The exhibition opening of former Rimbun Dahan resident artist Tony Twigg. The event also launched a 94-page full colour book on the artist’s work, published by SLOT with the assistance of the Australia-Malaysia Institute. The book will be distributed in four countries and places Twigg’s work within the context of contemporary Malaysian art and the unique art making of the South East Asia region.

(AY)

Vib ra fon: Solo Exhibition by Tony Twigg
21 Aug – 12 Sept 2009

Gallerie Taksu
17 Jalan Pawang, Keramat Hujung, Kuala Lumpur.
Open: Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm
Weekends and Public Holidays by Appointment

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The artist Tony Twigg and art writer Gina Fairley.

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Expanded Disc, Vibrafon, 2009 (8 parts oil and enamel paint on construction of found and milled timber, 129 x 134cm)

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Rosslyn and Ian de Souza, Malaysian artist based in Perth.

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Benjamin Chee a.k.a DJ Ben G and Garden International School art teacher Philippe Delmotte.

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Christine, fashion designer in Radio Dalam, Jakarta with Paolo Oscar and Gallerie Taksu’s Suherwan Abu.

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Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia Penny Williams urging artists to apply for grants from the Australian High Commission. [We’re listening – but where can we find out more about these grants? – ed.]

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Market research firm Firestar Research’s Sophine Cox, art conservator and restorer Lisa Stoddart who specialises in paper conservation, and Gina Fairley.

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Vibrafon Study 3 2009 (oil and enamel paint on construction of found and milled timber, 48 x 90cm)

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The gallery also serves tasty northern Indian cuisine.

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Visual artist Vincent Leong and Gina Fairley.

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Couple Fu Yen Huei and Wong Chee Meng.

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Artist Samsudin Wahab doing an impression of Neo in The Matrix.

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Fans of Vib-ra-fon Peter Tan and Simon Chow.

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Gina Fairley with artist-couple Yau Bee Ling and Choy Chun Wei.

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More about the exhbition:

What does it mean, Vib-ra-fon?  Our brains automatically compute notions of vibration, a vibe, or pulsating and resonating energy – a definition confirmed when standing in font of one of Tony Twigg’s most recent works. But when we pick up the dictionary, no such word exists.

Twigg explains it as, “…a thing that moves between positive and negative, that is something that contains its own echo.”  An abstraction on many levels, these works flutter in a place caught between play, sensuality and serious consideration. They prick these emotions within us, drawing us into an active participation in their optical game as we move across the measured length of their surfaces.

Continuing from Twigg’s “Expanded discs”, previously shown in Singapore and Manila, this new group of constructions uses the same foundation – a circle stretched through linear space. But in these forms Twigg is more acutely alert to the way we read the object. It is an extremely astute conversation between positive and negative space, pushing and pulling our eye through a set of complex spatial relationships within a given form.

This shift in energy is perhaps best illustrated in “Vi-bra-fon” (2009), a construction that can be flipped into two spatial arrangements. Twigg has used the flat edge of milled branches, placing them perpendicular to the surface of the painting so that, when painted in a deep red hue, they become bold defining lines. Standing to the side of this work these lines are compressed, shrinking physical space as if its armature is folding in on itself. And yet, as the viewer moves around the work from left to right it opens with lightness and energy. It is a sensorial experience that leads to our understanding of Twigg’s notion that these works ‘hold their own echo’.

It is like the lowest vibration of a bass stereo, slowly animated into melody. Vib-ra-fon is a deeply mature understanding of abstraction and its spatial pulse.

– Text by Gina Fairley