Victor Chin

Syed Ahmad Jamal, Endau Rompin, 1985, Acrylics on canvas, 173×223cm

Nature has always been an inspiration for artists throughout the ages. Mountains, in particular, have inspired many regional landscape painters.

From China there has been a long history of artists who painted the many outstanding geological features of their physical geography. Some of these artworks besides depicting the shapes and designs of mountain formations in great detail also conveyed clear information of the various geological compositions of their landscapes.

One of the most well-known Japanese artists, Hokusai, from the Edo period, made colour wood block prints of a series of 36 views of Mount Fuji. The Great Wave of Kenagawa done in 1831 is one of Hukusai’s signature compositions of this collection of early postcards of Japan.

Cezanne paid homage to his boyhood home in Provence by painting the Mont Sainte-Victoire in Aix at least 60 times from 1885 to 1906. His devotion to a single hillock slightly over 1,000m in his backyard set the modern standard of painting and looking at European landscapes since the Renaissance.

He began to dismantle previous ideas of perspective and started to flatten out and break up his subject by using fragmented shapes, colours and brush marks. His paintings led the way for Matisse and Picasso and to Abstraction.

Syed Ahmad Jamal, Gunung Ledang Visited, 1992, Acrylics on canvas, 173×239cm

The mountains of Malaysia have attracted a few artists. Fung Yow Chork and Razak Abdullah are among the few landscape painters who got inspiration form the mountain backdrop of Kuala Lumpur, the Ulu Klang quartz ridge and Genting Highlands. Mount Kinabalu (4,101m), our highest mountain between the Himalayas and the Snow Mountains of New Guinea, has a devoted Sabahan painter — Benedict Chong.

Syed Ahmad Jamal, whose retrospective exhibition is currently at the National Art Gallery, has been moved by Gunung Ledang, near Muar, his home town, in Johor. Jamal has painted three artworks with that name. The first Gunung Ledang was in 1978 (this painting is not in the show), then Gunong Ledang Visited in 1992 and the last one Semangat Ledang in 1999.

Read more in The Malaysian Insider here…

“Land Below The Wind”, Cheong Sung Kin’s title for his exhibition of ceramic sculptures and teapots, is taken from the title of a book written in 1939 by the American author Agnes Newton Keith. Cheong is from Sandakan and the book was written in the same town in Sabah (then known as North Borneo). Subsequently that title has been accepted as the unofficial descriptor for Sabah.

Keith wrote mainly about her domestic life as a colonial official’s wife and a little of her infrequent treks into the jungle. Cheong’s sculptures are of the landscapes and its inhabitants; from his own observations and the family’s backyard. He grew up surrounded by natural environments and indigenous cultures and peoples.

“Land Below The Wind” was written in a genial style and is still very readable today. But Cheong’s new collection of forest and mountain settings have been through a baptism of fire and come out the other side as exquisite and unique objects of art. Besides, there are not many artists like him today who use wood fire to fire their clayware.

“Land Below The Wind No. 1″ is an imaginative and powerful use of clay to describe living in the middle of the rainforest and having to climb up and down the steps and negotiating the terrain daily. These are majestic trees with their crowns touching the clouds and the branches look like they are holding up the sky. This is not just art but the art of living with the forest.

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NOV 1 — This is the last week to catch Eric Peris’s 30th solo photographic exhibition at the Sutra Gallery, which ends on Nov 5. Eric’s first two solo exhibitions were in 1982 at the Rupa Gallery (now closed), in Kuala Lumpur. Since then he has had 28 shows of his own.

In this one, Eric pulled out one example from each of his last 30 shows. What you get is a kind of retrospective view of one of Malaysia’s master photographer’s lifework. He deserves better national acknowledgement for his contributions as an artist, photographer, photojournalist and teacher. (It may yet come we hope.)

Eric, at 70, is a prodigious artist at work and his photographs have encompassed a wide variety of subjects. Many of his shots have been influenced by some of the most famous photographers of the last century.

His visual takes of the world around him have also in turn helped many Malaysian photographers see. Of course, he is most partial to those photographers whose works are in black and white, as most of his works are such.

Bob Teoh, Eric & Lee HL at the opening

In the early 80s, Eric showed photos of views in and out of windows. His first set was from Thai windows and its architecture and landscapes. Later, he added his views of Malaysian landscapes from train windows.

On show are some vintage images of his unique way of seeing and capturing his surroundings. Not the usual postcard aesthetics of beautiful landscapes at sunset but the more unusual and unknown views that are just as photographic. This is just Eric’s art of seeing.

Eric was also one of the few photographers who trained his lenses on tin mine landscapes near his former house in the Puchong tin mining area (now Bandar Kinrara). To many, this disused tin mining area was just a desolate and ugly gaping hole.

He turned those sand dunes, mounts and valleys into a record of our land forms, our history of the tin industry; in some ways like what the American photographer Ansel Adams did in the 40s and 50s with his country’s landscape.

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This is a short video of our recent exhibition EXITS

Heah Hock Heng passed away on 20 October, 10 days short of his 64 birthday. I first met Heah, in the 80’s, when I just joined the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS). He needed volunteers to help do a painting job at the MNS field centre in Cameron Highlands.

Apart from working as a painter I also ended up cutting chillies and onions etc. in the kitchen. Heah was both the project manager as well as the chef at that time. He was already renown then for his work in the field .

My painting was not up to standard and neither was my cutting skills. But that was the beginning of my long friendship with Heah and later with his wife Cheong Ann and some friends from the MNS days.

Heah (standing in the far right) making sure that the lunch for the party was in order, 2007, at KLPac.

Two years ago, I asked Heah and his friends to help cook a lunch for 100 persons. This was a party for a mixed disability group of friends at the KLPac. It was to celebrate the exhibition of photographs of the disabled athletes, which I had done.

Heah was one person who was always willing to help, when he can, no matter what it may be. He also had a distinguished career as a project manager for forest and environment related projects in Malaysia.

Heah with all his friends helping out at the KLPac lunch for the disabled friends, 2007.

But most of all, Heah will be remembered as a chef, for feeding thousands of MUS members ‘5 start hotel food’ deep in the Malaysian mountains.

Heah’s funeral will be on Saturday 24 October, 2pm, Trinity Methodist Church, Petaling Jaya.