Three Years of Dusun - Asian Arts and Culture E-Magazine

Covers for the e-magazine Dusun, Malaysia's best known and best loved Asian Arts and Culture e-magazine, now in its third year.

Dusun has grown from covering exclusively Malaysian Arts to covering the Arts of Asia, with regular features from Singapore, The Philippines and Cambodia.

Dusun aims to cover all the Arts of Asia, over time, and welcomes contributions about Asia and or by  people of Asian descent. Dusun is a free e-magazine, and therefore cannot pay for contributions and hopes that contributors endure the spirit of Dusun, as a 'giving back'.

Malaysian Murals - Gilding the Lily

The case against public murals in Malaysia.

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.  

The Life and Death of King John, 

Act 4, Scene 2, William Shakespeare

Recently there has been a rash of murals in public places, in cities, across Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur has largely limited this paint daubing to the banks of the rivers which converge to form the name of that city. Penang, under a misguided attempt to woo tourists, and appease tourist ministers, has begun a mass titivation and re-painting process, with the inclusion of public statuary and public art (murals). Ipoh too has caught mural fever, and has hastily painted the side of very public buildings to cover whatever innate charm they may have had if left un painted. These public paintings present the general public with a fait accompli, an ’artist's view' of what they think should be grabbing our attention.

While I agree that many painted images, including some murals, are amazingly beautiful to look at, skilfully executed and perhaps done with the best of intentions, there are many good reasons why the art of mural painting had died down, until it's renaissance in the mid twentieth century. The realisation that it was more difficult to upkeep a mural than a portable artwork is one reason why murals declined, but I feel that another reason is the innate beauty of walls and their interaction with their environment, and with nature, as opposed to we public being subjected to the mind, eye and hand of the muralist, however well intentioned. It has also been mentioned that in the early 20th century, and later, murals appeared in Mexico and in places in North America, with the least literacy. 

It could be said that murals are as much as an imposition as billboard advertising, in public spaces. Mural painting is an anti-aesthetic, it is the difference between a book and a film of the same story. A book (usually the product of one person's storytelling) engages your imagination, works with you, whereas a film (the vision of a whole team of people) sets out everything for you, tells rather than engages. That is what I fear murals do. It is the very people who prefer plastic Christmas Trees over real ones, or artificial flowers over ones whose petal drop, or prefer to wander around listening to an iPod instead of the life about them. People, effectively, willingly disengaged from the natural world, and yet imposing their aesthetic upon others.

There is a beauty, an authentic aesthetic to an outside wall often chipped, with broken bricks, plaster starting to decay with black mould or green moss. It may be an end to a house where the next door building has been demolished, revealing where staircases had once stood, rooms were coloured etc. but there is an unplanned, naturally occurring beauty to that.

There is a simple, and yet timeless beauty, in ageing buildings such as Britain's Elizabethan Shakespeare's cottage, The Egyptian Pyramids, Ancient British Stonehenge, Cambodia's Angkor Wat, Jordan’s Petra, Java’s Borobudur etc., and no one is suggesting they be mural painted, tarted up, made smart and acceptable for tourists visiting. No, they are left to their natural beauty for visitors to capture for themselves, the original and authentic ambiance of those places mentioned. Then why must older inner-city buildings be subjected to a marring of their natural beauty, by murals. 

Shakespeare wrote the phrase - to gild the lily, to take something which is naturally beautiful and cover it with a metal made precious by man. The innate beauty of the lily is destroyed, that naturally occurring beauty disappears to be covered by something of less beauty but of more financial value. This is what murals do, they cover an evolving authentic beauty with paint. They take away our imaginations and replace them with someone else's vision, to make reference to something else entirely, to the detriment of the natural beauty of the surface they are painted on.

Many would argue against this, I know, and cite successful mural programmes that reflected the culture of the area (as in the Northern Ireland murals), or attempt to engage tourism, (the Penang and Ipoh murals). But isn't that really just gilding the lily. Instead of finding a way to engage in a dialogue regarding naturally occurring, or evolving, beauty, we are subjected to the artifice of dubious mural beauty thrust into our sight, whether we appreciate it or not.

