A Visit to L'Escala

left to right..Lluis Duran, Lluis Roura and Martin Bradley

My host, friend, and mentor in everything Catalonia, hotelier Señor Lluis Duran, was most insistent that I visit with his bon amic, an artist and yet another Lluís, Lluís Roura Juanola. I was in Figueres for a short break from seeing exhibitions in Lombardy, Italy. I had a tight schedule which began and ended with catching up with Spanish friends, eating copious amounts of tapes (Catalan Tapas) and spending time with my extended family, the Durans. Eventually, after much persuasive persistence on Señor Duran’s behalf, I surrendered, letting him drive me in his ageing Audi through Catalonia’s charming Province of Girona to the antique fishing town of L'Escala.

It has been written that L’Escala, a municipality of Alt Empordà, in Girona, is acknowledged for two things, the ancient (Greco-Roman) ruins known as Empúries, and as a small fishing town producing the salty small fish we call anchovies and Catalans call seitons (which some say are simply the best and mentioned by Francisco Zamora in his "Diary of journeys in Catalonia”, 1700s). To this, admittedly short, list I add a third - Lluís Roura Juanola, or Lluís Roura as he prefers. It is said that Catalan artist Lluís Roura Juanola came into this world on a rainy day, at dusk, on the 5th of December, 1943. He arrived in San Miguel de Campmajor, in the province of Girona, Spain. Roura’s birth was premature, complicated. In that dire situation one Dr. Verdaguer took water and baptised the child, believing as he did so that the new born had not long to live. Roura, however, survived.

Señor Duran drove me past the early Summer countryside, past petrol stations also selling wine,  past the turnoff to Roses and the roundabout where Roura’s mosaic (executed by Armand Olive in 2001) stands, along near the coastal waters of L’Escala (the scale), around and up to Roura’s magnificent multi-tired house overlooking the bay. In front of that traditionally white-painted house, in the Spanish tradition, stood an antique olive tree, still bearing fruit. Being elevated, and being by the bay, a welcome breeze cooled us as the sun was beginning its slide towards the horizon. As it did Roura, a keen photographer, whisked out his camera and began to take photographs of us, not to forget the brush of the sun’s dying rays across the scant clouds and calm waters. I turned, startled to see a stork perched on the roof, gazing too at the sun setting. Roura gave a chuckle. The bird was transfixed not by the sunset, but by its fixtures to the roof. It was a very real statuette. Many, it seems, had been caught by Roura’s little jest, including me.

Since his first art block drawings, back in the very different Spain of 1958, Roura has, over the decades, dedicated himself to the Catalan environment which has nurtured him for so many years. As a boy, taking the very first artistic steps into what was to become his amazing career, in 1960 Roura had won second prize in his first art competition then, later, in the same year, a first prize in another. Through the decades he has gone on to win awards, and amazing accolades for work which has brought him to the fore of Catalonian artists, and honoured by the town in which he now lives. Roura’s paintings have always had the sense of ‘giving back’, enriching the region which has become a constant subject for many of his larger scale works. L'Alt Empordà inspired Roura to paint and have published a weighty tome of his paintings about that region, including El pas de la tramuntana (1987) which captures the sombreness of the wind which can cause madness, and Geologia Cap de Creus (1986) echoing both Salvador Dali, whose home was nearby, and his friend Antoni Pixot, both of whom had been inspired by that most especial Catalan nature reserve.

Roura engaged his visitors with an honestly smiling personality which projected his joie de vivre and good naturedness. His greatness has come through his painting the immediate environment, and later his photography. As we traversed the various layers of his seaside home, travelling towards his voluminous penthouse studio, we were led through his art gallery where huge, joyous, paintings acted like windows into colourful worlds. Worlds drenched by Mediterranean sun, warm, practically exotic or picturesquely static, frozen, frostily white but nevertheless dreamy Catalonian landscapes like Tapissat de neu, Tapis (2006) or La nevada La Vajol (2006) awaited our gaze. One impressive landscape caught my eye (La Tardor - Autumn, one of The Four Season series, 1987). It was a stunningly fiery landscape in autumnal colours.  A furious dance of reds swirled to their own gypsy tune with vermillion, red-orange, hot yellows drifting back to calmer pink shades dotted with practically staid green trees edging the eye to the horizon. Blue/grey with swathes of yellow swept into the practically placid sky. It was a flamenco tour-de-force worthy of Turner’s Sunset Over a Lake (1840).

