The Osage Art Foundation (OAF), established in 2004, works in the areas of cultural exchange, educational outreach and the building of knowledge. And since 2005, OAF has been promoting cross cultural understanding through art exhibitions between Hong Kong, China, Japan, Singapore and the Philippines. OAF exhibitions develop from substantial research, aim to make strong statements about significant as well as emerging artists, and to provide regional platforms for innovative curatorial perspectives. While the arts from Asia have become increasingly visible both within this part of the world, and globally, OAF recognises that more needs to be done to develop the cultural conversations happening within Asia. Even today, the 1 exchanges between artists in Asia are too often mediated by global centres in Europe and North America. As part of OAF’s mission to foster a deeper regional consciousness of the arts within Asia, OAF is launching a new platform, called “Regional Perspectives”, and initiating this platform with a major exhibition series. These exhibitions will establish new precedents in making the case that certain key artists from the region have a larger regional and international significance.
In 2011, Mr. Roberto Chabet, one of the Philippines’ most influential contemporary artists, will be celebrating fifty years of his professional practice as an artist, curator and teacher. OAF, together with the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE College of the Arts (ICAS), and King Kong Art Projects Unlimited are presenting a series of exhibitions of works by Chabet and over 80 acclaimed and emerging Filipino artists whom he has taught and mentored.
The exhibitions — entitled, “To Be Continued”, “Intermediate Geography” and “Complete & Unabridged, Parts I and II”— will offer viewers a chance to appreciate and examine Chabet’s work and legacy. Since his first exhibition in 1961, Chabet has been instrumental in establishing the foundations for contemporary practice in the Philippines. His works, ranging from painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, and installation, resist easy categorisation. Using mostly ordinary and found material, he takes an inclusive approach to art, searching for the sublime not just in abstract ideas but also in the immediacy of the quotidian and the commonplace. Beyond the significance of his artistic practice, these exhibitions will also explore Chabet’s influence as a curator and educator.
The solo exhibition “To Be Continued” is a landmark survey exhibition of Chabet’s plywood works from 1984 to the present. In these works, Chabet utilizes his signature material – store-bought plywood boards. It is a material, which has become not only the surface and support of his paintings and installations, but to a large extent its subject matter and content. The exhibition gathers for the first time significant works, including the seminal 1980s trilogy “Russian Paintings”, “House Paintings” and “Cargo and Decoy”. Highlighting process and the provisional aspect of the material, "To Be Continued" is reflective of Chabet’s practice, which gives precedence to the fugitive and contingent nature of art.
“Intermediate Geography” was an installation first displayed in 2005 as part of Chabet’s series of annual simultaneous exhibitions at Finale Art Gallery and West Gallery at SM Megamall in Manila. It will be reconstructed in Osage Soho. “Intermediate Geography” is like a reminder of the dichotomies between the known and the unknowable; the expressible and the inexpressible; private and public; oneself and the other; art and non-art.
For the group exhibitions in Singapore and Hong Kong “Complete & Unabridged, Parts I and II”, a wide range of works by Chabet and his former students will be featured. This two-part exhibition aims to highlight the role of Chabet as a mentor and influence to generations of Filipino artists, mainly from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, where he taught for over three decades. Reflecting the diversity of interests and practices in contemporary Philippine art today, the works in these exhibitions are connected by a continuing discussion on alternative forms and ways of thinking about art, which Chabet has consistently raised through his own art, curated exhibitions and teachings.
“Chabet 50 Years” is part of a series of projects organised by King Kong Art Projects Unlimited throughout 2011 – 2012 at various venues in Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila in celebration of fifty years of Chabet’s pioneering conceptual work and his role in shaping Philippine contemporary art.
Curators: Nilo Ilarde, Ringo Bunoan and Isabel Ching
Opening Reception: 13.01.2011 (Thursday) at 6:30pm – 8:30pm
OTHER EXHIBITIONS
Complete & Unabridged, Part I
18.02.2011 – 26.03.2011
Opening Reception: 17.02.2011 (Thursday) at 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Curators: Gary Pastrana, Ringo Bunoan and Isabel Ching
Venue: Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE College of the Arts
Complete & Unabridged, Part II
05.03.2011 – 09.05.2011
Opening Reception: 04.03.2011 (Friday) at 6pm – 8pm
Curators: Gary Pastrana, Ringo Bunoan and Isabel Ching
Venue: Osage Kwun Tong, Hong Kong
Intermediate Geography
05.03.2011 – 09.05.2011
Curator: Nilo Ilarde
Venue: Osage Soho, Hong Kong
PUBLIC PROGRAMMES
Curators’ Talk
Date: 14 January 2011 (Friday)
Time: 5pm - 7pm
Venue: Room #F201, LASALLE College of the Arts 1 McNally Street, Singapore 187940
Language: English
Participants:
Respondent: Ahmad bin Mashadi, Head of National University of Singapore Museum
Speakers: Ringo Bunoan, Artist, curator, writer and researcher
Isabel Ching, Independent curator and adjunct lecturer in the Masters of Asian Art Histories Department at the LASALLE College of the Arts
Moderators: Charles Merewether, Director of Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore
Lee Weng Choy, Director of Projects, Research & Publications, OAF
Artists’ Workshop
Date: 18 February (Friday)
Venue: Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (ICAS), LASALLE College of the Arts 1 McNally Street, Singapore 187940
Language: English
Duration: 3 Hours
Artist: Gerry Tan, Artist and curator
Forum
Date: 5 March 2011 (Saturday)
Venue: Osage Kwun Tong 5/F, Kian Dai Industrial Building, 73 - 75 Hung To Road, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong
Language: English
Participants:
Charles Merewether, Director of Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore
Lee Weng Choy, Director of Projects, Research & Publications, OAF
Ringo Bunoan, Artist, curator, writer and researcher
Isabel Ching, Independent Curator and adjunct lecturer in the Masters of Asian Art Histories Department at the LASALLE College of the Arts Ark Fongsmut, Curator at Bangkok University Gallery
Gary Pastrana, Artist, organiser and co-founder of Future Prospects art space, Manila
John Batten, Writer, art critic, curator and organiser
