ALIEN/S
27 March to 25 June 2017
Curated by Kiron Robinson
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Poklong Anading, Rico Entico, Cocoy Lumbao, Sanja Pahoki, Utako Shindo and MM Yu
I wasn't born in Australia. As a kid I moved around a lot between countries and home before stopping in Melbourne. I still feel like there is somewhere else I should go to. Often it is just another part of the city, somewhere I haven't seen before, somewhere that has seen me. The artists in this program all in one way or another are considering this idea. being somewhere while thinking about somewhere else, being somewhere while being seen as from being somewhere else. - Kiron Robinson
Images:
Rico Entico, Pabalik na Sayo (Going Back to You), 2014, 3m32s
MM Yu, No Signal (excerpt), 2005 - 2017, 8m11s
Cocoy Lumbao, To The Reader (excerpt), 2015, 7m21s
Poklong Anading, linedrawing (excerpt) 1998 -2017
Sanja Pahoki, A message from the future, 2016, HD video 5m
Utako Shindo, Topologies Between the Three, 2016, 3m55s
Alien/s
Bugs are everywhere here. Creatures. Creeping, crawling things. The ground is covered with them. The flora obscures them, you can almost forget, off the edges of the concrete the land is one great shifting carpet of things. I sit on a bench and watch closely for their movements, a few emerge and scamper across the concrete.
The air is gripped with a warm, thick tension. I look up into a grey, old sky, the back of my neck is wet. My jaw is itchy. Scratching brings a discordant anxiety rummaging through the back of my head. The itching persists, I feel bitten by something. Something in this strange air, perhaps. Or perhaps I am just allergic to this place. I check the time. Brax!... We have to go... Now.
I stand and notice a bug limply investigating the tip of my boot. I flick my foot to brush it away, accidentally smashing it’s fragile body on the path. It smooshes like a grape.
Fuck I offer under my breath. I look around, as if being watched. I scuff my boot over the dead thing a couple more times before walking off. I head over to the twins, tied up by their leads to the fence. They sit digging in sand. I unhook them as Brax appears alongside me.
You two ready? I ask as I jangle the lead, one of them growls in return. Brax, stay close... I’m not letting these guys off the leash. We’re in a rush.
We march off down the path, which runs a short distance to a road. Giant trees form a canopy, which gives the impression of a giant green intestine stretching down to the main street. Shaded homes line the way. I wonder if any peering eyes set themselves at the windows, to catch a glimpse of our odd group. The gentle passing of strangers from this place always confounds, I have made a habit of keeping my gaze solemnly towards my feet as I walk.
A small group of shops huddle together, the only indication of a community for miles. A kind of deli, or meat shop, sits last on the left. As we get closer I am pricked by some nagging feeling, a self-imposed obligation. I stop at the front window filled with lengths of odd meats. Giant hocks of flesh, bulbous, strangled tubes like tortured snakes. Whole carcasses, roped-up to entice, more purple than red.
I crack the front door of this death bazaar.
Brax, do not touch a thing. I grip the two by my side tighter, gently pushing them through the door. Keeping them close to my legs, I take little steps. A woman peers at us from behind the counter. Her eyes bulging from their sockets, an ugly visage, unnaturally contorting to greet me with an uneasy smile.
Um... Hi... I just wanted to tell you, I bought some... meat from here a couple of days ago.
Meat?
Yeah... and when I was cooking it... I saw it had, kind of, maggots in it.
Maggots?
Yeah. I mean... I’m not after credit or anything... I just thought you should know.
Oh...
Yeah.
I’ll tell the boss.
Yeah... Okay... well, have a nice day... I offer awkwardly. I motion for Brax to exit and usher the twins out after him. I feel a certain sense of relief for being out of the shop. Though my anxiety returns in kind as Brax dutifully marches off ahead of me. I take my phone out of my pocket and flick to the calendar. 1729 days until we can go home.
- Baruday Logan, 2017
Poklong Anading’s spectrum of works ranges from video, installation, photography, drawing, and painting, while continuously expanding other seemingly autonomous projects that reinforce the investigative and descriptive characteristics of art. In “linedrawing”, A video done by drawing lines on canvas until the pencil was worn down, creating a hypnotic visual effect a sense of volume, time, and fluid plenitude out of a basic gestural mark which draws subtle lines connecting performance drawing and other media. It signify how the author’s hand and eye might be totally enmeshed in the traces they create, relinquishing control to the marks that are alive even in the author’s absence.
Poklong Anading graduated from the University of the Philippines in 1999 and has since been participating in Asian biennales and international festivals. His works have been included in the permanent collections of institutions such as Singapore Art Museum, Mori Art Museum, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Rico Entico is a filmmaker based in Pasay, Metro Manila. He straddles between narrative and experimental forms of the moving image, which offers an absurdist yet poignant vision of some of the undercurrents that drive his characters’ motivations, namely their vices and virtues. His films include Luha 20/20 (2015) and Gastusing Dasal IV (2016).
Originally shown in Hors Pistes, Tokyo (New Moving Image Art Festival), Pabalik na Sayo (Going Back to You) is a commentary on the relationship of resistance and consumption. Told in the form of letters in dual threads: the speaking voice which signifies wanting, and the text or subtitles which signify rejection, combined with the detestable imagery of assorted rubbish.
Interested with the diverse forms of video practices and other emergent cultures that spring from it, Cocoy Lumbao draws from a wide range of sources that occupy the spectrum of videography—which he uses as his main platform in terms of making art. From single-channel projections to multiple screen installations; from manipulating found footage to appropriating images from the internet, Cocoy Lumbao’s works are attempts to cross the gap between observation and thought.
In To the Reader, he explores the idea of writing as an activity, rather than as a profusion of texts and symbols. Based on Denise Levertov’s poem with the same title, it tries to capture a kind of essence committed to the act of writing, through the persistence of the image of a sea, and the obsolescence of the sound of typewriter keys.
He is currently an artist-in-residence at Gasworks, London.
Sanja Pahoki was born in Osijek, Croatia and is currently based in Melbourne. Her work has been widely exhibited nationally including at Heide Museum of Art, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney and Queensland University of Technology and internationally in Tokyo, Shanghai, Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, Paris and Rotterdam. She teaches at the VCA&MCM and is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne.
Utako Shindo is an artist, working between Tokyo and Melbourne. She creates an installation artwork, comprised of visual, aural and spatial components. Her work embodies various transference processes: between image and material, sounds and texture, architecture and atmosphere, and subject and object. By presenting her subtle and nuanced artwork, Utako intends to provoke one’s poetic experience of and reflection on the world.
MM Yu has worked between photography and painting since obtaining her degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines in 2002. Her works in both media tackle the nuances achieved between composition and color as they occupy the frame. Primarily drawn to street photography and documenting the everyday, MM Yu’s No Signal is a ‘composition in motion’ of the urban landscape that is Manila, which she has been documenting throughout her practice as an artist.
Yu obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Philippines. She has had numerous solo shows, including Left of Here, West Gallery, Manila, 2013; Inventory, Silverlens, 2012; Galerie Zimmerman Kratochwill, Austria, 2011. Distinctions and residencies include Cite International des Arts- Paris residency (2013); Sovereign Asian Art Prize-Finalist (2010); Thirteen Artists Award, Cultural Center of the Philippines (2009), and the Ateneo Art Awards –Common Room Bandung Residency Grant (2007)