38. Tony Twigg | Spindle

Spindle was made with other similar works for an exhibition at Taksu Gallery in Singapore and given the collective title, Expanded Discs. Each work in the show, like Spinel began at least notionally as a disc that had been split and prised apart into an oval form.

Formally the oval form is a satisfying shape that offers both the made elements and the space between the made elements a place with in the work. It is held together by its “meniscus” an unseen tension at the edge.

Metaphysical the work maps a passage - from birth to death - from not existing to 

passing through existence to not existing again. It is the dance of life played out between the seen and unseen.

Tony Twigg

Chris Eyre Holmes exhibition of spoons is a response to SLOT’s invitation to non-artists to share a collection that they may have. Unbeknown to me Chris who is a friend of my father has a collection of spoons that she has maintained since her girlhood.

The spoons are attractive enough but not overly interesting. What is interesting are the notes that Chris spontaneously supplied with each spoon. For example - 

“Spoon Two

On the plane from London to Moscow I’d been sitting beside a priest on his way home after 6 months R&R in Rome.  He wanted to buy some chocolates but not to leave the plane. As I was going to stretch my legs I offered to buy them.

As well as the chocolates I found this spoon. I was surprised at how light the wood was and how simply the bird was carved. The bowl of the spoon looked just right for serving casseroles. Having paid in US Dollars I was unwilling ton receive change in Roubles. I was sent to the ned of a huge cue while less complicated transactions were dealt with.

It was a long wait and eventually I was the only person left. As we were finishing the sale an airline stared rushed in and said I must hurry the plane is waiting. Back on board I found that the only reason I’d been chased up was that the priest insisted.”

Or

“Spoon Seven

It was with mixed feelings that we visited Mandalay. As a child I remembered with pleasure my farther singing “on the road to Mandalay”

There are many reminders of colonialism and as an adult I am acutely aware of the human rights issues in the country.The local arts and artefacts are complex and beautiful. Many of them are ornate so I was happy to find this simple spoon. I love its sinuous shape and translucence. It was said to have been carved from Alabaster. Whatever it is made from it is a perfect scoop for yogurt and fits very well into the growing collection.”

It it's clear that each spoon is a talisman that can transport Chris to the time and circumstances when each spoon was collected and that in part, is why she is maintaining a collection of spoons. Their utilitarian function being merely a foil for that true purpose.

This collection allows us to share a life through objects. It may also identify a function of art objects, But finality it confirms that the value of an object is something we place on it rather than something that it has inherently.

Poklong Anading visited SLOT on his way to an artist in residency position he had been awarded at La Trobe University in Bendigo.

Back in Manila he presented a solo show at Finale Art File, which like many galleries in Manila is little more than a shop front in a huge shopping mall. In proportions not unlike SLOT. During the opening of his exhibition an audience had gathered around a neon in the shape of a mouse trap that he had placed on the floor. With their backs turned the artist stepped outside the gallery and photographed his subject that within days was printed as a tarpaulin and displayed in the gallery window as the exhibition. 

Now the exhibit from Finally Art File is displayed in SLOT. We are looking at those who are looking, a metaphor that ricochets back and forth between Manila and Botany Road proposing many different responses to the idea of looking at something that is art in an art gallery.

This collection allows us to share a life through objects. It may also identify a function of art objects, But finality it confirms that the value of an object is something we place on it rather than something that it has inherently.

 Dag girl and the baby in the box is perhaps satirical, certainly oblique and possibly self revelatory - as well as being a Christmas parable that speculates on the anxiety of Dag girl, the generosity of a collection of friendly aqua mutts and a baby that turns up in a box outside a supermarket.

Mai Long explains -“Dag girl is a girl. She doesn’t do sex cos it’s evil.  One late April night Dag Girl is awakened by a disconcertingly vivid nightmare. Rattled by this disturbing dream, she clutches her Peter beads, endlessly reciting prayer - for days, nights and months on end. But horror builds, and six months later Dag Girl suspects she is with child. Dag Girl finds no alternative but to confide in her special friends, the Aqua Mutts.

Sensing Dag girls’ stress, the Aqua Mutts tell her stories - about Immaculate Conception and Virginal Conception.

Dag Girl recognises a ray of hope. Burt no longer sure of what is real or not real this sketch belief in goodness, particularly her own, is short lived. Moreover dag girl viciously doubts her personal worthiness as a recipient of the kindness and friendship offered by the Aqua Mutts: generous, upright, peace-seeking creatures.

Lack of self-belief irrationally catapults her into a reciprocal suspiciousness of everything around her. Wild fabrications build and multiply, imbuing the aqua mutts with unprecedented powers and raising them to an elevated and superior domain all of their own.Self-perpetuating destructiveness spiralling out of control, Dag Girl conceded she is weak and unfit for motherhood.

Seven months gone but no baby bump.  Was Dag girl ever pregnant at all? Was this just some foment of her overactive imagination.

Nine months gone, but no baby bump.

Then suddenly, a baby appears - in a box - outside the local supermarket. Baffled and intrigued, the Aqua Mutts join Dag Girl to witness the phenomenon…..”  

Paul Shops lives not far from SLOT, in Zetland. He is a traveller, visiting the world’s religions - Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity, recently Islam and most exactly Sufism.

