At Maculangan, Equinox, 2011.Green Papaya Art Projects and TAKSU Singapore brings together recent works by Filipino artists on the second installment of Serial Killers, curated by GP Director, Norberto Roldan.
As the independent art scene in Manila wanes into the background after such seminal independent spaces as Surrounded by Water, Big Sky Mind and Future Prospects closed shop a few years back, commercial galleries have moved to bigger and better spaces along Makati City’s Pasong Tamo Avenue, an old industrial district fast becoming the country’s premier art destination. Though it may seem that the commercial gallery system has taken over the initiative of vigorously promoting Philippine contemporary art to the outside world, it’s quite difficult to detach this development from its purely commercial intent and thus presents a context of art-making that has become not quite unexpectedly problematic for a number of Filipino artists. This scenario only heightens the fact that today the role of the market, its support institutions and collector base has been acknowledged as crucial to artists’ careers and the progress of their practice. Making the move from the category of promising and emerging, or from a low-key and under-rated, to a successful mid-career practitioner a more arduous task. And this is so much true for artists who have been practicing at the edge or even outside of the radar of the market.
Argie Bandoy, Order of the Negatives, 2011
Serial Killers: Welcome to the Club appears to be an oxymoron against the prevailing art environment and the works (varied as they are) unmindful of the flattering spectacle delivered by hyper-branded art fairs and biennales in the region. But being outside this orbit is precisely the trajectory of the exhibition. A dissonance of sort, not anti-commercial, just claiming a piece of ground in this highly contested and complex cultural territory. This selection, which comes from diverse disciplines as painting, graphic arts, photography, film, music, performance and new media, will have to contend with the rules of engagement set by the present infrastructure.
Serial Killers, a product of a long-standing collaboration between TAKSU and Green Papaya Art Projects under its Crossborder Projects, comes at the heels of an independent initiative banking headstrong on a premise that Filipino artists are not totally caught up in a maze of hierarchy influenced by the bullish market for Southeast Asian art. The works of Argie Bandoy, Patricia Eustaquio, Jonathan Olazo, Jayson Oliveria, Maria Taniguchi, MM Yu, At Maculangan, Pardo de Leon, Jed Escueta, Al Cruz, Khavn de la Cruz and Fando&Lis will maintain that artist-driven forces, other than those driven by other external conditions, still make up the core of independent art-making in Manila. Welcome to the Club.
SERIAL KILLERS /WELCOME TO THE CLUB is a part of PHILIPPINE ART TREK V, a project of the Philippine Embassy in Singapore.
Pardo De Leon, Related Stories, 2010.
Jed Escueta, Amicusaurus, 2010.
Opening reception: Wednesday, 9 November 2011, 6.30-10.30pm, with Guest of Honor Mr. Jose Isidro Camacho, Vice Chairman for Asia Pacific of Credit Suisse.
Featuring a film screening by Khavn de la Cruz, the Philippines' internationally acclaimed and multi-awarded digital film maker, with a live score performance by Fando & Lis, post-rock/neo-folk duo from Manila's independent music scene.
Fando and Lis
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