Photo Bangkok 2015 opens today, and before we get ourselves immersed in all kinds of photography shows in the next couple of months — Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok University Gallery and 19 other partner galleries join hands — there's still a chance to enjoy art in other forms.
Among these is the "Two Person Exhibition" by Disorn Duangdao and Suwichcha Dussadeewanich at Cloud and it's up first in this column because it's gonna be over by this Friday. Apologies for the delay.
In recent months, the gallery — in case some people are not sure where it is, it's almost opposite Cleopatra massage parlour down Maitri Chit road off Hua Lamphong MRT — has put on brief yet strong shows and this is one of them. Every time I go there the space is completely transformed and this time the room further inside on the first floor is glaring white with bright strips of neon.
In the centre stands an odd-looking table whose surface is a thick layer of roughly-mixed cement. The piece is Suwichcha's and the cement layer is mixed with the debris from Wat Kalayanamitr which has been subjected to outrageous destruction by the temple's own committee for the past decade.
Coincidentally, Disorn's interest is along the same lines. His painting of clashing sea waves are made of acrylic mixed with soil and seawater taken from around Wat Khun Samut Jeen on the shore of Samut Prakan which is troubled by land erosion from seawater.
Without knowledge of the issue, the cement-topped table is enigmatic with its irregular quadrilateral shape. With a little bit of background — the temple is being sued by the Fine Arts Department — the artwork is a sad nostalgic look at a historic past which doesn't necessarily take sides in the dispute.
For a new show at Bangkok University Gallery, social issues are also the artistic drive but the results are much more practical than aesthetic. This is even more satisfying as it's by a relatively young artist, Titapa Thinnarach, who is part of this year's Brand New Art Project. The artist's works are portable tents for the homeless made from vinyl banners and the exhibition doesn't only show the finished products but takes us through each process in the making, from sketching desk to sewing station (until Aug 8). This year "Brand New" projects span to other art spaces as well, from WTF Gallery which will open next week to an installation at hipster-filled The Jam Factory. At the latter, Titirat Skultantimayta has literally turned a square gallery space into a household space filled with a sense of longing for her little brother who passed away.
Entitled "Filling The Void" (until Tuesday), each area in the house is simply yet completely separate and it's the objects in these areas, which may have looked normal from afar, that give an eerie, almost ghostly feel to the space. On the dinner table, while one fork is of stainless steel, the fork next to it is of foil paper, feebly folded. While the saucer does have the same flowery pattern as the cup, look closer — that saucer is not a saucer but just an embroidery pattern on the tablecloth.
Contrasting elements between "the real" and "the almost real" pervade all parts of the house — the dressing table, the toilet and the laundry area, and the wall text at one point, a quotation from Jodi Picoult's 2004 novel My Sister's Keeper, sums up her created space rather touchingly.
"If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?"
Contact kaonap@bangkokpost.co.th with comments or news on art events.
Suwichcha's cement-topped table as part of 'Two Person Exhibition' at Cloud.
Titirat Skultantimayta's installation.
