. While there will be food, drinks and parties aplenty over the weekend, Andaman Cruises will also be offering its services, making this the perfect chance for guests to find out how they can explore Phuket on board a yacht.
Andaman Cruises
“At Heart Media and Lux Inc Media, we believe in building long-term relationships with our partners…With this event we give them the opportunity to meet their targets in a completely different environment than a yacht show” says Nicolas Monges, General Manager of Asia Rendezvous, Thailand. He added “ It gives them the opportunity to meet them in a fun and relaxing surrounding, develop friendship and make business. This event is a chance to unify the industry members and encourage them to commit to the PHUKET RENDEZVOUS”
Margaret Leng Tan performing ‘SATIEfaction’ at the National Museum of Singapore Gallery Theatre. Image courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore
“More than anything,” enthused Margaret Leng Tan as she sat under the stage lights in the darkened National Museum of Singapore’s (NMS) basement Gallery Theatre, in front of a select group of journalists, “I want to be, not a stand-up comic, but a sit-down comic. And because I use the toy piano, I can be in a position to be funny!” The statement itself seems to be encapsulate the 71-year-old’s spirit — effervescent, curious yet boundary-breaking and iconoclastic — as she conveys her current intentions to “go pop”.
The Singapore-born, Brooklyn-based pianist was at the NMS preparing for a one-night only multimedia concert, ‘SATIEfaction’ on January 20, in a tribute to the late French avant-garde composer Erik Satie, performing both on the grand piano and the toy piano, together with poetry readings and video projections. This was a follow-up on her well-received ‘Cabinet Of Curiosities’ performance at the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2015, where she turned a medley of everyday objects, from chess sets to bicycle horns and alarm clocks, into instruments.
Tan’s list of achievements is dazzling: she was the first Singapore soloist to play Carnegie Hall‘s Isaac Stern Auditorium to a sellout crowd in 2002, has performed at the Venice Biennale on three occasions, and was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 2015, just to name a few. She is also known for being the most important John Cage interpreter, her mentor for 11 years before his death in 1992.
Margaret Leng Tan. Image courtesy of Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay/TributeSG
The provenance for Tan’s illustrious career was apparently borne from a sibling rivalry with her sister (“Everything she did I had to do also and do better.”) and from strong-arming her parents into giving her piano lessons at age six. She subsequently won the open section of the 1961 Singapore-Malaya Piano Competition and then a scholarship to New York’s Juilliard School at the age of sixteen. After her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees later — the rest is history. Art Republik catches up with Margaret Leng Tan.
What is it about toy pianos that fascinates you, and when did you realise you could create wonders with them?
The toy piano has a magical sound. Because it has metal rods instead of strings, it doesn’t sound like a piano because is really a repackaged glockenspiel pretending to be a one. No two toy pianos sound the same; the rods give off unique, complex overtones. One can sound like the voice of angels and another would work well in the sinister soundtrack to a horror movie. The toy piano can also be nostalgic or serious or funny.
I realised fairly early on that toy pianos and toy instruments are full of potential because with toys there are no rules and the only limit is of your imagination. The toy combinations are endless and when you start adding in other sounding items, well, you are fulfilling what John Cage believed: that you can create music on any object capable of producing sound.
I treat every object I choose to play, be it a toy piano or a bicycle bell, as a real instrument in accordance with French Dada artist Marcel Duchamp’s statement that “poor tools require better skills”. Today, I can say with pride that anything I can do on the adult piano I can do on the toy piano with regard to my control of touch, nuance, articulation and dynamics. I have also worked very hard to finesse my playing technique on the bird whistle or paper accordion so that they too will perform reliably and meet my artistic expectations.
You’ve lost your instruments in transit before, oftentimes retrieved but not always. What is your relationship with them?
It was a nightmare when United Parcel Service lost my 50-pound crate of instruments which has not been recovered to this day. Fortunately, my two top-of-the-line touring toy pianos have always shown up whenever the airlines have been remiss, with the most recent Cathay Pacific debacle early this year, makes a total of 10 incidents over 20 years.
My touring toy pianos are irreplaceable. To me, they are the equivalent of Stradivarius violins — one of a kind in their expressive and virtuosic capabilities. They are my voice. I could never do what I do on any other toy piano.
