aisyalam

On Thursday morning I visited the Kek Lo Si temple on the mountainside in Penang, which was as fine a complex of structures I’ve ever seen. In the afternoon flew home, arriving to find two sick kids—not much happened beyond that.

Friday a long day that began by driving over to Melawati to pick up the laminated printouts of my pictures and poems. They weren’t quite ready yet so had some time to pick up some art supplies and eat lunch banana leaf style with Fauzee and Fishie. I arrived at the 153 Gallery (which is literally in the shadow of the Petronas Twin Towers) at about 2. Talk about being a fish out of water! Since the kids were sick, Amy had to stay at home so I had to figure out what to do with her work and my work. It was one of those I needed her help and she needed my help type of situations, but I think things worked out all right in the end. Despite the fact that I’ve done many different things as an artist, I’ve never before installed images on the walls of a gallery and was wishing Ben Polsky, installation wizard, could have teleported in. Thankfully Sau Bin was around, and once he arrived back from having lunch he and I spent the next 5 hours figuring out how to hang all of the works using a tape measure, thread, nails, and double sided tape. After much sweat problems, problem solving, and so on, all was well (and things that are supposed to be straight are). Very interesting to see all of the other installations going up—a lot of unconventional pedestals and objects. The opening is Tuesday night, & I’ll post full documentation on Flickr next week.

I had no idea there was so much process involved, but should have expected it because of the materials: Amy’s work features one seven panel piece (“Curry Politics”) a 50”x 34” laminated glossy print, and another large format triptych. My work (see picture) includes 14 large printouts of poems and an equal number of images—so lots of logistics. It was crucial that Sau Bin was there—I doubt I could have done it without him. Big traffic jam in KL on the way home, and (even though I enjoyed the work there) glad to be back in Cyberjaya.