T For Travel

A few days ago, the National Arts Council of Singapore announced that Matthew Ngui )has been elected as the third Artistic Curator and Director of the annual arts festival, the Singapore Biennale.  Ngui is one of the most respected artists throughout the international art world, and this appointment has the first native Singaporean in charge in charge of this event.  2009 will be the third year of the festival, and the Council is hopeful that this will secure Singapore’s position on the international map, secure the position that Singapore has so longed for, that of an international artistic hub, the center, and one of the leaders in the world of visual arts.  Many of the businesses throughout the city, such as Singapore luxury hotels, benefit from the festival as well.  As many travel from all corners of the world, to either participate in the festival, or to experience it as audience members.

Ngui has had years of experience in the biennale celebrations throughout the world, and along with his credentials and expertise of his own work overseas, Singapore and the Council are quite confident that he will lead this years Singapore Biennale into great success.  He is known to create work that is specific to the regions and cities that he is working in, bringing the locals into the process and involving the culture from within he works.  This is a concept that the Council and the Government of Singapore has been working towards for years.  For not only is important to bring as many spectators and artists in from other parts of the world, it is of utmost importance to involve the local people and the local cultures.

Ngui has also been gaining experience as a curator, working on the Biennale of 2008, as well as exhibiting at the Biennale celebrations in Venice, Sao Paulo and Gwangju.  In 2001 he became one of the first four Singaporean artists to represent the country in Venice, previously he was the very first to show at the Documenta Biennale in 1997.  He began as a sculptor and eventually moved into the realm of performance art, installation pieces, video and public art.  The 2001 Biennale will no doubt be quite a spectacular event with Ngui at the helm of such an incredibly talented group of international artists.

Most of the beautiful and ancient art in the world today, is in South Africa.  And now, some of the most diverse and exciting new work is being produced by the contemporary and modern painters of this country.  Many of the buildings showcase new work including the restaurants, the government buildings and offices and even the luxury hotels.  Cape Town artists, and artists from the entire region had been focusing on depicting and describing the new world during the times of the colonial era.  Often times as reporters reporting back, such as with Thomas Baines.  He toured the country making sketches and paintings of the natural world, the people, the flora, the landscapes and the fauna, much in the same way a court-room artist records that which the cameras do not see.

Then the artists began to shift their focus during the end of the nineteenth century.  They started to create works for the sake of art in and of itself, not as reports sent back to the city, but as the expression of what life was like living in South Africa, and being South African.  Anton van Wouw, sculptor, and Hugo Naude and Jan Volschenk, two painters, began to give a sense of art that is locally rooted in the culture and the society of their homeland.  And through these works began to gain an identity that is purely South African.

Two of South Africa’s female artists working in the early 1930′s, Irma Stern and Maggie Laubscher, created a bit of a scandal when they began employing techniques of expressionism, using bold colors and strong compositions that expressed their own personal views, which caused them to clash a bit with the more traditional and old fashioned ideologies and subject matter.  And during the years of apartheid, the art sometimes attacked the oppression and the racism, while at other times succeeded in lifting up those who were struggling.  There are many galleries and museums throughout the country of South Africa, wherein it is most suggested one should spend time with the history and the beauty, and tour what was and has been, and what will become for South African art in the future.