The works exhibited address the domestic, public, and virtual when considering proximity and place. Domestic and interior spaces act as vessels for our origins, cultural values, and personal relationships. Public spaces have become increasingly intimate with the advent of social media and online connectivity. And virtual spaces are examined in a Deleuzian sense that can evoke both the ideal and real.
Ivy Marie Apa uses parchment – specifically pages from a bible – as surfaces for detailed paintings of decaying objects. Apa collects apples, nails and paper, and observes them from her studio, painting them in their weakened state. Apa performs the role of the anthropologist making an enquiry into the aura of the religious document, and testing its potential as a prosaic form.
Nice Buenaventura’s B.A.B.E.L II (Leisurely Erasing Body after Body) addresses the recent interment of Ferdinand Marcos’ remains in Manila’s Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes’ Cemetery), revising a history of theft and murder into one of heroism. Buenaventura uses banal office materials such as toner and copy paper to construct an almost invisible map of the cemetery, the detail erased and the fading lines resembling the last gasp of the printer’s toner cartridge. Forms resembling paperweights signify the weight of history bearing down in a collection of objects that give form to the everyday nature of abhorrent behaviours.
Alfred Marasigan’s installation, Locale 4, uses the vernacular of the streetside stall and situates it in a sky blue expanse that asserts itself in the gallery space. Marasigan’s previous iterations of this series include a Manila advertising billboard as a colour-filled painting and a large gradient banner extending over the exterior of Manila’s famous Cultural Center of the Philippines. Marasigan’s oevre considers place and cartographies as an entry point for personal revelation and Marasigan mines his experiences of places from his past as data, for the examinations of identities and self.
Nomar Miano’s paintings of naked figures with votive-like arrangements contain symbols of hygiene and cleanliness. The vulnerable figures contort and shy from the viewer and are contrasted with the orderly configuration of the items next to them, the Morandi-like tones of the paintings coalescing in a composition both restrained and haunting.
Gigi Ocampo’s paintings stare penetratingly at the viewer in a field of static and brushstrokes. Red jester-like smiles sit uncomfortably on the figures, women who remain trapped in a place of expectations and uncomfortable histories.
Soika Vomiter’s wall painting Philippine Bombing Festival commemorates the moment of impact of a bombing in his hometown of Hilongos, Leyte in 2016. The event signified a shift of the tenor of unrest in the region and brought home for the artist the reality of our nearness to disaster.
– Tania Smith 2017
Curator
