Tag Archives: Visual arts

Cultural centre Bedulu

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Another draft chapter from my guide to Lempad’s Art and Buildings in Bali

Getting there:

Lempad's wall at the abandoned cultural centre in Bedulu, Bali.

Lempad’s wall at the abandoned cultural centre in Bedulu, Bali.

If you are staying in Ubud, go south down Jl Hanoman or Jl Cok Gde Rai for about two kilometres until you reach Jl Made Lebah/Jl Raya Teges and turn left.Travel east along a road that then changes its name from Jalan Raya Goa Gajah to Jalan Raya Bedulu and then Jalan Pura Samuan Tiga. Pass through an ornately carved stone gateway and travel along a dual carriageway to a paved car park. Pura Samuan Tiga temple is on the left and Lempad’s art is part of the neglected cultural centre on the right, just before the road narrows. As all of Lempad’s art is on the outside of this building there is no need to go inside and consequently no entry fee.

Several excellent but neglected examples of Lempad’s art can be seen at this now abandoned cultural centre. Lempad was commissioned to carve a bas relief into clay bricks for this Suharto-era building used by visiting politicians to address meetings. It has been reproduced in full colour in Gaspar, Casannovas and Couteau’s book “Lempad”. Continue reading →

Pura Desa Pengastulan temple, Bedulu

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Directions: Jl Yeh Pulu, Pengastulan, Bedulu.

Boma above a gate at Pura Pengastulan in Bedulu.

Boma above a gate at Pura Pengastulan in Bedulu.

Lempad built this temple in 1962-63, soon after he had completed the Saraswati temple in Ubud. If the Saraswati temple was lavish this one is flamboyant.

While he must have been working with a much smaller budget Lempad was able to express himself with great abandon in his home town. Look at the fingernails on the Boma (guardian spirit) masks above the gates. They look more as though they were rapidly drawn with a pen than carved in stone. You might like to contrast these with his earlier drawings in the Neka and Puri Lukisan museums which are almost as though they were made with a chisel. Continue reading →

Puri Lempad Bali – Lempad’s house in Ubud

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The entrance to Lempad’s house in Ubud.

This is a draft chapter from my guide Lempad’s Art and Buildings in Bali.

Lempad was the Ubud king’s principal artist and architect. The King gave him land a short walk from the Royal Palace to build this house.

Although there is art to see here it is not a museum or a shop but a private residence where Lempad’s descendants still live. Just inside the gate you will be greeted by a Lempad statue of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn which he is said to have made after hearing the tale from expatriate European artists. Continue reading →

Artist crowd funds her overseas study – August 2013

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PICTURES AND TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN

A needle-felted dog by Liz Marruffo

Perth artist Elizabeth Murruffo used the crowd funding utility Pozible to fund study trips to Florence and Mexico.

After missing out on a grant, she hit upon the idea of attracting orders for needle-felted portraits of people’s childhood pet dogs.

This story is published in the current edition of the Artsource newsletter.

Judgement and the vulnerable male July 2013

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TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN

This appeared as a catalogue essay for Paul Trinidad’s latest Bali exhibition. It also appears on his website here.

JUDGEMENT AND THE VULNERABLE MALE

 

“… though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow….”
– Isaiah 1:18
Judgement and the vulnerable male are recurring themes in Paul Trinidad’s life and work.

He grew up in the Western Australian Goldfields towns of Kalgoorlie and Leonora. These communities began as temporary settlements for men who dug and scraped for gold. As deep mines replaced mine shafts dug by hand, male mine workers still vastly outnumbered women. The preponderance of single men in the Goldfields saw the state’s first Premier, John Forrest, reluctantly give women the vote rather than have his conservative government overturned by working men.

In his youth Trinidad spent several years in the wilderness, but not in harmony with nature. With his father and brother he worked a three-man gold mine at Lake Darlot. Together they pitted their minds and muscles against the hostile desert. They were pursuing a universal measure of men’s worth, extracted by toil and fire – gold. Continue reading →

IN HER ARRANGEMENT Paintings by SHAARON DU BIGNON May 2000

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TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN

from Artseen May 2000

I have just found something I wrote in 2000, as part of a review of an exhibition by Albany artist Shaaron du Bignon:

“… much post-modern art becomes the willing tool of the mighty. To give one example, Rupert Murdoch was able to set up his Sky-TV channels using almost unlimited free material from MTV video makers. The fact that they borrowed heavily on performance art, itself a derivative of Dada, is rarely mentioned. Dada was all about deconstructing authority. Its grand daughter, MTV, has become an unwitting and foolish accessory to unmitigated power.”

I must have been an opinionated art critic! To read more go to Judith McGrath’s Artseen or click below.

Continue reading →