“The chief aim of Sufies is to let go of all notions of duality, including a conception of an individual self, and to realise the Devine unity. They make extensive use of parable, allegory and metaphors and it is held by Sufis that meaning can only be reached through a process of seeking the truth.”

In his art Paul is observing the significance of patterning. He is reading patters, for example the ripple pattern of sand as the tide recedes, ideas conveyed symbolically by shapes in various religions and the geometry of Islam that can be read as a form of calligraphy.

“Islamic art is essentially a way of encoding matter by means of geometric and floral patterns united by calligraphic forms, which embody the word of God as revealed in the sacred book, the holy Quran.”
As opposed to heresy there is the truth of unity for Paul in his mixing of religious symbology, in his framing of the Christian cross with an Islamic pattern.  It recalls the amusing tale of Woody Guthrie, the American folk singer registering the birth of his son Arlo. He got to question - Religion an wrote - “all of em or non of em”

Paul Shopis considers a similar question and responds - “What many of us in the west discard as dead faith, say that of our childhood - I believe now - through my journey and my return to Christianity - leads to the same place that Sufism does - that is unity and oneness with the Devine. (Now) I am more comfortable adopting my own cultural faith - the one I was brought up with.” 

I met Haslinda a young woman working as an assistant at Taksu Gallery in Singapore when I was exhibiting there. But that was her day job. She is an artist - who graduated from La Salle College of the Arts and whose monochromatic paintings are receiving well deserved recognition among the young painters of Singapore.

To SLOT Haslinda has offered a series of apparently white drawings that on close examination are more subtly rendered than emphatically monochromatic. They are a single gesture but far from being made as one mark in a single moment - they are an accumulation of marks that have been adjusted, even erased into a crescendo. Like a fine curry that blends various components into a distinct flavour - so it is with Haslinda’s 9 drawings. Each work takes hold of an emotional engagement that leaves its tracing as a residue more than as an accumulated rendering. It is the residue of engagement through time, one that is anything but subtle or timid. It is courageous and heroic and definitely passionate.

An essay on Haslinda’s work written by Zulharli Annan concludes “As her vocabulary of gestures accrue, they subtly record her growth conceptually and artistically as an emerging talent on the Singapore art scene.” 

Multhalib Musa described his work to me as “unrealised visionary architecture”. He studied architecture in Malaysia and design in Adelaide then become a sculptor realising public commissions across South East Asia and in his homeland Malaysia. While there is little sculpture in Malaysia there is a rich tradition of Modernist architecture that no doubt is an influence on his work. His other influence is Islam and the geometry that express his faith.

His works begin in a CAD (computer aided drawing) program on a computer, an architectural tool. He generates formula that guide a mechanical laser as it cuts his design in flat metal sheets. When assembled his works trace the topography of a form in flat bands that twist in space with precision, enormous control and spell binding beauty. The surfaces of these works are left untouched, presented as delivered from the factory, then left to weather, which Multhalib says expresses his Islamic distaste for decorative adornment.

An Involute is a curled spiral that can be described as a mathematical equation. In this case Multhalib has expressed his idea as a CAD formula - cut in metal with a laser, then twisted, animated you might say, by hand, progressively, into a 3 dimensional object. Typically of his work, this austere mechanical process has produced a work of organic beauty that in this case seems to echo representations of the cosmos. It offers thoughts of fractals colliding with accent mysticism that twist harmoniously when the Involuteis touched by a breeze.

I met Multhalib when he came to Sydney as and artist in residence at Art Space and then again when I went to Malaysia where I saw an exhibition of his work at the Australian Embassy in KL., Swirls. It included his entire Involute series made up of works generated by altering various measurements with in the given drawing or formula of the Involute form. It was a spectacular show. In the catalogue he explained that “Without this physical model it is almost impossible for the mind to envisage this spatial configuration even with the aid of a 3D computer program. Therefore the Involute sculptures must exist in the real world before the mind can comprehend…” 

Tracy Luff was born in Penang, Malaysia. She moved to Australia in 1985 with her husband Ross - to Ipswich then Newcastle before settling with him in Goulburn. Along the way in she began making sculptural forms, laminated from sheets of cardboard.

I met her at a Singapore art fair where she was represented by a Melbourne gallery, East&West Art. The serenity of her elegantly formed and fabricated works captivated me and as I commented on them to her dealer she asked “would you like to meet her?.” I was introduced to her and her husband who explained that Tracy envisaged her apparently organic forms on spread sheets where each cardboard lamination of the completed form was plotted before the process of cutting the cardboard on a band saw began. Then the work was assembled, or more correctly threaded on to a metal spinal - like an oversized neck lace - so that it is gravity, not glue that holds the work in place. Perhaps this is what accounts for the untrammelled appearance of her works?

In the brochure that accompanied Tracys Singapore showing she wrote -  “Through the medium of cardboard, I explore the human condition. As the cardboard box is a container, so my vessels are containers of memories and life experiences. As I cut through the skin of the cardboard to reveal it’s inner texture, so my vessels suggest a revelation of self, cutting into inner emotions and thoughts. As each vessel is formed by many layers, so the story of life is multilayered. If there is beauty in the multifaceted surface of each vessel - if beauty is only skin deep - it’s integrity comes from within”

It is a general comment about her work that could correctly be applied to the startling work that she has presented in SLOT.