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ALL SET FOR A BIGGER & BETTER MANILART 10

After the astounding success of last year’s MANILART 09, the Bonafide Art Galleries

Organization (BAGO), teams up once more with the National Commission on Culture and Arts (NCCA)

and the Department of Tourism (DOT) to showcase the finest in Philippine visual arts via the bigger and

better MANILART 10, the 2nd Philippine International Art Fair.

Slated for a four-day public run at the SMX Convention Center Hall 4 at the Mall of Asia

Complex, Pasay City from July 29 until August 1, 2010 from 11am to 8pm.

MANILART 10 promises to dazzle art lovers and enthusiasts with the best and broadest

examples of Philippine contemporary art. Over 1,000 paintings and sculptures by 400 of the country’s

brightest talents will be on display and over 60 of the finest art galleries participating, thus making the

fair the biggest ever in Philippine history.

“In the first year of MANILART, it took us three long months to fill up the 40 exhibition booths

planned,” says BAGO president Jonathan Sy. “This year 70 of the booths snapped up within two days

by some of the most prestigious galleries nationwide. We post a 40% increase in the participation with

half of that number getting double-sized booths.”

The BAGO also expresses its gratitude to the management of the SMX Convention Center as the

space more than doubled and more importantly for agreeing to lease Hall 4 at a subsidized rate owing to

their support to Filipino art and artists.

Exciting activities such as painting demonstrations, on-the-spot competitions, “how-to” lectures

and many more are lined-up. That is why the BAGO is very pleased that the NCCA Committee on Art

Galleries headed by Lyn Yusi initiated the approval of a larger grant for MANILART 10. (30)

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Dis-close: Project Another Country continues Brisbane-based artist-couple Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan’s investigation into the idea of time and memory, place and history, processes and transitions. This latest exhibition turns attention onto the physical site itself to reveal something of its past and history. With careful consideration and close examination, the artists respond sensitively to the space and its painted white walls. The husband-and-wife team has been collaborating over the past ten years on projects based on their experiences as artists and as parents of five children currently living in Australia. Their inter-disciplinary, collaborative and communal art projects often employ everyday materials and found objects to express ideas of migration, family and identity.

Major exhibitions include: ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, 2009; Logan Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, 2008; Singapore Biennale, 2008; Adelaide Biennial, Australia, 2008; The Drawing Room, Manila, The Philippines, 2006; Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2006; 50th Biennale of Venice, Italy, 2003.

Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan are represented by Jan Manton Art | CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL ART | 59 Melbourne St South Brisbane QLD 4101 AUSTRALIA | +61 7 3844 0043 | http://www.janmantonart.com/

http://boxcopy.org/dis-close-project-another-country-alfredoisabel-aquilizan/

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In her second solo show, Kadin Tiu translates the private process and inevitable struggle between the transient ideas and identities that are typical of the artist’s life. Depicting this haunting, terribly lonely and at times consuming moment of contemplation, doubt, reassessment, and eventual self-realization, she builds on literal images of isolation and interruption to capture this fragile, floating space in between certainties: when one must betray the suddenly archaic perspectives they have outgrown, while wrestling with the grain of something frightening unfamiliar and yet excitingly new and potentially epiphanic.

In the magical reality of her pieces, there is an agitation and energy of thought and possibility streaming into reality in the form of a dark, symbiotic liquid, threatening to engulf and drown out all that is concrete and tangible. There is a necessary yet beautiful destruction that the artist embraces, which she anticipates will give her passage into a new, if ephemeral plane of artistic creation.
Break in Continuity will open on Friday, June 4 from 5pm to 8PM at blanc Peninsula Manila. Blanc PMN is located at The Peninsula Manila G/F Shops 9 and 10 Ayala Avenue corner Makati Avenue, Makati City.
The exhibition will run until June 26, 2010.

For more information please visit www.blanc.ph call/sms +63920.9276436

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Bato Bato sa Langit by Alfredo Esquillo Jr.

Opening Reception: June 9, 2010, Wednesday
6-9pm

There is a Filipino saying, “Bato-bato sa langit, ang tamaan ay huwag magalit.”, which roughly translates as: Do not react to the criticisms I am throwing at you, because your reaction will give your guilt away.

With painting and sculpture, Alfredo Esquillo Jr. sets off a game of throw-and-catch, where criticism constantly bounces back and forth. In his latest show, called Bato Bato sa Langit, the players’ roles are undefined – ‘who throws’ and ‘who gets hit’ are questions that require some stepping back, humility in tow, to arrive at an answer. The point of his game is clear. Esquillo’s art is the prism through which he looks at the Philippines’ sense of nationhood and the obstacles in its way forward.

The first stone is cast by America whose impact on the life of the Filipino nation is without comparison. Esquillo’s paintings exhibit the bond between the two nations in all its varied relationships, from that of teacher and student, to that of scientist and specimen. As in B.I. Joe, where an American teaches some natives to smoke…later on to find the entire village has learned the habit— the finger points both ways.  And though blame is often mutual, the wound is extensive and deep.

With this, Esquillo throws back the stone more than fifty years later only to realize the biggest and powerful stone is one that Filipinos threw at themselves. Through his sculptures, where he puts together the jeepney and a wheelchair, he builds a symbol of the Filipino people. With the bright colors and lights of the jeepney leading the way but the driver’s seat bound by a metal wheelchair, he reveals that Philippine history, tainted may be by its colonial past, is also paralyzed by the Filipinos’ own doing. So often forgotten is the ‘man-in-the-mirror’ concept that a colorful and bright future is harder to achieve.

Politics and criticism aside, Esquillo looks back at the Philippines’ short history to wonder where it is heading and with his audience, decide if the road will be as bumpy as it has been. If Bato Bato sa Langit is about the Philippines, it is also for the Philippines. The game of throw-and-catch can end, and Filipinos have the power to get there.

Bato Bato sa Langit runs simultaneously with Being There 1946: The Legacy of Teodulo Protomartir at Silverlens, and Lover Lay Down by Christina Dy at 20Square at SLab.

Artist Talk by Alfredo Esquillo Jr. is on June 26,Saturday 3-5pm at SLab, Silverlens Gallery. This event is free of charge. RSVP call 8160044 or email manage@silverlensphoto.com

Bato Bato sa Langit is in partnership with Tin-Aw Art Management.

For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816-0044, 0917-5874011, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am–7pm and Saturdays 1–6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com / slab.silverlensphoto.com.

Words: Bea Davila, Image: Alfredo Esquillo Jr., Alab ng Puso, 2010

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