Sidang Seni SINI 2008 day two

Several interesting talks on day two. Rachel Ng from Valentine Willie gave a really informative talk about the current art market in Southeast asia. She’s the manager for Valentine Willie art gallery in Bangsar. It is abit different from all the other talks. Arts in a private gallery are really a form of commodity. Almost like buying and selling houses or properties. Plenty of speculation. There are really no standards to judge whether any artists’ works would appreciate or become worthless. The rise of China’s artists in the global art market is abit surprising. She quoted an example of Zhang xiao gang’s work that was sold for 6 million in 2008 but was only worth 9 thousand in 2007. Then of course we will have to realise that the earning doesn’t really go to the artists but it is the return for the investment by the collector. So collectors are making of money. Even though the auction price will push the market value of an artist’s work higher but the artist will never be able to make as much money as the collector.

Another interesting talk was by Hasnul Saidon on the development of art in malaysia after 1990. A very down to earth speaker. From his writing, I can see that he posseses plenty of knowledge but he speaks with the language of the common people. For much of his talk, he was focusing on criticising the art critics for stereotyping Uitm and creating a negative impression of its teaching style. He was especially cynical about Piyadasa’s phrase “malay revivalist proclivities”. He said that Uitm had been stereotyped for being malay-centric and islamic centric which he claimed was baseless. I must agree that most of what critics put forward cannot really be used as properly researched conclusion. They are often emotional remarks based on their own experience and observation. Another fallacy is perhaps due to the lack of writings about the art movements in malaysia that most critics only ended up refering to the limited few art historians for reference. When enough people repeatedly talk about the same conclusion over and over again, it can really become a form of truth.

To end the seminar, there was Dato’ Syed Ahmad Jamal passionately speaking about the spirit of an artists speaking of his own experience. “You are born new everyday”, he said. The art is the representation of the spirit of our community, our souls and who we are. A very inspiring speech from him. He was so moved by the whole thing that he made a quick jawi writings on the small whiteboard on the stage to end his speech.

A good start for visual arts in malaysia. Sad to see very few participation from other ethic groups except malays. For some reason, there is a bad habit for conference presenters in Malaysia to write papers that has no bibliography or references at all. To upkeep the quality of the seminar, it is the responsibility of the organiser to reject such poorly written papers. I suppose in someway, there are probably not enough papers to choose from for presentation also.  Still, it is acceptable as malaysian standard. What’s important is somebody making the effort of organising it.