Group Exhibition: Itinerant Practices
19-24 September 2023
4 Cromwell Place, Gallery 10, London SW7 2JE
Tuesday-Saturday: 11am – 7pm. Sunday: 11am – 4pm
For last available pieces, please click here.
Itinerant Practices is the culmination of many years of camaraderie between two curators and three artists who lived and worked in Singapore. French multi-disciplinary artist Hélène Le Chatelier, American painter Lydia Janssen, and British artist Piers Bourke, join forces with the curatorial team at Peruke Projects to bring to the viewer the narration of a collective diasporic consciousness that embodies their everyday lived experiences. Steeped in rich memories, the show is built in relation to the individual negotiations made between “back home” and “now”, culminating in a richly woven tapestry of memoirs of cross-culturalism, identity, transnationality, and hybridism.
Hélène Le Chatelier
Highlighting our state-of-being in both social and private settings, Hélène Le Chatelier’s
Missing Part underscores resilience as a commonality of our human condition. Seeking to honour the personal stories which constitute the narrative of social history in Singapore, she emphasises the complexity of human beings and the multiplicity of faces and identities which can successfully coexist.
Simultaneously, this series conveys the notion that there is no human existence without
pain, and loss. The unique capacity to recompose and turn any situation into a positive
outcome can arise through transformation and acceptance. From a nation of citizens to a single human being, we recreate and address a subjective reality to serve different goals, and by leaving space for new narratives, the way we process our memories and our capacity for resilience can even become political.
Lydia Janssen
Drawing from previous exhibitions Spotlight and Yellow Brick Road and developing new
sketches titled The Rectangles, Lydia Janssen investigates what it means to belong and feel at home. In 2011, she left New York City for Singapore, and seven years later moved to Bali, Indonesia. In 2020, having travelled between five countries during Covid, all in an attempt to get back home to Bali, Janssen became fascinated with the psychology of space, place, and how one’s definition of home changes when living the life of a nomad.
A home can be limiting and claustrophobic (especially when quarantined), making a life in the diaspora a liberating escape from restrictions and boundaries. Navigating both rootlessness and groundedness, she likens her life to a river, but one that you can never step into twice. The experience of Janssen’s work atmosphere and physical surroundings will alter, depending on your mood and emotions, memories, and experiences.
Piers Bourke
Piers Bourke’s Fan series developed as a result of his time living in the island-nation of
Singapore. The convergence of cultural influences of living and traveling in Southeast Asia led him back to the fundamentals of working with paint on paper and canvas. In this series he strips his subject matter back to capture the rapid movement of transformation that he observed in Singapore’s ever-changing urban landscape. Bourke’s exoticised Asian hand fans generate quick hand movements and are an analogous response to Singapore as an island that is perpetually under construction and rapid modernisation.
Known for seamlessly fusing various cultural symbols into his pieces, Bourke depicts their historical uses within the constant context of change. For Fans he focuses on an aesthetic based loosely on the instruments, developing a technique with which to paint the motif that mimics the flow and function of the object itself. Abandoning brushes for wooden blocks, he sweeps mineral pigments across the surface material, resulting in gestural marks with an unpredictability unique to his movements. By infusing a linear structure in the pieces through flashes of vibrant colour and the angular interventions on the paper, he emphasises duality, movement, and multiple layers, much like Singapore’s multicultural and swiftly evolving society.
Images courtesy of the artists
Previous Projects
Nino Sarabutra: Now or Yesterday?
15-20 November 2022
4 Cromwell Place, Gallery 7, London SW7 2JE
Tuesday 15 Nov: VIP Preview 5-7pm.
Wednesday-Saturday: 10am – 6pm. Sunday 10am – 4pm
Now or Yesterday? further advances and reinvigorates Nino Sarabutra’s trademark theme of the exploration of human emotions. Encouraging the audience to contemplate love, life, and the very spirit of being alive, the Thai artist presents a new series that summons the viewer to consider the climate change crisis as a direct result of human behaviour, as well as the imperativeness of addressing it. Communicating how, as citizens, we must possess a higher purpose, love and respect, not just for ourselves and others, but for nature and the planet, she fills the gallery with ceramic and clay works that represent love in all its forms.
From a new series of hearts and monoprints, as well as a commissioned mobile, these works remind us of how tenuous life is and invite the spectator to contemplate who they aspire to be. Nino’s renowned skull installation WHAT WILL YOU LEAVE BEHIND? will also be showcased in London for the very first time.
