My colleagues from Bob Associates Dino Hafian, June Lai, Ahmad Effendy, Eddino Hadi and Apad members Mr. Abdul Rahman Rais and Sazali Rahmat. My colleagues made me a T-shirt as gift which reads “Call me Batik Master” – ahem!
My batik installation. The label reads:
VEHICLE 1: FANTASY OF FLIGHT
Batik on cotton, fitted to a pentagon dome structure
made of aluminium tubes. 300cm x 76cm x 5 panels
My research and practice for this MA programme concerns batik-painting in contemporary art-making.
I find in this technique an expressive medium for extending my long-standing practice of drawing with ink on rice paper. The explicit traces and cracklings of wax presented a wealth of expression subjected to various element of chance. Cloth on the other hand, as a convention for adorning bodies presented a wealth of possibility in artistic projection.
My inspiration are derived from a meditated practice of ‘automatic drawings’, which often resulted in fantastical morphing of organic forms juxtaposed with mundane objects. They postulate the complexities of recognizing our ethnic originality, which are a confluence of cultural conditioning and preoccupation with contemporary settings. Paraphernalia of flight happens to be one of the recurring phenomena in my drawings.
