Written by lainie at 04:34 PM on September 4, 2008 in Friends, Arty stuff.

It's when I find myself with time to sit down and write, that the realisation my life is going faster than I can self-document sinks in. This on occasion forces me to take a more topical, all-encompassing route in my posts, as opposed to the scattered diary entries I am more familiar with. I know la, which makes me look like a better writer, but my blog's primary function is to record things I do because my memory sucks .

[ Parts of my keyboard don't work. I write everything, then copy and paste the relevant missing letters in after, including in this post. No, I'm not even close to kidding. The rate I fervently C&P during chat sessions is testament to the blossoming chatroom bunny in me. Or my inner spelling nazi, but this blog's regular readers will have good reason to doubt that. And, my laptop regularly hangs at will without warning. ]

You could say these experiences make me more consciously appreciate the time-worthy things I encounter, as I recently did. A winner of Annexe's Grants for Grabs, CAIS Project posters and flyers have been prominently displayed about everywhere in Annexe (nicely designed, too). I would probably have missed it but for Rachel inviting me to her art tour of the exhibition.

 CAIS stands for Contemporary Art in School, an initiative by the folks over at Rumah Air Panas (RAP). It's a great thing that has started in Stella Maris high school, but it seems to be drawing far less attention that either project or readers deserve.  

If you are a product of the same art syllabus I was in local school, your Pendidikan Seni (art) lessons chiefly consisted of painting swaying coconut trees (4 leaves each) by the beach or a kampung house. It is nothing new to rue the state of our education system, suffice to say it could be dramatically improved - as CAIS has done.

Tree with more than 4 leaves!

Doodling  for fun with some coloured pens jogged my memory back to those times in pendidikan seni. The highest grade I ever got for art was C+, a result of laziness and point-blank refusal to paint landscapes (homework, pfft). I'd have loved this CAIS Project in school.

Yap Sau Bin (pic left), co-curator and one of the founders of RAP, accompanied us for the tour.

Lainie: Why weren't you at my school doing this? So cool!

Sau Bin: No funding back then .

So what is CAIS doing, exactly? Come, let me butcher their manifesto (because I can't find my copy) and tell you.

[ If you're going for the art talk, and you like surprises, SPOILERS AHEAD - are these warnings usually used for art exhibitions? ] 

Getting the artists to work with the students. Getting students to participate in making art - not just in execution but in conceptualising too. Challenge them to view the space around them differently, or at least with more awareness - observable in many cases. Having artists do site-specific work around the school.

Think "interesting use of space". A mural along the corridor - one side, the eye of the universe's creator, with planets and galaxies reflected in the pupil. On the other side, the universe as seen in the eye is painted. The students came up with that.

This one's clever! (wait, let me explain the wire fish head first). It's built in a courtyard-like area of the school that's shaped like the hull of a ship, which immediately brings to mind the figurehead found on the bow. This piece, plainly titled "fish head", is based on the head of a particular species of fish known as "Schoolmaster". Geddit...geddit....? 

Rach pointed out you won't find a single work done on canvas here. A school filled with art! And none on canvas. Kinda cool.

Rach, wearing her CAIS Project button, given out at the exhibition (I took a blue one). Rachel started writing about art for Kakiseni a while back, and boooom! Articles about art in many other publications followed very quickly.

This time, she conducted the art tour around Stella Maris, talking about the works exhibited, what the artist was trying to do in each instance, observations that could be drawn, and cracked a lot of school related jokes only I seemed to get / layan (this way please. And in single file!). Being ex-schoolmates from Main Convent, Ipoh, we couldn't help but lament that our school wasn't anything like this.

Part of the art tour staring at the fish head. It's a nice place for the sculpture. I don't imagine it would have worked as well anywhere else.

 The next part was a bit morbid. On the board in the laboratory, a video: split screen of a newborn being bathed, while the baby monkey on the right is dead, being scrubbed and prepared for a formaldehyde bath. I find this an uncomfortable juxtaposition - both newborns look so similiar, but one's life holds far less value in our society. Poor monkey. And then.......

.....I realise they displayed the monkey . Please don't tell me they killed the baby monkey for this....

Owl in formaldehyde. When I was in secondary school, we took a vote and decided not to dissect any frogs. I'd like to think that eating animals is better than having 35 grossed out and disinterested girls maiming a drugged out frog to little effect (except, perhaps, more students turning vegetarian and anti-vivisection).

It's been a long while since I stepped into the labs in Taylors college, much less my makmal (lab) days in school. Stella Maris had a variety of "specimens" laid around, and it felt like a warped revisit to my school, but no one was wearing their uniforms. I was there on Saturday, you see. No students around.

My school's makmal was more ganas (fiercer), we had a human foetus in ours. I think many of us Main Convent girls have examined the huge jar over the years. 