This exhibition is supported by Chang Beer (UK & Europe) and Monsoon Valley Wines.
About the artist
After graduating in ceramic art from Silpakorn University in Bangkok, Nino Sarabutra (b. 1970, Thailand) spent nearly 20 years working as an advertising creative in various agencies before becoming a full-time artist in 2008.
Nino’s work focuses on communication. Her work stimulates self-reflection so audiences consider their position in life, how it feels to be human, what factors drive their emotions, what motivates them. In 2009 Nino presented her first solo exhibition Exploring Love with walls of ceramic hearts framing images of all that we can love. Since then she has explored death, sensuality, spirituality, food, and human greed. Her exhibitions, and Nino herself, are defined by the genuine joy of living.
Nino’s most recognisable work WHAT WILL YOU LEAVE BEHIND? was created in 2012 with 125,000 porcelain skulls filling a gallery to remind us of the precious nature of life. Since then, it has been developed through shows in Bangkok, Singapore, New York, Venice, Paris, and the Bangkok Art Biennale 2018. She has held regular solo and group exhibitions in Bangkok, New York, Manila, Singapore, Berlin, and Venice.
Image: Nino Sarabutra, Now or Yesterday? Installation view, ceramic hearts, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.
Rituals & Rebirths – 10-22 May, 2022 – 4 Cromwell Place, Gallery 1, London, UK
Part of London Gallery Weekend 13-15 May, 2022
Rituals and Rebirths was a group exhibition in collaboration with A.I. Gallery that examined the performances of three diasporic Southeast Asian multi-disciplinary artists, constructed around the rituals concerning the rebirths of their oeuvres and the marking of time. These three artists living between cultures, with transnational hybrid identities, were brought together for the first time alongside one another. This formidable trio – Anida Yoeu Ali (b.1974, Cambodia), Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (b.1970, Philippines), and Quỳnh Lâm (b.1988, Vietnam) – brought to a new audience an opportunity to reflect upon their experiences of crisis, displacement, and otherness, through their rituals, renewals, responses and provocations.
Presented as an installation of videos, photographs, symbolic objects and artefacts, and two participatory performances by Rasmussen and Lam, the artists documented the passing of time in each of their ceremonies. Ali’s The Red Chador installation illustrates the death and rebirth of a provocative and politicized alter ego. Rasmussen’s 23.5° performance demonstrates the cyclical nature of life, while Lam’s Price of Humanity performance illuminates the tumultuous journey of a nomadic outcast. Rituals and Rebirths explored the intersections of the three artists’ responses to both their personal and geo-political narratives that have shaped their identities.
About the artists
Anida Yoeu Ali (b. 1973, Cambodia) is a multi-disciplinary artist living & working in the USA. Ali’s works include performance, installation, videos, images, public encounters, and political agitation. Ali’s works have been exhibited at the Haus der Kunst, Palais de Tokyo, Musée d’art Contemporain Lyon, Shangri-La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture and Design and the Queensland Art Gallery. She is a recipient of the 2020 Art Matters Fellowship and the 2015 Sovereign Asian Art Prize. She graduated with an MFA from School of the Art Institute Chicago. Ali serves as a Senior Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington Bothell and travels between the Asia-Pacific region and the USA.
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (b.1970, Philippines) is a performance artist who is living & working in Denmark. Cuenca Rasmussen has exhibited and performed internationally including at KIASMA Art Museum, Helsinki, Brooklyn Museum, New York, Tate Modern, London, Performa, New York, Venice Biennale, Thessaloniki biennale, Busan Biennale, The Drawing Room Manila, Röda Sten, Gothenburg, AROS Art Museum, Aarhus, National Gallery, Singapore, in Copenhagen: SMK/National Gallery Denmark, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen Contemporary.
Quỳnh Lâm (b.1988, Vietnam) is an interdisciplinary artist who is living & working in the USA. Lâm works in performance, installation, video, and mixed media. She was the recipient of the 2019 Art Future Prize, Taiwan. She has exhibited work in Vietnam and abroad, including at The Factory Contemporary Arts Center in Ho Chi Minh City; Art Formosa in Taipei; The Vincom Center for Contemporary in Hanoi; Richard Koh Fine Art Gallery, Singapore; and Mana Contemporary in Chicago, New Jersey and Miami.
Images: installation shots of ‘Rituals & Rebirths,’ Anida Yoeu Ali ‘The Red Chador’ and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen ‘Today is your’, 2022. Courtesy of the artists, A.I. Gallery and Peruke Projects.