Front Row

Soon Heng takes a tour of an off-the-beaten-track gallery nestled in Bukit Tunku. In this apartment-gallery which shares the block with eateries, offices a bank and other professional service providers, he gets an almost first-hand account of HRH Sultan Ismail’s life behind the camera and sees several original prints. 

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To celebrate International Women’s Day and to draw attention to women’s struggles in balancing their careers and personal lives, the gallery owners of Artemis Art has organized an exhibition titled Equilibrio (brio, in music means a vivacious performance style). The curator, UC Loh and two of 22 exhibiting artists tell about their works and how they are expressing this “either found or continuously changing” equilibrium.

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To keep discussion vibrant and relevant, a group of public intellectuals maintain an online blog site. A particular subject of discussion in cyberspace now takes shape in the real world with an exhibition on the  discussions on faith in Kelantan, which many Malaysians know often only nominally and with assumptions formed from hearsay rather than facts. The curator of the exhibition, ‘Khabar dan Angin: Excursus on Faith in Kelantan’, and two artists share the process and and their created products of this exhibition.

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This is Shakespeare’s year, and on-air today is the second UK act to visit our country. The actors from The Handlebards, a theatre troupe that is barely three years old, share their thoughts on performing the Bard. They are touring Southeast Asia, for the first time, after traveling and performing the length of the UK carrying all sets, props, costumes and all on just four bicycles with trailers. These four actors play all 22 characters in their version of one of Shakespeare's most popular works ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

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The curators of the exhibition ‘Love Me in my Batik’ educate us on the history of this art form and situate the craft as practiced in our country in the context of region. They inform on the works that are displayed which include several from Indonesia. 

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The Chinese New Year celebrations have given birth to a special orchestral concert featuring Chinese music called "A Celebration of Chinese Music". The director and the featured violinist share about preparing the orchestra to play and tell about the significance of the pieces to be performed, several of which were composed in the 1950s.  

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We talked our way into a dress-rehearsal and realizing that many a technical slip between tonight and opening night can be fixed, we veer away from any discussion of line hiccups, miscued light changes, etc., and focused on the elements that engaged us.

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This four-year-old a capella group is staging a musical presentation about a girl named Aisya--her trials, dreams hopes and triumphs.  The performance takes songs by by local and international artistes including P. Ramlee, Marvin Gaye, John Legend, Michael Jackson and Muse, amongst others, and combines multimedia effects to depict Aisya’s journey. The group sings on-air and tells about putting this show together with choreography by Michael Voon.

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The artist’s works are off to VOLTA NY, an American incarnation of the Basel VOLTA Show, an invitation-only exhibition. The artist talks about these most recent works and the impulse that led to their execution. His daughters feature in these works which are described as continuing his exploration of duality.

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Keeping traditional performances alive is Pusaka’s mission, and in pursuing that, it opens the year with a puppet show in Teochew. It has invited the Kim Giak Low Choon Puppetry Troupe, led by Ling Goh (of Penang) to stage a performance. Pauline Fan and Yana Rizal from Pusaka gave details not only of the troupe and the tale that will be performed but the craft the troupe keeps alive in the face of 21st century challenges.

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