We stepped up and into Lluís Roura’s studio. Dominating the room was a most impressive picture window looking out to the town, revealing the extremely scenic Bay of Roses, and its setting sun. Artistic paraphernalia were strewn across Roura’s stupendously large atelier penthouse. It was obvious that that generosity of space also doubled as an office as desks and a computer shared the space with easels, tripods and tables laden with paint-filled palettes, brushes and paint tubes in various stages of use and, of course, paintings. One easel mounted, ready primed, blank canvas and all the references the artist requires for that new work stood awaiting the artists hand.

As if by prior arrangement, the outside sun began to grace the sky with gold. Roura grabbed another camera and dashed outside, encouraging us to do the same. He has taken thousands of photographs from his rooftop terrace, capturing myriad sunrises and sunsets and everything in-between. Looking at the spectacular celestial display one could understand why. Colour changes were so rapid that the human eye could barely catch them, but a camera lens can.

Lluís Roura’s expansive painting of the Holy Land, titled The Landscape of Jesus’s Baptism, executed between 2010 and 2011, resides in the chapel of the baptistery Sant Pere de Figueres, in Figueres town, near the Dali Museum.

Amorous Delight; Amarushataka (The Sutra Dance Company Performance)

I had tickets for the final night (of the four night spree) of Ramli Ibrahim’s dance presentation, Amorous Delight; Amarushataka, by his Sutra Dance Company, at Damansara Performing Arts Centre (DPaC).

Ramli and I had first met a few weeks previously, at Sutra House, during a gathering of the Malaysian Art Institute alumni. I thought him charming. A vision in his South Asian clothing, and a good advert for an energetic life. I had long been an admirer of his performances, his zest for life and his unwavering dedication to dance, and all that that entails. I was delighted to finally meet him, though briefly, for a talk amidst the noise and furore of the art school’s celebration, which Ramli had hosted. Later, I was invited to attend his latest production and performance, Amorous Delight, hence the tickets. It had tried to rain, but nothing was going to spoil that enchanted evening.


Before the show, in the foyer, was a small exhibition of intriguing works by Odisha artist/designer Jyoti Ranjan Swain which were also centred around the spirit of love. Those mixed media images, in their delicate ink and gouache/colour on Mill-Waste sheets, were an unexpected, yet delicious, primer to the anticipated show. 

The Sutra Dance Theatre dance performance of Amorous Delight gave homage to five verses (1, 4, 8, 40 and 74) from a collection of 100 Indian Sanskrit quatrains titled Amarushataka, by the 7th c. Indian poet Amaru. Some of the later palm leaf manuscripts (podi) were illustrated by an anonymous Master of Sharanakula (19th Century, Orissa, India). Dr Dinanath Pathy, along with Eberhard Fischer, had recently written on that very subject, for ARTIBUS ASIAE, publishers at Museum Rietburg, Zurich. Dr Pathy, resplendently elegant, was present at that night’s performance. A selection of illustrations taken from that 19th Century manuscript were projected as a backdrop to that DPaC Amorous Delight performance of the Orissa (Indian) dance known as Odissi.

There are many classical Indian dances. The oldest text of Nāṭya Śāstra of Bharata Muni (sanskrit) represents a detailed stagecraft manual, elucidating and observing how various dance styles; Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, and Mohiniyattam etc should look and be performed. The Nāṭya Śāstra suggests that there is “no axiom, no concept in the universe that cannot be expressed by the body”, so spake Ramil Ibrahim in a recent ‘Ted Talk. The Nāṭya Śāstra introduced the theory of ‘bhava' and ‘rasa’, vital to Indian aesthetics. ‘Bhava' meaning an emotional state or mood portrayed by the dancer/actor, while ‘Rasa’ “taste” or “essence”, referring to the sentiment that ‘bhava' has manifested by the actor, and therefore evoked within the audience. In the Nāṭya Śāstra ‘Odhra Magadha’ is mentioned, and may be identified as the earliest precursor of the present day Odissi dance style so beloved of the the Sutra Dance Company.

In the theater we heard, but could not see, the players of music. Ordinarily an Odissi orchestra might consist of a ‘pakhawaj’ (drum) player, a singer, a flutist, a sitar or violin player and a manjira (hand cymbals) player. Dancers are adorned in Odiya silver jewellery and an especial coiffeur. along with voluminous Sambalpuri (Western Orissa style) or Bomkai saris (from the Odisha village of the same name). They are often vibrant in colour and unique to the dance style.