Chirpier, if less provocative, is this trompe l'oeil piece at the narrow staircase, simulating a view of the outside world. I told her it was somewhat ironic that the escapist view they painted on the walls of their school happened to be the church? One institution to another.. 

Stella Maris looks out to the back of Puduraya, and a construction site that has been there about a decade or so. Nice. With Puduraya just next door, I didn't imagine these kids get a lot of clean air. All those buses in one concentrated area made me think of the time I was inhaling the nastier air in Oxford (highest ratio of bus services per capita in UK, that).

Ostritch eggs painted with costumed superheroes by Shia Yih Yiing. The fragility of constructed fantasy images? This room also contained Ahmad Fuad Osman's exhibition, Recollections of Long Lost Memories, where the artist has injected a hippie looking observer into various vintage scenes taken from photographs (as below) leading up to the Mahathir era (grinning his face off as Mahathir tearfully resigns yet again).

Photo taken from Rimbun Dahan website

For those who missed the huge hype in the local art world about Matahati's recent exhibition (and to be fair, it is easy to miss any huge hype in this scene), this part of Fuad's exhibition in Galeri Petronas was very, very popular - probably very much due to the obvious poke-humour many of the pieces had. In Stella Maris, you will see a video showing you a collection of (all?) images in the series. 

confess your sins here!

A photo of TEAR (a homonym, so play with the words a bit over here). I love this part of the exhibition. The contemplative environment of the library is perfect for an installation of a confessional room. You're supposed to flip the way awesome B&W blinds to signal the room is being used for confession (Foucault, anyone?), light a candle (mostly for atmosphere), and then confess your sins anonymously (unless you'd REALLY like to share) by marking the tissue paper laid on the table - use the onions! - with your confession.

Then tear away the top sheet, that's your confession and souvenir to keep. Leave the bottom copy with the other confessions at the side of the table (you can try and decipher the previous ones too, like I did). Again, clever use of space.

I would have installed this in the loo, but you know. Library is probably better. Depends on the concept.

About the only part of the tour that didn't offer any surprises was the wall of graffiti - something I'd expected, along with the words like "Honour", "Truth" or whatever virtue, as loudly painted here. 

Call me a skeptic about the choice of words they painted, but perhaps once they get being politically correct out of the way, the content creativity can come in. From what I've seen around the school, some students have a really fun mind.

This could also become the most interesting bit of the exhibition, provided they keep it open to future graffiti. Imagine having a throw up in school! Much better than Cenfad, where you get bitten by mosquitos and have to avoid being seen (it's behind the toilets).

From Bath Room.

Another one I love, from the Exchange Project. At their indoor basketball court, students came up with the concept of putting in a bathroom where you can take a shower (though I'm pretty sure the bathtub is really only there for aesthetic purposes). The walls are lined with lyrics, you're supposed to sing in the shower there. Mamma mia, here I go again..My my.

 The Flash is the favourite superhero of artist's son. I don't know why I arranged this here.

You'll also see Vincent Leong's Run, Malaysia, Run! (originally in VWFA gallery), Wong Hoy Cheong's video installation. Also, many instances of duality, and deprivation of the senses (Erica Eaton or "angel" performance art by students under Amanda Heng's guidance in Project Exchange)....... Aiyo takde masa to blog . 

Just go see it tomorrow, please. And if you're the kind that needs credentials, yes there are all sorts of artists here: award-winning, renowned, Venice biennale, Korea biennale, banyak lagi biennale, founders of berbanyak things (eg: Erica Eaton = Evolutionary Girls Club).

But I'm not really asking you to go there for the names. I'm asking you to go there and see a wonderful learning environment for art set up in a school - for this, I think Rumah Air Panas has done a fantastic job. It looks like it's been a huge commitment and plenty of work for a lot of people, but it's pulled through really nicely and I would love to see this brought to other schools. Well done to Stella Maris for picking up on this.

There are artist talks for the students and community (registration required), but if you want to go for what I went for, which is the art tour:

ART TOURS

On the 5th, 1.40-3pm, Friday (tomorrow): Exhibition walkthrough with CAIS curator Yap Sau Bin

On the 6th, 2pm-3pm, Saturday (day after): Exhibition walkthrough with art writer Rachel Jena

LOCATION

Stella Maris secondary school, Jalan Robertson, Kuala Lumpur.

(On Jalan Pudu, you know the construction site next to Puduraya? And there's an old car salesroom at the corner? the turn in to Jalan Robertson is there. Watch out for the road sign if the line of buses trying to get into Puduraya is very long).

I would recommend you go on Friday if you can because Sau Bin is a curator, and therefore more familiar with the creative processes that went into the show, and most relevant: because the school is devoid of students on Saturday, which makes it feel very different.

Otherwise, Saturday's art tour by Rachel Jena is also very fun, and Sau Bin will most likely be there anyway to provide additional trivia-info on exhibitions.