Some of my most recent works are showing now at Finale Art File Gallery in the Philippines till 31st Dec. It is such an honour to be shown next to some really amazing artists who are making very exciting works. Thank you to the curators and everyone else who made this possible. Will post some pictures soon!

Arrange, assemble, collect, choose, construct, collide, cut & paste, intervene, invade, juxtapose, jumble up, rip, remix, tear, trim assorted found materials and readymades. This is a show about remixing and reassembling, taking collage as departure point and involving artists with certain sensitivity towards material. While collage was a strategy for destabilizing systems and conventions, its aesthetics seem more de rigueur than radical in our visual landscapes. Pasts are constantly recycled, conflicting cultures collide visually and spatially, and the collage cunning of displacement and disruption seems to have lost its point. An almost unlimited storehouse of image and sound resources is instantly accessible for sampling and consuming in the digital age, where private and public merge, and copyright becomes an increasingly testy and confusing issue. Is there now scope for the spirit of counterculture to operate, and for the aesthetics and process of collage to be meaningful? Does borrowing, or the sometimes preferred term, stealing, yield any more creative innovation or insights? Wherefore is one a collage artist? Here, we explore orthodox and less orthodox tangents from collage in theme, imagery, style and material. Circling the tangle between the crisis of collage and the drive to keep making and remaking the world from the scraps of human culture, we take a stab at widening interpretations of and evaluating collage’s bleed into contemporary artistic practices, somewhere between collage’s more traditional definitions as a medium-based category and how, in principle, everything today can be seen as collage. 

curated and organized by Isabel Ching with Mariano Ching

participating artists:
JUAN ALCAZAREN
FELIX BACOLOR
ZEUS BASCON
PATRICK CRUZ
EUGENE JARQUE
RAFEEZA KHALIQ
ROMEO LEE
ROX LEE
PAUL D. MILLER AKA DJ SPOOKY THAT SUBLIMINAL KID
IZZIYANA SUHAIMI
MAC VALDEZCO

It’s a Tuesday morning which feels like a Saturday. And here’s a peek into what’s coming in December.

Friends to keep you warm was recently featured on Like I Give A Frock, a website to definitely visit if you want to keep up to date with all things art, design and fashion local and otherwise. Thank you, Pakkee! Skip on ahead and read it here and do check it out the rest of the site too!

Making new works, yay! While alternatively rewatching Harry Potter (hehe) and listening to Florence + the Machine’s Ceremonials, Feist’s Metals, The Antlers’ Burst Apart, Andrew Bird’s Norman OST and of course, The National’s everything.

Though I love FTKYW to bits and pieces, it is nice to work on something else and explore other ideas, other ways of expressing. This time I’m staying away from drawing people and instead delve into objects and abstraction. This is for a VERY EXCITING exhibition in December, which I am reeeally looking forward to but also freaking out about because it’s one of those solittletimesomuchtodo type of thing.

Ok, back to sewing.

Some photos of the installation. Thanks to drömkeepers for the pictures!

It is another rainy day. Have I mentioned that I love this type of weather? All I want to do is read a good book or watch a good film with a steaming cup of coffee and warm cookies. But of course I cannot. Work beckons, big plans that should keep me busy till the end of the year! 

She finds that bear hats protect her secrets very well. But they threaten to tumble everytime she opens her mouth.

Come down to The Little Dröm Store to meet the silly and strange girls and boys of Friends to keep you warm. They would certainly love to meet you! More details here. Thank you to the drömkeepers for generously providing their space and help, and to everyone else without whom FTKYW wouldn’t have been this wonderful and easy.

Fancy your very own piece? Write me a note and let’s talk (:

ps: Pay careful attention to the window display made by my very talented friend, Hanzhi.

Something from the Friends to keep you warm series. These were shown back in March this year and are 40 x 50 cm. They are some of my most favourite pieces in the series.

Mark your calendars for October 22nd! That is when the next installation of FTKYW will be unveiled at The Little Drom Store. 5 more days! Are you excited? I sure am!

On top of my to-do list after the exhibition is to rediscover play and the simplicity of enjoying the company of others.

With the clock ticking closer and closer to the show, I do wish time would be at a standstill! Also, I think I should stop looking at other people’s work because a lot of them are way too amazing and it makes me feel like an underachiever. Besides, work generates more work, more ideas, more inspirations, more style.

Okay, back to the embroidering!

ps: Anyone know of any creative opportunities in London that would interest someone like me?

pps: The work above is from the upcoming show at The Little Drom Store.

Working on FTKYW while catching up on Bones season 1.

ps: Have you heard Feist’s Metals? It is so good and on repeat!

Some pieces from Friends to keep you warm.

These are 8 x 10 inches, pen, watercolour and embroidery on acid-free paper. They are proudly hanging (with a couple of other pieces) in the home of a very wonderful and very warm family.

Currently working on new pieces for a show at The Little Dröm Store. Very excited! Keep a lookout for more information (and also more new old pieces from the series).

Have a fantastic week everyone, with a little skip and a little shimmy dance. Chase them blues away!

FTKYW in CATALOG magazine’s Issue #83 - PLAY! Together with three other local artists, pandapanda (much love for Shu!), Ridhwan Sesapar (one third of ONESIXTYNOTEPAD, very dapper and dashing young lads) and Kristie Sim (one word - multi-talented).

Thanks to everyone who made this possible. Happy weekend!

Showing tonight at Nixon Art Mosh 2011.

This is what I’ve been up to recently, making things for people whose work I love and enjoy (:

Bisous!

The Secret Garden, is showing at the Tokyo Book Art Week 2011, happening now till August 29th. Inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book (one of my all-time favourite books - Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? ), I had an immense urge to fold pages into roses. I want to fill an entire room with folded book pages flowers! Perhaps one day. If you read Japanese, visit their website here and if not, their facebook page here. Better yet, if you’re in Japan, drop by Temple University campus and check out the many many lovely artist books! I sure wish I could be there! 

Thanks to La Libreria for this fantastic opportunity!!!