We’re tremendously excited by a new Visual Pond initiative that aims to capture a slice of Philippine’s vibrant, loud and dizzying contemporary art scene. ARTiculation is conceived as a series on contemporary artists from the Philippines. The only series of its kind locally and consisting of ten videos released online throughout the year, each episode features an artist talking about his/her body of work such as themes, influences and motivations. The series, shot and edited with a low budget, aims to be a critical and easily accessible resource for curators, writers, students, academics and anyone who wants to learn more about contemporary artists from the Philippines. A catalogue featuring the ten artists will be made available at the end of the year. For foreign audiences, Visual Pond will eventually be releasing English transcripts.

For the first episode, Visual Pond is delighted to feature Mark Salvatus. Born 1980 and a BFA Advertising Arts cum laude graduate from the University of Santo Tomas, Salvatus is interested in urban and community-based art as demonstrated in street art, the Wrapped project, the Accidental Contemporary Art series and blogging. He has participated in a number of international residencies such as the Asia Cultural Artist Residency (Gwangju, Korea), the Shatana International Residency (Shatana, Irbid, Jordan) and the Can Serrat Centro de Actividades Artisticas (Barcelona, Spain). He will soon be going to Melbourne, Australia as an artist for the Next Wave Festival 2010.