The Amarushataka collection of semi-erotic poems deal with “delights and deprivations” of love, and the “dark anguish of union-separation”, according to one reviewer for The Tribune (2006), and tell of "the young beloved of slender body and bewitching face" with "enchantingly dishevelled tresses, the vermilion on the forehead smudged", "tiny beads of sweat shining as the earrings swing in playful rhythm”. The poems are intimate, loving, with a touch of the poet Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Balkhi) echoing sweet forlornness in longing.

With the aid of superbly lyrical classical Indian music from Srinivas Satpathy, Guru Dhaneshwar Swain and Ramarao Patra, Sivarajah Natarajan’s evocative lighting triggered the imagination to set the scene for a powerfully memorable performance. Ramli and company were, of course, simply stunning in their performances. From the large bow-drawing gestures, to the minuscule kohl lined eye movements and quasi-erotic kinesics, the performers intrigued and delighted a most enthusiastic audience. We watched enthralled as one performer indicated that her glances and her smiles would adorn the doorway, waiting for her lover, her breasts glinting with anticipatory perspiration replacing water pots. It was bosom heaving, love lorn poetics, skilfully transposed into stunning dance far surpassing the wanton gyrations of Bollywood Hrithik Roshan/Aishwarya Rai or Tamil film Urmila Matondkar/Prabhu Deva couplings, or music maestro A.R.Rahman at his best.

The performances equalling those of Nijinsky and Nureyev dancing L'après-midi d'un faune (from Stéphane Mallarmé's poem) revealed éros and agápe, Greek expressions of love. Éros as passion, seeing and appreciating the beauty in another and aspiring to know a spiritual truth, perhaps a truth through that cosmic dancer Shiva, as the Nataraja, lord of dance revealing the cyclical nature of the universe. Agápe, Plato thought of as the highest form of love, the love of man for god, or God, also the love for a wife and children. In 1970, the Beatles had finally sung “In the end the love you take, is equal to the love you make”. A lot of love was make, figuratively, metaphorically that night, owing to the efforts of a wide range of people who brought Amorous Delight; Amarushataka to life.

After show the audience birds twittered, they chit chatted, taking group photos and selfies. Indian memories were still fragrant, chords still vibrant and the air of love still charged sweet and sour, even in the colder light of the foyer, where normally the suspension of disbelieve begins to unravel.
Be-costumed dancers mingled, smiled, posed for photo after photo in the still electric theatre foyer, the scent of Jasmine still sweet from the dance.

The Sutra Dance Company’s excellent performance of Amorous delight was a triumph of near erotica. Together, the skillful ensemble held the prancing reigns of sadness, exhilaration, romance in its grasp, leading the audience this way and that, but always steady. It was a full gamut of emotion, visual and audible, melding choreography, poetry, Odissi Sangita (music), lighting and poignant graphics. A sublime hour rushed past and in true theatrical tradition we were left, like Dickens’ Oliver Twist, wanting more.

Chao's Caprices

Left Martin Bradley, right Chao Harn Kae

Chao Harn Kae’s ceramic and sculpture solo exhibition, at K.L’s Oriental & Cultural Association, along the Old Klang Road, displayed all the ingenuity of a modern revelatory whimsy. A former Malaysian Institute of Art painting graduate (1997), Chao lives mostly in Hong Kong these days creating bronzes, ceramics, painting in oils and making sculptures. He returned to Malaysia to hold his first solo exhibition. This was launched some days after a M.I.A. old boys and girls massive get-together at Datuk Ramil Ibrahim’s Sutra House.

Whimsies are capricious, fanciful, playful. Chao’s Human Beast Series whimsies had the quality of being drawn from memories of childhood, and/or the more capriciously metamorphic elements of Western mythology. Petite white and blue porcelain centaurs (perhaps children of those sons of Ixion), pranced from Thessaly and Ovid’s Metamorphoses onto aged Malaysian railway sleepers. A blue-faced mermaid, her body pale, her piscine tail brushed blue, rested on a rough crafted breeze block. In her broken limbed stance she was another Aphrodite, risen from the sea and echoing the other from Melos, by Alexandros of Antioch. By another block of distressed wood, a blue-armed, white figure lay with its torso and lower body coiled, like a snake. It was most reminiscent of Grendel’s mother, the Anglo-Saxon sea-witch, bane of beowulf, but this male perhaps more resembled the Greek Typhoeus (miniaturised).

