FOST Gallery is pleased to present {The History of Java}, Jimmy Ong’s highly anticipated solo exhibition. The exhibition title references Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles’ (1781–1826) two-volume tome of the same name published in 1817. It was this publication that earned the conferment of his knighthood, and not the founding of Singapore. Raffles traced the history of Java, from ancient times to the establishment of Islam, and then to the arrival of the British forces. He also discussed social, political, agricultural and cultural aspects of Javanese life and he is often credited with sparking interest in the Western world for the ancient temple Borobudur. Ong was curious about Raffles’ time in Java, this iconic figure who is so revered in Singapore, but not so in Indonesia. The British invasion of Jogjakarta in 1812 particularly fascinated Ong. The various accounts of the events surrounding the invasion formed the basis of Ong’s own imagined versions of the same and the ground for his new works. The raison d’être for this exhibition stems from a culmination of a few factors. Legacy is foremost on Ong’s mind: Singapore is celebrating her 50th year of independence; Ong himself reached the same age in 2014 and was reminded of his own mortality. In the years leading up to his fiftieth year, Ong was also spending a lot of time in Indonesia and he finally decided to uproot himself from America, his adopted home for most of his adult life, and relocate semi-permanently to Jogjakarta. Ong explains “I underwent a mid-life crisis where I panicked over the impermanence of my existence. I was grasping and grabby, not unlike what Raffles might have gone through.”
In this respect, Ong has certainly risen above the challenge with his epic drawings of imagined historical scenes, having hitherto never been done. Each of these four drawings is almost 3 metres long and 1.3 metres high. Ong will also include a mixed media installation of an effigy of Raffles and a mock historical documentary of Jogjakarta sites Raffles would have visited. Stephanie Fong, Director of FOST Gallery, says “This new series of works is not only significant to Ong for personal reasons, it is also extremely important from an art historical perspective because it marks a turning point in his career. We are extremely honoured to be presenting them at the gallery.”
The drawing Demolition of St Andrew's (2012) needs particular mention because it is the only work set in Singapore. However it was included nevertheless because this was the first work to be made in this monumental narrative format. In this work, he appropriated the muscular figures in Xu Beihong’s (1895-1953) The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains (愚公移山, 1940). This drawing set the precedent for later works as Ong continued to reference artists he admired in the later drawings. {The History of Java} is thus not so much a pictorial account of Raffles’ time in Java, as it is Jimmy Ong’s new phase in Jogjakarta.
