Out to Space

One mission in Thailand trip was to retrieve my works in the past. When I decide to moved to Sydney, I was stupid to think that I could go back soon and left behind my art pieces that made me proud. Unfortunately, 6 six years on, the house I lived was sold, my belongings were stacked away in many places and I had no idea how they ended up. There were three items I missed the most: two artworks from high school and a film from university. However, they were found in the neighbour’s who was very generous to keep my stuff in their house.

Back in high school, I chose to study the program that taught both visual arts and science to aim for university entrance exams in architecture. (Do not ask me any chemistry now.) It was the best intuitive decision I had ever made because it cracked my vision potentials and also served my curiosity about how things worked.

Third Point Perspective Exploration

Poster colour painting for the final mark in Composition class.

Hay Inspiration

Mixed Media work for school art exhibition

It was a mixed feeling of joy and sadness when I rediscovered these long lost babies. Nevertheless, I decided not to bring these two works to Sydney and took pictures of them in their environment with the camera phone instead. It should have been enough to place them in my fond memories. Looking at the past, whether happy or painful, certainly helped guiding my lost soul to the future.

Likay is the most popular Thai folk theatre in the country. Because the practice of likay is not confined to strict classical Thai performances, it has a long history of its adjustments to audience demands and technologies while maintaining the traditional integrity. Richard Barrow has a sample clip of a likay. In the old days, when it was their peaks, some hi-profile troupes had their own TV programs. However, since the popularity is going down, surviving the fierce competitions from modern entertainments is not easy.

Nok Krajib (นกกระจิบ), 11, is the youngest of 14 performers in Petch Jing Troupe (เพชรจริง), where she is being trained by her extended likey family from Sukothai Province in the north of Thailand.

After school tonight, she gets back home, putting on make up and dressing up to get ready for the show.

Her home is the theatre which is moving around Bangkok for the best deal to temporarily reside in the community. They have been here in the market of Chaeng Wattana Housing Estate, northern suburb of Bangkok, for a month.

Just a quick preparation before the show by the key performers while others are still dressing.

Petch Jing, the leader of the Troupe, is fixing the mixer. The audio system has been the mojor problem since the show started tonight.

Nok Krajib’s small appearance is while the market is closing down for the night. No one really pays attention to the performance except a bunch of local kids and a glue sniffer. The troupe shares electricity with the market therefore they can only use the full power after the market shut down.

Then she goes off the stage to sell garlands to the audience in the market. The only show income is from the garland selling to the patrons so that they can wear them to the favourite likay performers.

And she is back on the stage again as a dancer in the last half of the show which is just a sing-along with karaoke but it is the peak of the night when they can interact with the crowd and sell the most garlands. Unfortunately, the audio issue is getting worse. The noise is too hard to fix so they have to wrap up the night with frustration.

I finally make it to Thailand after six years of moving to Sydney. It is a bit of culture shock for me. The new international airport, Suvarnabhumi, is so huge that it takes 40 minutes to walk to the immigration. The duplicated paintings of famous Thai artists’ artworks are enjoyable. Anyway, the selection is quite narrow, just representing the beauty of old Thai lifestyles and values and losing the touch of modern Thai culture. But you cannot win a tourist propaganda, no doubt. They will see the chaos and fall in love with it when they pass these posters anyway.

I stay at my brother’s house which is not far where I grew up. The morning sunlight beam from the back into the house intrigues me. It is an empty marshland behind the wall in the back. There are still places like this in the working class suburb even though the area is more occupied by people. I actually hear birds that I did not notice before making photographs in Sydney. Photography does not just teach us to see but also to listen as well.

When the evening falls, old friend of mine gather at the place for a few drink but we decide to move on because another party is singing Thai karaoke country-pop songs and sharing it to the entire neibourhood. No one seems to mind except us.

At a beer garden, I have to try this new invention. It is a 3-litre Singha decanter, keeping the beer cool with an ice tube in the centre of the cylinder. We do not have to put ice in the beer anymore. Have I mentioned we put ice in the beer? 7 hours drinking is the way to go on the first night in Bangkok.

This work is pretty much the same content as Red Sofa, exhibited on Marrickville Art Prize 2007, but different medium. When the print was commented at the opening night that it cried out loud to be a moving image, I could not agree more. I am happy to take that on board. And here we go, another short films collection of dumped stuff on the streets of Sydney after Anywhere Chairs.

Image Makers Image Takers by Anne-Celine Jaeger is basically a collection of insightful interviews of living legends in photography business. That includes the big names like Martin Parr, David LaChapelle and rising stars such as Alec Soth. And the list goes on.

But what I like the most in this book is the section she involves a number of major curator and photo editors of our time, for instance, Camilla Brown from the Photographers’ Gallery, Kathy Ryan from New York Times and Gerhard Steidl from, of course, Steidl.

Although this second part of the book is smaller than photographers’ dialogues, if gives another spectrum of this huge medium. The great thing is to hear from people who get to see photographs as a profession in depth. I want more of them.