‘Playing piano at age nine, 1955’. Image courtesy of Margaret Leng Tan
A lot of people know you — if they didn’t already — from your performance of Cage’s silent piece, ‘4’33”’, on your toy piano under a void deck in Tan Pin Pin’s film ‘Singapore Gaga’. How did that come about, and what are your thoughts on that performance?
Pin Pin had contacted me in late 2004, having seen Evans Chan’s documentary on my life, ‘Sorceress of the New Piano’. She wanted to include me and my toy piano in ‘Singapore Gaga’. I think performing John Cage’s ‘4’33”’ under an HDB (Housing Development Board) void deck was a brilliant idea! It captured a slice of Singapore life within that frame of time. As Cage said, “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not.” I love that bit when a woman walked by engrossed in her mobile phone (even back then!) and did not notice, let alone find it odd that someone would be sitting at a toy piano in a void deck!
What’s important for you when someone experiences your work?
I like to see myself as an entertainer. I want people to have a good time and leave with a smile on their faces. I am not out to prove anything or convert anybody. I am just happy and grateful that they are willing to come down the rabbit hole with me.
Is classical music something intrinsically natural to you and given how it has brought so much to your life, could you have imagined doing anything else?
At this point in time, I feel I have gone beyond classical music into a new genre that transcends boundaries to include not only music in the accepted conventional sense but other sounds as well. Of course when I was a child and during my Juilliard days I aspired to be a classical pianist, like everyone else. But after meeting John Cage in 1981, everything changed. I would say that music is still at the core of my being but it is a music that encompasses the three-dimensionality of theatre, choreography and performance.
‘With Dad, before leaving for NY, 1962’. Image courtesy of Margaret Leng Tan
Your education at The Juilliard School starting at the age of 16 culminated with your Doctorate where you were the first woman to graduate with this degree from the prestigious school. How did your education help mould you as an artist?
To develop your full artistic potential you have to be highly disciplined in your work habits as well as a curiosity about the world around you. Juilliard was essentially a goldfish bowl but I made an effort to escape its confines and partake of the Theatre of Life offered by New York City. What a waste it would have been otherwise!
Your father was the former Straits Times Press chairman, C.C.Tan. Do you feel you came from a creative and intellectually-inclined family growing up? Were there any formative moments growing up that changed and shaped you as an artist?
I come from a family of lawyers. Artistic pursuits were not exactly de rigueur in our household but I was allowed to have music lessons and ballet lessons because my family could afford them, and for that I am grateful.
When I was fourteen, Joseph Bloch, a professor from Juilliard, visited Singapore and heard me play in a masterclass. He encouraged me to consider applying to Juilliard after I finished school. This was a turning point for me: that someone from the outside world thought I was talented enough to seriously consider a career in music.
You first headed to New York in the early 60s when you were just a teenager. What was that transition like?
Before my Juilliard audition I was well looked after by kind friends of friends of my parents. I was dreadfully homesick when I first arrived in New York. Being homesick is one of the most painful experiences I can remember. Then one day I had an epiphany. This was soon after I had been accepted at Juilliard. Driving down the East River Drive in the afternoon with my host family, the sun was glinting on the water and the magnificent New York skyline filled the horizon. Suddenly, I felt a great surge of elation… Here I was in the greatest city in the world, at the best music school in the world! The opportunities in this land of promise loomed large and I was going to make it! All my homesickness fell away at that moment and I never looked back.
‘Juilliard days, 1967’. Image courtesy of Margaret Leng Tan
What is your studio space like and what does it mean to you?
Well, there are three work spaces within my Victorian brownstone: one is the large parlour room upstairs that houses two vintage Steinway grand pianos from the 1890s. I use one piano for prepared piano activities and the other for keyboard playing. Downstairs I have another Baldwin grand piano where I can practice all night since I keep vampire hours.
‘SATIEfaction’ comes at a time where you admittedly want to explore a more “pop”, expressive approach to your work — I can’t help but think the attributes oft accorded to Satie — an avant-gardist and a visionary… disregard for the rule book… and his embrace of the absurd and the surreal and the blurring of high and low art — may as well be about you.