My thesis, therefore, is for city planners to learn how to appreciate the innate beauty in the buildings we already have, rather than seek to cover that beauty with a dubious and transient aesthetic. To, in fact, unnecessarily gild the lily.

Always Leafing Never Staying

Always Leafing Never Staying, 2006

Continuing the series of digital artworks created while I was living in rural Malaysia.

I had started using digital layering in Photoshop back in England, some decade and a half ago. By the time I have left England for Malaysia I had given up physical painting altogether. I just was not practical to carry bags of gouache colours and paintbrushes around with me.

Digital layering relies on me taking many digital photographic images of the countryside around me, often cutting out the main image, by hand, then adding different photographs, in layers and manipulating their density, colour, sometimes erasing parts of the photographs to let other layers show through.

The final image is arrived at in a process similar to abstract painting, in so much as you know, roughly, where you want to end up but anything can, and does, happen along the way. I stress that ALL the images I use are taken by me, not rummaged from the internet. It is important that I am the whole originator of these images, that I have selected the images all the way through the process trying to ascertain the 'essence' of Malaysian rural life, at any one moment in time.

Nik Rafin Rich Tapestry

What initially intrigues the tentative viewer of Nik Rafin's paintings, is the vibrancy of the colours that the artist has chosen to speak for his feelings. No tablet or computer screen viewed JPEG, or four-colour print reproduction, is able to fully satisfy that sight, or capture the sheer beauty of the work of art as you gaze wistfully before it. Catalogues and brochures, as important as they are, and as expansive and informative as they are, cannot compete with being face to face with a work of art. This is true of meeting an object, soon to be desired, in an adroit artisan temple set aside for such adoration (e.g. Artisan Fine Art Gallery).

Eckhart Tolle has mentioned that “Presence is needed to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature.” That presence exists in the uniqueness of the moment when attending a work of art. It is a, practically, sublime moment of ‘viewing’ which in Sanskrit is ‘Darshan’ , and in Japanese ‘Satori’.  Walter Benjamin, (in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, 1936) states that “The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.’ In other words, we can only be certain of authenticity, or ‘realness’, when we are in the presence of the actual work of art. Likewise a work of art reveals its own ‘realness’, its own narrative and not simply a mirroring of its surrounds or of society (Plato’s mimesis).

This uniqueness of the viewing moment, of the gaze if you will, is especially true when in the company of the vibrant paintings created by this up-coming artist Nik Rafin. Rafin studied in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and brought a soul full of experiences back from America to his motherland, Malaysia. Practising variously as a graphic artist, illustrator as well as a fine artist, Rafin has nursed a bond with the simplicity and cleanness of line work and a need to give depth and volume to his acrylic painted canvases. The fusion of the woven and inherent depth of barely seen imagery demonstrates itself in Rafin’s ‘Mindscape' and ‘Earthscape' series. In these there is an intermingling of circles, demi-circles and oblique abstractions, which the artist holds together by an entanglement of strands which could, in a creative future, become the double helix of the painter’s own DNA.

In his earlier works, Rafin has rendered visual ‘dances’ of line, exploring colour and shape relationships (Earthscape Series) with the need for a definitive subject matter. At times he has injected subjects into his work, melded them with the abstract and, as time has progressed, we see more and more subjects resonating with the vibrancy of his abstractions. His timely paintings of ‘8 Wild Horses’, coming in the Chinese year of the horse, reflects the multicultural nature of Rafin’s home country - Malaysia. The horses prance and dance, some spot lit in white, manes flowing to the energy of the canvas, others turning heads in the mid-ground, neighing, stallions rampant with the luxury of their freedom. Other horses, tamed for the race, remind the visitors of Malaysia’s love for the racing horse. Another eight horses, this time ridden by diminutive jockeys, their boots standing in race stirrups set high near the lightweight saddles, thunder in the race. Orange abstractions, circles, weave, help place the browns of the horses and lighter colours of their riders.

