Online Festival of Video Art, Ready but Postponed or Cancelled, Figure-proof
By Vivyan Yeo, Ho See Wah and Ian Tee

A+ Works of Art celebrates its third anniversary with the A+ Online Festival of Video Art, a physical exhibition ‘Ready but Postponed or Cancelled’, as well as an online exhibition ‘Figure-proof’. These are all testament to founder Joshua Lim’s vision for the gallery to “foster collaboration, interdisciplinary art practices, curatorial projects and critical discourse”. The Kuala Lumpur-based art gallery has consistently provided a platform for the Malaysian and wider Southeast Asian community to come together, and the pandemic has not slowed these efforts down. “These are tough times for everyone, so it’s important to keep that in perspective,” says Lim. “But it’s also important to continue to fight for artists and other cultural workers, including everyone from designers to gallery installers to writers. We have a small but committed circle of regular supporters and collectors, and we need to widen that circle, locally and regionally.” Here, we preview the anniversary events A+ Works of Art has put together with a diverse group of collaborators to straddle both the digital and physical spheres.

A+ Online Festival of Video Art

Thảo Nguyên Phan, ‘Becoming Alluvium’, 2019-ongoing, single-channel colour video, 16 minutes 50 seconds. Image courtesy of A+ Works of Art.

Amongst the first of its kind, the online festival calls attention to video art, highlighting distinct characteristics of the largely overlooked medium. “The support for video art in Malaysia and Southeast Asia is very underdeveloped,” says Lim. “But the work that these artists do is wonderful, and we want to diversify and deepen our support of it.”

The event is a timely rendition within the current pandemic as it utilises a mode of seeing familiar to visitors in lockdown: the moving image. While the digital display of paintings and sculptures may seem out of the ordinary, the viewing of videos online is a comfortable affair for most internet-users. “We believe that online platforms are an ideal space to present new media, video art and photography, which we want to promote to a wider audience, and for which we want to encourage more collecting,” adds Lim. The festival hands viewers the freedom and agency to play, pause, rewind and fast forward the exhibited artworks, providing an experience unique from the public display of video art in physical spaces.

Launching in five time-sensitive phases, the ‘A+ Online Festival of Video Art’ is designed by curators Au Sow Yee, Marc Gloede, Ray Langenbach and Trương Quế Chi. Alongside A+ Works of Art, they each take turns to present their personal selections of artworks, uniting a wide range of messages and video techniques from across Southeast Asia. Several of the invited curators are showcasing their artworks in the festival as well, foregrounding the multiplicity of roles played by art world practitioners.

Ho Rui An, ‘Student Bodies’, 2019, HD video, 26 minutes 30 seconds. Image courtesy of A+ Works of Art.

The current curation by A+ Works of Art opens the festival with the largest number of works from artists Ho Rui An, Orawan Arunrak, Kim, Tan Zi Hao, Trương Quế Chi, Ray Langenbach and Au Sow Yee. Upon entering the show, one first sees Ho’s ‘Student Bodies’, a video that evocatively employs the medium of film to tease out the historical connections between societies in East and Southeast Asia. With strategic overlaying of moving images, manipulated sound and multilingual text, the video presents a nuanced take on capitalism, modernity and pedagogy within the region.

The next selection of works by Au Sow Yee will open on 8 August with artworks by Posak Jodian and Wu Chi-Yu. Adopting a dialectical approach, this curation encourages visitors to reflect on their states of being within the current global situation. When asked about visitor experiences, Au expressed her hopes for the audience to take away “conversation, not only within oneself, but within socio-political situations in the region.”

‘Ready but Postponed or Cancelled’

Noor Mahnun Mohamed, 'Sarsi', 2020, oil on linen, 30.5 x 51cm (diptych). Image courtesy of A+ Works of Art.

The gallery recognises the precarious positions that COVID-19 has imposed on practitioners. In response, A+ Works of Art has collaborated with The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre in Ho Chi Minh City and Arario Gallery which has spaces in Seoul, Shanghai and Cheonan, for the physical exhibition ‘Ready but Postponed or Cancelled’ at its premises. As the title suggests, the presentation will feature artists who have been preparing artworks for their various shows in 2020, which have since been postponed or cancelled. The exhibition presents an opportunity to view artworks in the flesh once again as restrictions are cautiously lifted, an experience that has been sorely missed by many in the art community.