Wow, that’s really generous! I won’t let it go to my head! Those attributes that you mentioned I feel are truly applicable to John Cage and Marcel Duchamp, both great and influential artists. John was a close friend of the older Duchamp, they played chess together regularly. Duchamp’s revolutionary ideas about art, as enshrined in his “readymades“, had a profound impact on Cage. I would go so far as to say that Cage’s ‘4’33”’ is a “musical readymade”. There is definitely a connection to Satie’s idea of “Furniture Music” which was intended as wallpaper or background music.
So you see, all the stuff that I do using toys and everyday objects is merely the logical endgame to a trajectory charted by these brilliant visionaries who came before me.
Margaret Leng Tan performing ‘SATIEfaction’ at the National Museum of Singapore Gallery Theatre. Image courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore
What’s coming up in 2017 for you? You have mentioned the revered George Crumb has been composing a new work specially for you.
Yes, the iconoclastic American composer George Crumb, who is now 87, has just completed ‘Metamorphoses, Book I’, the first instalment in a new major piano cycle, his first since his creation of the groundbreaking ‘Makrokosmos’ series in the 1970s.
I will never forget when he casually mentioned in July 2015 that he was going to write this for me and that each of its ten movements would be inspired by a different painting. What a gift!
For the past year and a half I have had the great privilege of being Crumb’s pianistic muse. I realise that this is history in the making. It has generated quite a buzz and many festivals are interested to present it. It will be the focus of my performance schedule for 2017 and 2018.
What’s the end goal?
From John Cage I have learnt to regard both life and art as processes unfolding inexorably in their own time. Within this, goals become irrelevant. I will continue to work as long as the ideas keep coming and as long as I am physically and mentally capable.
From a broader perspective, I hope that I have given a new generation the confidence to seek and persevere on their individual creative paths and to remain strong in the face of skepticism and criticism.
This article was originally published in Art Republik 14.
Sedna gold is used with steel, here in the Seamaster Planet Ocean 45.5mm Chronograph
There isn’t any status symbol that’s quite as ubiquitous as gold, and its universal appeal is easy to understand. The metal’s rarity is reason for its value, while its physical properties explain its allure —gold’s density gives it heft, which implies weight and importance, while its inert nature is often associated with ideals of being constant and unchanging. That final property also means humans won’t be allergic to it, unlike silver, for example.
Still, gold isn’t without its limitations, chief among which is its softness that precludes pure gold from use in both jewellery and timepieces. By mixing gold with other metals to create alloys, however, hardness and other desirable properties can be attained. Yet this isn’t without cost — literally. Alloys have lower gold content and thus less value, making them less precious — unless the other metals in the mix are even more precious, like platinum. The question, then, is the purity of gold to be used in the context of watchmaking.
The watchmaking industry has settled on 18-karat (where gold accounts for 75 per cent of an alloy’s mass) as the de facto fineness for gold alloys used in timepieces. This standard is a good balance between maintaining the value of the alloy (due to its gold content), and the hardness and colours that can be achieved. Three main shades of gold are used in watches. Yellow gold is the most traditional, and retains the colour of pure gold. White gold contains nickel, palladium, or another white metal, and is usually rhodium plated for a brilliant shine. Rose gold, on the other hand, skews towards red thanks to the inclusion of copper.
Several manufactures have, in the past decade, introduced proprietary blends of gold in order to attain properties that aren’t present in the three typical alloys described above, and/or to differentiate their products. Clearly, there is still much room for development — advancements are still being made as recently as 2016, when a titanium-gold alloy with four times the hardness of titanium was developed.
Rods of Everose gold, which will be shaped into plates, tubes, bars, and wires, then machined into case components
Everose Gold
A manufacture that produces timepieces on the scale that Rolex does has the freedom — and capability — of deviating from the norm, to put it mildly. Rolex does exactly that when it comes to metallurgy. For a start, it uses 904L steel that has higher nickel and chromium content, which makes it more corrosion resistant and capable of attaining a brighter polish, albeit at the cost of greater difficulty in machining. This drawback is hardly cause for concern though, since Rolex produces its own cases anyway, and has acquired the necessary expertise and equipment to work 904L steel. A parallel exists in the development and production of gold alloys. Rolex’s in-house R&D department and gold foundry has allowed it to create its own blend of pink gold: Everose gold.
Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master 40 with Everose Rolesor case and bracelet
According to Rolex, the drawback for regular formulations of pink/rose/red gold is reportedly a certain tendency to fade. To be fair, this is possible, but not necessarily probable — a myriad of factors are at play here, from the age of the watch to the conditions it was subjected to. Peruse an auction catalogue featuring old timepieces, however, and it is apparent that some rose gold watches can and do lose their reddish touch to end up looking more like yellow gold. Rolex developed Everose gold to prevent such an eventuality. The alloy is produced in Rolex’s own foundry from pure 24K gold, based on the manufacture’s specific recipe. Everose gold’s exact composition is a closely guarded trade secret, but it is known to contain trace amounts of platinum, ostensibly to lock in its colour.
Rolex introduced Everose gold in 2005, and uses it exclusively in lieu of regular pink gold. In the Oyster Perpetual Sky-Dweller, for instance, this extends from the timepiece’s case to its crown, bezel, and even bracelet. Bimetallic references of Rolex watches that contain pink gold also use Everose gold, in a blend of gold and steel the manufacture dubs Rolesor.
Magic Gold is produced in-house within Hublot’s laboratory, which has its own foundry for processing pure gold
Magic Gold
There are actually two gold blends that are unique to Hublot. King Gold has a higher-than-normal percentage of copper to make it even redder than conventional red gold and, like Rolex’s Everose Gold, contains platinum that helps it to retain its hue. What’s arguably far more impressive is Magic Gold, which has an astonishing hardness of 1,000 Vickers that Hublot claims makes it the world’s first scratchproof gold alloy.
Calling Magic Gold an “alloy” is a slight misnomer. Although it stands at 18-carat purity like all the other gold alloys discussed here, Magic Gold isn’t actually a mixture of metals (and non-metals) that are melted and blended together in a foundry. Instead, the process of creating Magic Gold begins with boron carbide, a ceramic that is the third hardest substance currently known. Boron carbide powder is first compacted into a desired shape, before being sintered to form a porous solid. Pure molten gold is then forced into these pores under 200 bars of pressure, like saturating a sponge with water, before the combined chunk of material is cooled down. Voila! The resultant mass is Magic Gold: an incredibly hard ceramic matrix that’s literally filled with gold.
Hublot Big Bang Unico Magic Gold
Magic Gold was only introduced in 2012, and despite being successfully commercialised, remains a very challenging material for Hublot to work with. To machine Magic Gold, CNC machines equipped with ultrasonic cutters and diamond tipped tools had to be specially ordered from Germany. Milling and shaping Magic Gold components remains difficult even with such equipment — just 28 bezels in this material requires around three weeks to machine. As such, production of Magic Gold parts remains limited for now, with an estimated 30 to 40 complete cases produced every month. As Hublot continues to refine its industrial processes and production efficiency with this material, however, its output is expected to scale up accordingly.
Globemaster in Sedna gold
Sedna Gold
Omega has been making waves with its anti-magnetic movements and its involvement in developing the METAS certification, and rightly deserves attention for these efforts. The brand’s work in advancing material engineering, however, also warrants a closer look. It has, for instance, developed a process to inlay LiquidMetal, a zirconium-based amorphous alloy, into ceramic bezels using a combination of high pressure and heat. The result is the seamless melding of two contrasting materials that yield a perfectly smooth surface. Omega has also made inroads into its mastery over gold. Case in point: Ceragold, which was first introduced in 2012. Instead of LiquidMetal, 18-carat gold is combined with ceramic to form Ceragold, using a slightly different process to yield an equally high contrast bezel that is also smooth to the touch. To create Ceragold, the bare ceramic bezel is first engraved with markings, before being completely PVD-coated with a conductive metallic substrate. This interim product is then electroplated with 18-carat gold, before being polished to reveal the original ceramic surface and markings that remain filled in with gold.