Chao was conquering our hearts and minds with his tiny caprices, enchanting his visitors with their sad little faces, be-rouged and frequently coy. A lonely, lost couple sat in a small boat on a railway sleeper sea, one tiny blue rabbit-eared figurine looking this way, another black one that. It was as if they were observing we visitors, forever curious of our curiosity.

Elsewhere in that tantalising display was Chao's Portrait Series, with tall white plinths which enabled intricately manipulated ceramic busts (as the genealogy of those myriad creatures was uncertain perhaps austs is more appropriate) to look out. It all began, Chao intimated, with the one head and neck piece. It was a simple figure. You could imagine it to be the face of a clown, disguised with pale blue make-up, perhaps wearing a tight fitting earthen coloured coif head piece, or cowl. Is the face a mask? Where lies the real persona? Is it behind the mask, or is there no mask but a face, pinch-lipped and cautious-eyed as a character from some Moebius Bande Dessinee perhaps.

Chao developed the concept further. Other head and neck sculptures began appearing, but this time with cowls resembling those of medieval fools, jesters with ass ears like Shakespear’s Nick Bottom (1500s), or Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen's “Laughing Jester” (1515) and Hans Sebald Beham’s "A dancing fool” (1500s). Many of Chao’s series resembled busts of The Lost Boys’ in their Neverland animal costumes, hailing from Walt Disney’s cinematic “Peter Pan” animation (1953). They were cute, but with a distinctive otherness and each with a distinctive, often haunting, face. 

Seeing deer antlers reminded Chao of hands, with fingers. He developed the idea into the head and neck series, then replacing ears with out stretched hands, or placing a hand on the head between the ears. His craftsmanship allowed his visitors to accept his concepts. His deftness and design encouraged a wilful suspension of disbelief as we, the audience, were drawn into his endearing fantasies. 

Aside from the fascinating works of art displayed, and they were fascinating too, Chao admitted that the whole could not have been achieved without a little help from his friends. During the setting up, one friend would advise this, another that, until the display took the splendid shape it was in when I visited. The exhibition visitor was immediately struck by the uniqueness of the display, and of the display materials themselves. To present Chao’s captivating works to their fullest potential, plinths and exhibition blocks had been constructed of breeze-blocks, sections of railway sleepers, distressed and corroded metal troughs as well as the usual white stands, of varying sizes, this resulted in a meld of materials which was both eye-catching and mesmerising.

For the Arno River, Gallarate

Ettore Favini

Captive silver river mirror 

illuminating presenting intellect

Reflection/refraction

Dissipating in darkness 

Permission of luminosity

Permits memory of light 

Reveals delving imaginings

In dolce dialectic

Urban Mining

Mimics mines

Extracting elusive elements

Within Contemporary critiques

Timeless river stretches

Gaul to Gallarate

Echoing meadows

Bound by grassy debates

Intricacies of Modernity

Forgotten Futurismo

Dripping typewritten notes

Presenting word ephemera

Potential poesie

Fragile as life

Fades into lacuna

Please mind the gap

All that is mined

Has been minded

Considerations of context

Collected in collaboration 

Nascent and Renaissance 

Genesis of art

Eternal

Yet strangely irrevocably present 

Ma*Ga quick silver envelopes

Trite tributaries of meaning

Landings of dogma

Jetties of jetsam 

Swift Bats as MIA Gathers

Swift Bats dodged in the humid Malaysian night. Two young red dressed Indian girls swayed and danced Odissi while fireflies flitted around the octgonal stage, at Sutra house. It was the begnning of a rare night's entertainment. 

MIA founder Chung Chen Sun shared his thoughts while performers waited and his audience clapped. Soft songs sought ready ears as one Chinese singer sang to acoustic guitar, speeches abounded, more songs, keyboard and welcome greeting by Malaysian dance maestro Ramli Ibrahim. 

The cream of MIA mingled, ate, ate some more and reminded each other of the need for creativity. The time expanse of the seating was overtaken only by the length of the food queue. Sivarajah Natarajan's The Crowning Glory exhibition hid its brilliance behind pots of masala and crispy, fresh, roti cannai. I braved the food queue and then wrote under a tree fern, watched over by a statue of Ganesha.

Ex MIA students rued the loss of a city statue, others the pairing down of courses at the new Institute. You could feel the commitment to creativity and to each other. I was glad to, momentarily, feel part of the whole.