Rafin’s canvases portray the swift energies of constant movement. Gazing at Rafin’s work, you might wish to recall those images of the Italian Futurist painters Natalia Sergeevna (The Cyclist, 1912 - 1913), and Pablo Piccaso’s friend Carlo Carra (The Red Horseman, 1912) as they attempted to capture movement onto their canvases. Carra, like Rafin, was intrigued with the motion of horses, painting them time after time (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1908, Horse and Rider, 1913, Pursuit,1915). Could we, perhaps, refer to Rafin as a new Malaysian Futurist, painting fluidity and the grace of movement? Rafin, like Carra (Football Match,1934) renders all the rush of the football tackle, as his colourful footballers (Football Celebration, 2014) dash towards the viewer from out of the rich tapestry of a green woven background, their rush and their deftness as sportsmen revealed in Rafin’s painting.

Throughout these more recent images, Rafin has intricately rendered an organically woven background into his energetically multiple-layered paintings. A background, perhaps representative of weft and warp of life, a weaving together of intricate and infinite narratives with his graphically complex strands. Together, it is those myriad painstakingly painted strands which adhere the narrative to the artist's telling yarn (story). 

It is with these deft, carefully placed and carefully chosen, ribbons of colour that the artist becomes a wanton weaver of skilfully chosen cultural narratives. The artist images the strength and the resilience of fully engaged riders, as they push their burdened beasts to the all-important finish line. Rafin reveals the dedication, and power, of race horses galloping, legs pounding, stretched at full thunder of hooves with lust for the race, at one with their mounts. In other scenes, Rafin presents the explosive energy of the dhol, dholak and tabla with their high energy beats vibrating a rhythm to which the movement of Bhangra dancers (2014) cavort. Rafin is a precise painter.

In other, older, heads stylistically Rafin’s works might remind gallery visitors of The Beatles' (black and white) 'Revolver' album cover (1966). The popular music hero foursome, peeking from Klaus Voorman's sublime illustration of strands of graphic hair. The visitor may gaze and remember the painted (not photoshopped) works of Makinti Napanangka, revealing the aborigine Women’s Hair String Ceremony (karrkirritinyja) for, according to Paul Klee, ‘drawing is simply a line going for a walk’, and this is something that Rafin delights in, amidst the spaces of his wonderfully woven, acrylic strands.

The artist Nik Rafin, is a delicate delineator. He is an enricher of sight, with canvases spinning multifarious multicultural tales of Malaysia, from the hoof pounding thrill of Penang races to ebullient Bhangra dancers leaping from the Punjab. It is as if art historical (Italian) Futurism has liaised with an Asian present, producing a fresh style which becomes engaged with all the excitement and dynamism of carefully captured movement. 

Whatever the painterly references of these stimulating works, there is little doubt that the artist, Nik Rafin, has successfully captured all the exertion, endurance and potency of a variety of figures in movement. He has put before us remarkably stimulating colours, against a sublime background of an essential weave. It is for us to gaze into these works, become one with them and discover the artist’s movement and imagery.  

Kampung House

Kampung House 2007

Malaysia's rural villages have many legends. If stories are to be believed there are many ghosts, not just supernatural but echoes of tragic stories left behind by families, lovers and unique interactions by rural humanity.

For almost seven years I travelled along rough tracks in my Jeep, taking my camera with me. There were so many wooden kampung houses just left to rot as the previous owners had died, and the younger generations had fled to the towns and cities to make the living they were unable to do in those secreted villages.

All along the kampung dirt tracks, overshadowed by banana and coconut trees there were these dilapidated buildings waiting to fall, covered in flora and immense character. Snakes and insects had made them home in a mosquito filled environment. Termites built hills nearby the small forgotten orchards of rambutan and mango, colourful beetles launched from unkempt torch ginger flowers to land on bushes of pandan.