Seamaster Planet Ocean 600M Master Chronometer in Sedna gold, with Ceragold bezel
A year after Ceragold’s release, Omega introduced Sedna gold. Named after the red-coloured minor planet, which is currently the furthest observed object in the solar system, this 18-carat alloy is a proprietary blend of gold, copper, and palladium. Like other rose gold alloys, Sedna gold owes its unique colour to its copper content. Palladium, on the other hand, functions here like platinum in other gold blends — it prevents the copper content in the alloy from oxidising, thus maintaining Sedna gold’s colour. This alloy has been used in various collections, including the De Ville Trésor, Constellation, and Seamaster, and appears to have superseded the orange gold blend that Omega previously used.
Lange 1 Time Zone in honey gold
Honey Gold
A. Lange & Söhne debuted honey gold in 2010 when it presented the “Homage to F.A. Lange” collection, which consisted of three limited edition timepieces cased in the precious material. The manufacture has been extremely selective with its usage of the alloy; it took a full five years for honey gold to make its return, this time at Watches & Wonders 2015 where the 1815 “200th Anniversary F. A. Lange” was presented as a 200-piece limited edition. Only two other watches were issued in the material subsequently, and in even smaller runs: the Lange 1 and Lange 1 Time Zone in honey gold totalled just 20 and 100 pieces respectively.
Aesthetically, honey gold’s hue falls between its pink and yellow siblings, with a noticeably lower saturation — it is paler, yet redder than yellow gold, and has a marked resemblance to honey. The alloy’s colour stems from its higher proportion of copper vis-à-vis regular yellow gold, and the addition of zinc, but it retains 18-carat purity. Honey gold wasn’t actually developed for A. Lange & Söhne with appearance as the primary objective though. Instead, the manufacture was concerned with creating a more scratch-resistant case. With a hardness of 320 Vickers, honey gold has around twice the hardness of regular 18-carat yellow gold, which measures between 150 to 160 Vickers. The result? A hardier watch case that’s less prone to dings and scratches.
1815 “200th Anniversary F. A. Lange”
Despite its greater hardness, honey gold isn’t necessarily more difficult to work. Any equipment that is primed to machine steel cases, which are even harder, is more than capable of handling honey gold. When used in movement components, however, the material does present challenges for the finisseurs at A. Lange & Söhne. The “Homage to F.A. Lange” collection’s timepieces, for instance, have movements with balance cocks rendered in honey gold instead of German silver. Hand-engraving them with the manufacture’s signature floral motif is thus more difficult and time consuming, while also requiring a special set of burins with harder blades.
Mademoiselle Privé Coromandel Le Séducteur with its case and dial elements in beige gold
Beige Gold
When it comes to colours, Coco Chanel’s closest association will always be with black. After all, she was the person responsible for adding the little black dress to fashion’s lexicon. Beige was also a staple in her palette though, and like how her love for Coromandel screens continues to inform the designs of some Chanel products today, the couturière’s penchant for beige remains an inspiration for the house she built.
For Chanel, the logical extension to having fabrics and leathers in beige is a gold blend in that very hue. The alloy is a nod to Coco, who professed to “go[ing] back to beige because it’s natural”. Indeed, beige gold does conjure up images of sand, or lightly sun-kissed skin. Unique to the maison, it is an 18-carat blend that falls between yellow and pink gold in colour, while appearing significantly more muted than either. Subtlety is the name of the game here — the alloy harmonises with some skin tones instead of popping out in contrast against it, and matches with a wide range of colours and textures regardless of one’s sartorial choices.
Monsieur de Chanel in beige gold
Instead of introducing beige gold in its more established jewellery line, Chanel chose to feature it in its timepieces first. The material was unveiled at BaselWorld 2014 in the J12-365 collection, where it was placed front and centre in the form of beige gold bezels sitting atop polished ceramic cases. Other women’s collections followed the next year, with line extensions for the Première, Mademoiselle Privé, and Boy.Friend all sporting full beige gold cases.
Of course, the material was never meant to be exclusive to women’s watches. In 2016, beige gold crossed over to Chanel’s jewellery division in Coco Crush rings, and further proved its versatility by appearing in a men’s timepiece: the Monsieur de Chanel.
Portrait of Singaporean artist Robert Zhao, one of the artists featured. Image courtesy of the artist
The references that artists use to inform their work are widely varied: these can be a song, a film, a novel, a fashion image, a building in their neighbourhood, a childhood memory and sometimes a combination of two or more of them. The possibilities and permutations are endless.