At the same time, ‘Ready but Postponed or Cancelled’ is an act of solidarity and support for the many artists affected by abruptly changing plans. It is an avenue for presenting works that would otherwise be put on the shelf indefinitely, such as for Malaysian artist Chong Kim Chiew, who was slated to have a now-postponed solo exhibition at A+ Works of Art in June 2020. Chong’s works are heavily informed by his local environs and reinterprets conventional understandings of it to spurn refreshed meanings. In a country —and a world — altered by the virus, such reinterpretations may prove to be even more valuable as we find new ways to navigate “the new normal”.

Ha Ninh Pham, ‘F2.2 [organic rig number two]’, 2020, graphite, colored pencils, and acrylic on paper, 107 x 66cm. Image courtesy of A+ Works of Art.

Vietnamese artist Hà Ninh Pham will also be presenting artworks from a postponed duo exhibition with Trương Công Tùng , ‘World’s Apart’, that was meant to open later in the year at the gallery. The artist creates otherworldly landscapes to think about how we construct territories from a peripheral viewpoint, a timely exercise in imagination as we are increasingly bordered in because of strict travel restrictions.

Other participating artists include Philippine artist Leslie de Chavez, Malaysian artists Noor Mahnun Mohamed and Yim Yen Sum, and the Sabah-based collective Pangrok Sulap. Even as the artworks are presented outside of their original contexts, the exhibition performs as an archive of sorts in documenting the challenges, disruptions and resilience during this highly unusual period for the art community and the world at large.

‘Figure-proof’

Miguel Puyat, ‘dappled sunlight (through the collages)’, 2020, found glass, found wood, cardboard cutouts, nuts and bolts. Image courtesy of the artist and A+ Works of Art.

'Figure-proof' is the inaugural presentation of A+ Works of Art's online exhibition platform. Curated by Manila-based curator Carlos Quijon Jr., the show is an invitation to reconsider notions of the figurative during this exceptional time of global pandemic. The title is ambivalent in its play of meanings, suggesting the impossibility of figuring out or a resistance to representation and likeness. Five young artists from the Philippines respond to this provocation through the lens of their unique practices.

Reflecting on the online exhibition format, Quijon says it is a place for experiment and an opportunity to foreground new ways of approaching art-making, display and public engagement. He highlights the intricate relationship between space and editorial design as a key factor in shaping viewer experience. "The point of engagement also becomes uniform in this case, as everyone accesses the show via a screen and a digital user interface," Quijon elaborates. The presentation is developed with Kenta Chai, a designer based in Kuala Lumpur, with these considerations in mind.

Celine Lee, ‘Composition of Red, Yellow, and Blue under the pH level of 12’ (detail), 2020, bleach and water on dyed abaca paper. Image courtesy of the artist and A+ Works of Art.

Another conscious curatorial decision is to feature artists across the Philippine archipelago and not just ones based or trained in Manila. This gesture takes advantage of the online format to gather practices from the periphery, something Quijon notes "would have been challenging if it were a physical exhibition". Jan Sunday is a self-taught artist who was until recently based in Cebu; while Ginoe is a creative based in Silay City, Negros Occidental. Both artists take the body and portraiture as points of departure to explore feminine and queer themes.

The exhibition also draws attention to different ways of dealing with and working in the context of a pandemic. Utilising materials she had in stock during the lockdown, Celine Lee has created abstract paintings with abaca paper and bleach, a cleaning agent that has since become ubiquitous, while Miguel Puyat has focused on the activity of going outside for sunlight, fashioning a toy that requires the sun for its figures to form. And Pam Quinto's resin-dipped underwear sculptures are poignant relics associated with the preciousness of intimacy. Taken together, these works show how artistic practices have been transformed by the crisis and found expression through eclectic visual and material languages.

'A+ Online Festival of Video Art' runs from 1 August to 14 September 2020. The festival is free to attend, with registration.

‘Ready but Postponed or Cancelled’ at A+ Works of Art runs from 8 August to 5 September 2020 and viewing is by appointment only. To visit, please contact +6018 333 3399 or info@aplusart.asia.

‘Figure-proof’ runs from 15 August to 12 September 2020.