ART OF THE LAND

If you don’t know where places like Beaufort, Sabah are located, you needn’t worry because locals like Donald Abraham won’t blame you. Abraham grew up in Labuan while spending a significant amount of time in both his hometown of Beaufort (15 minutes away from Labuan by boat) and also his parents’ hometown Kuala Penyu where the locals speak Tatana – an obscure Kadazandusun dialect.

Growing up in a backwater town of Sabah had its drawbacks. As much as KL yuccies like to idealise the simple life, the lack of a proper education did put stress on young Abraham, but also resulted in his choice to pursue art. “I was a slow learner. I was only able to read at age 6. My mom used to buy Gila-Gila [Malaysia’s version of Mad Magazine] for my siblings and I, I started to read and draw from there, sketching the heads of the characters, or rather, copying them,” he recalls. “Then I started drawing on pieces of paper to stick on the wall. I don’t know why I did that, really. I guess I wanted my art to have an audience.”

Before his 20th birthday, Abraham decided to spread his wings to KL. He had already failed to sit for his SPM as he was too busy skating and listening to punk rock. With just a sketchbook in hand, Abraham got into the advertising industry, while living in KL punk squats and crashing on friends’ sofas.

During this time, he increased his output tremendously. In fact, JUICE has not seen such a young artist with such an extensive body of work before this. Whether it’s his dog characters going on adventures in the city or multi-layered psychedelic illustrations, one constant is the vast amount he produces. For most of his series, several paintings or works are created when he could’ve done just one. “I’m just a normal painter or a street artist. In the States, they label this kind of art as ‘Outsider Art’ – it has no limits, there’s no formal education or skills behind it; they start from or use whatever they have and do whatever they want,” Abraham explains.

And whatever Abraham wants, it’s clear that not many are going to understand him. “It’s like skateboard tricks. It’s useless but it’s fun to do! It’s useless because no one is watching unless you document it. Not all of my work is documented,” reveals Abraham. Which begs us to raise the question: How much more art does Abraham have waiting for us to discover in years to come?

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Often overlooked until Ernest Zacharevic’s murals took the island and the rest of the country by storm, Penang has always had a rich multicultural heritage that has inevitably spawned a healthy local art scene. From the island’s history as a trade hub, influences converge over generations to make very a rojak state out of an already rojak country.

Left-handed comicbook artist, Lefty Julian is one of such homegrown talents. “When I grew up in the ‘80s, I got my dose of superhero comics from the mamak newsagent, HK Kung Fu comics and pirated manga from the Chinese bookshops, music from the local RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) radio station and movies from occasional visits to the huge theatres,” Julian relates of his mishmash upbringing. “I am from a Christian family but frequently roamed around my Taoism grandfather's house in the kampung with a friendly Malay neighbour. I guess I’m a melting pot myself.”

Starting as an Art Director with MOY, the publication company that gave us Ujang, Julian was in charge of Sot Sot – a short-lived Chinese comic magazine similar to Ujang. He moved on to Gempak Starz and whilst there started his own collective-publishing house called Gilamon Studio with 2 other artists. In the time before he returned to Penang, Julian was based in Singapore working for an American company that produced creative intellectual property for Hollywood. “It wasn’t a particularly good time but a good experience,” as Julian remembers it, but it did drive him to return to his first love – creating comics – and to Penang once again.

With so much attention being drawn on Penang’s art scene now, the One Academy Penang lecturer, who teaches Character Design & Comics Illustration, still feels his heart is in comics despite having marked George Town’s most prominent spots with his murals. “It was very exciting as I just returned to Penang after being away for almost 20 years. It gave me a good reason to study and understand my hometown.” Under the George Town Heritage Project, Julian was given 5 streets to research and interpret in a single-panel comic. “I wouldn't call it my most prominent work as that would always be my next project but yeah, it's the most visible project of my artistic life so far.”

So does he feel Penang is getting crowded now? “There are indeed a whole lot of local talents. I don't consciously know where my art fits in but my style is more mainstream superhero-influenced (plus a small portion of subconscious manga) decorated with a hefty dose of local elements especially those that feel vintage or evoke nostalgia. I guess I just inject in the ingredients and let it grow into its own animal.”

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The great Pablo Picasso once said: “I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn.” It’s the old versus new argument. Traditionalists will inherently try to resist change, while those who welcome change are often oblivious to the dangers of modern comfort.

Although photography as an artform is fairly new as compared to other mediums, there are those who take the discipline to a new level, even proving Picasso wrong. Seremban-KL raised Vincent Paul Yong is one such individual. Recently celebrating his 10th anniversary as a professional and artistic photographer with an exhibition of his works at Art Printing Works, Bangsar; Yong almost became an Electrical Engineer if it was not for the camera he got from his dad on his 11th birthday. “A year later, he banned me from using it because I spent a bomb on developing film. He obviously thought I was wasting film as the shots turned out blur by intention,” says Yong who became a fulltime photographer in 2004.

Refining his skills as an experimental photographer was tough. “Some people in the industry were giving me a hard time because they knew I was a self-taught photographer. They thought I was being ‘experimental’ to cover up my inadequacies.” But Yong persisted and opened his own studio in 2006. Later on, after numerous projects and shoots, Yong became known as a fashion-photographer, although his work has always transcended his subjects and their fields. In 2012, Yong produced Levi’s Spring/Summmer ‘12 Digital Lookbook that used stop-motion videography and featured DJs Davern Koh and HypeEmBeats.

As an advocate of minimalism, Yong is very in tune with modern design trends and yet still manages to have his own way with his craft. “I can’t just frame a picture and click the shutter! I’m not someone who produces photos according to a brief. My real client is, all the time, the audience, the readers or the viewers – not particularly the person paying or funding the project,” he says in a Bohemian manner before continuing, “I know it’s unpopular to say this to clients, but I guess I’m an idealist. I want creative freedom for myself and my partners so we can produce our best work. It’s a win-win.”

A city-slicker with an eye for simplicity (probably due to his Seremban upbringing), it’s no wonder the local fashion scene adores him. “A photo shouldn’t be contrived,” Yong reinforces his disdain for digital retouching. “That would defeat the whole purpose, if a photographer relies on Photoshop. Photography should be organic and fluid.” We guess it’s also true what Picasso said years later: “In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression.”

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