Five Southeast Asian artists, Robert Zhao Renhui (b. 1983, Singapore), Eiffel Chong (b. 1977, Malaysia), Alwin Reamillo (b. 1964, Philippines), Zoncy (b. 1987, Myanmar) and Anon Pairot (b. 1979, Thailand) share with Art Republik the sources of inspiration for their work lately.
Visual artist Robert Zhao visits a local zoo wherever he goes
“Obsessions”
“I have visited more than a hundred zoos in the last 10 years. Whenever I travel, I make it a point to visit the local zoo, no matter how small it may be. I am searching for a reason why we need to see animals in zoos. I am still searching.”
Robert Zhao Renhui is a visual artist based in Singapore. His work addresses man’s relationship with nature, paying close attention to how our attitudes and opinions shape our assumptions about the natural world. He is currently showing ‘Christmas Island, Naturally’ at ShanghART, Singapore.
Wedding photographs form the inspiration of Eiffel Chong’s work
“Till Death Do Us Part”
“When I was about ten, my mother took out our family photo albums and threw away all the photographs that had my father in it, including their wedding photographs. I didn’t understand why she did that at that time, but it coincided with them getting divorced. I recently came across some old wedding photographs while visiting abandoned homes and the memory of that particular day came flooding back. I tried to relate the couples in the photographs to my parents, and couldn’t help but let my imagination run wild about why their photographs had been discarded when they should be prized possessions.”
Eiffel Chong is an award-winning photographer based in Malaysia who has exhibited extensively both at home and abroad. His works often deal with identity and human frailty. Chong graduated with an MA in International Contemporary Art and Design Practice from the University of East London and a BA (Hons) in Photography from London College of Printing.
José Rizal, considered a national hero, on a Philippine matchbox
“The ‘Rizal’ Matchbox”
“I grew up in the family’s piano workshop, and so the piano springs are from there. The matchbox is from a childhood incident. After discovering matches, I was playing with them in the varnishing area of the workshop, and nearly torched the whole place down! Of course, my father found out, and I was punished seriously for it. For me, Rizal’s face on the matchbox is a kind of trivialisation — his significance reduced to a common day kitchen implement is far removed from the ideas that he represents. Most know Rizal as a matchbox, similar to his face on the now devalued one peso coin.”
Alwin Reamillo is an interdisciplinary artist living and working between Australia and the Philippines. His practice is focused on ideas about migration and cultural identity. His works appear in many forms, and span painting, photography, collage, sculpture, mixed media installations, performance and shadow puppetry. The chosen image relates to his ongoing ‘Matchbox’ series, most recently shown at Art Fair Philippines with Arndt Fine Art.
Zoncy’s early artistic practice was inspired by her father
“An Afternoon in a Beach Town in 1998”
“While we were playing, Dad was drawing something on a paper. He showed us what he drew. It was the three of us on the back of a giant tortoise. I liked it very much. Once he made us recycled paper masks. If I pulled down the ribbon at the back of the mask, the red tongue came out from its mouth. And he put curves on the chest and the hips on the drawing of a girl I made. He was a good poet when he was young. Later, he became a judge at the high court. Now he is retired and works as a freelance lawyer. My past as [it is] related to him has influenced me in the early years of my career as an artist.”
Zoncy Phyu is a multidisciplinary artist based in Yangon, Myanmar. She explores a range of mediums for her work, including painting, photography and performance. She is also a trainer in creative advocacy, community theatre and multicultural education.
“Delete all your memories about KitKat. In The Philippines, they have KimKat!”
“KimKat”
“I am always interested in human relationships. They form the core of my work and preoccupations. I usually get inspired by stories from the people I meet: stories from the newspapers, stupid stories from taxi drivers… just everyday things. Travels, especially to factories and to strange cities, are wildly interesting to me as well. Of late, I have been intrigued by animal behaviour.”
Anon Pairot is an artist, designer and a curator based in Bangkok, Thailand. His work is known for its fluid confluences between rebellion, controversy, subversiveness, intellectualism and theatricality.
This article was originally published in Art Republik 14.
