Glory and unity in art, and loss

Thailand at the advent of the Asean Economic Community might be lagging behind its neighbours in some pursuits, but the past year has helped put it at the top of the pack in terms of art. 

Although not as wealthy as Singapore, which opened a Bt13.7-billion National Gallery in November, Bangkok still intends to become the art hub of Southeast Asia. And there are enough foreign art critics agreeing that the Thai art scene is freer and more exciting than Singapore’s for the ambition to be realistic. 

The Kingdom has lately garnered attention with the opening of the first Asean Cultural Centre and a series of important exhibitions hosted by the government and by private galleries in the capital.

Heritage meets high tech at the Bt15-million Asean Cultural Centre, which opened on August 7 on the third floor of the Culture Ministry’s Contemporary Art Centre on Ratchadamnoen Klang Avenue. Its interactive digital displays and a wealth of artefacts constitute an education in the history, art and livelihoods of the region.

All 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are mounting shows for the facility, primarily traditional singing and dancing, but the focus was on contemporary art for the exhibition “Missing Links” from May through October. Curator Gridthiya Gaweewong from the Jim Thomson Art Centre assembled installations, video art and photographs by artists from all of the Asean member-countries save Brunei. 

 

Photo Bangkok

The same sense of regional unity was evident in the inaugural Photo Bangkok extravaganza in July, with more than 60 Southeast Asian photographers displaying their work in 20 galleries. Piyatat Hemmatat mounted the Bt6-million festival, recruiting dozens of Thai artists, curators and galleries for the cause. Among the standout shows was “Pause” at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre and “Rediscovering Forgotten Thai Masters of Photography” at Bangkok University.

 

New frontiers

Bangkok boasts more than 40 art galleries and this year added two more, both commercial in nature and both located in the Sathorn business area.

YenakArt Villa opened in June on Yen Akart Road, playing with the name. Frederic Meyer, who owns a few French restaurants in the city, and Jeremy Opritesco, a former cultural attache at the French Embassy, set up shop in a grand example of 1930s European avant-garde architecture and admit customers by appointment only.

They host a fresh exhibition almost every month in their 160-square-metre space with a five-metre-high ceiling and a gorgeous garden outside. The Villa has mainly solo shows by both Thai and foreign artists and also provides room for an artist in residence.

Bangkok CityCity Gallery opened in August, a Bt15-million undertaking by a young couple, collectors Akapol Sudasna and Supamas Phahulo. The inaugural show featured Thailand’s hottest manga artist, Wisut Pornnimitr. Upcoming contemporary Thai artists will be their stock in trade.

The ultra-modern, museum-standard facility has the main 200-square-metre gallery with a ceiling six metres up, tall enough to accommodate huge installations as well as fashion shows, mini-concerts, live theatre and film screenings. There’s a cafe with a big window overlooking Sathorn Soi 1 that can double as a separate exhibition space or host lectures and workshops. And they too have a lovely garden where you might just catch some live theatre.

 

Thainess on tour

The 60th birthday of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn was celebrated throughout the year with cultural events at home and in China and Britain. It was a prime opportunity for the Culture, Foreign Affairs and Tourism and Sports ministries to promote Thai culture abroad. 

Soon after her birthday on April 2, the Princess flew to Beijing to perform in concert playing the ranad-ek and to display some of her acclaimed photos. That event also celebrated the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between our nations.

Dubbed the “Totally Thai” festival, in June Londoners were treated to an epic dose of Thai fine arts. First the classical dance of khon was staged at the glorious Royal Albert Hall. Then there was the Thai Film Festival, hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts at its Princess Anne Theatre in Piccadilly. 

Finally there was “Thailand Eye”, an exhibition of contemporary works by 23 artists held at the influential Saatchi Gallery. It opened late last month and in fact continues into January. The home crowd will get to see what London previewed when the show is mounted in March at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Presented by the life-assurance giant Prudential, “Thailand Eye” is also the subject of a magnificent coffee-table book of the same name, featuring pieces by 75 artists. As Apinan Poshyanonda of the Culture Ministry said, “Contemporary art is a key factor in building a bright future for our creative economy.”

 

Final farewells

This year began on a sad note with the death on January 26 of the eminent sculptor Saiyart Sema-ngern, age 70. Winner in 2008 of the Culture Ministry’s Silpathorn Award for creative design, he had a unique way with wood and built some wonderful furniture pieces as well.

Saiyart’s trademarks included the age-old skill of joining wood without nails and using old pieces of buffalo carts, ploughs and rice barges, which became lively tabletop figures. Long before his death he built his own coffin, again utilising recycled timber. 

On June 4 National Artist Chalood Nimsamer died at age 86. Once a student of Silpa Bhirasri, “the father of modern Thai art”, Chalood also studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Italy and mastered lithography at the Pratt Graphic Centre in New York. It was for sculpture, though, that he was named a National Artist, in 1998. A pioneer of conceptual art in the Kingdom, he used objects found in daily life for the 1982 series “Rural Environmental Sculpture”, a hymn to the simple way of life in the countryside.

Only weeks later, on July 15, Paisan Pienbangchang, one of Thailand’s early heroes of performance art, died at age 54 following a long battle with cancer. The College of Fine Arts graduate made a name for himself as a critic, a writer and an activist who addressed social issues through body art.

A prominent advocate for human rights and the environment, Paisan would use everyday items as props in his performances – as well as blood, both real and fake. He would sometimes physically hurt himself to depict the suffering of the underprivileged.

A National Artist in literature, Prabhassorn Sevikul died on September 18, the victim of heart failure at age 67. Armed with schooling in international relations and comparative politics, he’d joined the Foreign Ministry in 1969 and served in Laos, Germany, Turkey, New Zealand and Chile. It was his long diplomatic career, providing insight into different cultures, history and art, that inspired his novels.

He was a master of the Thai language and had a gift for imparting deeply felt sentiments in simple prose. His most-loved work is “Wela Nai Khuad Kaew” (“Time in a Bottle”), his sixth novel, serialised in a magazine, then published in book form in 1986, reprinted many times since, and thrice adapted for the big screen and television.