The Corpo-reality of Oil Paint

It’s done! I’ve made the thesis that I wrote at the Royal College of Art into a book! I’ve always wanted to try making a book out of paint because well, the thesis is called “The Corpo-reality of Oil Paint.”

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It’s been a month since I’m back from my year-long studies at the Royal College of Art. After a month of trying things out – testing different paper weights that will give a nice hand feel with the soft cover, making a PDF that won’t cause the printer to shake her head at me, emailing and dropping by bookbinders and getting “whaaat is this that you’re trying to do??” responses from some and helpful advice from others, I finally tied that knot on the last stitch on the binding! These two books were made for two very special friends and dearly respected teachers who have been with me on my journey for more than a decade now.

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Several failed attempts and mocks ups later (booklets when folded became larger than what I calculated, accidentally piercing holes that I wasn’t supposed to pierce with my needle when binding etc), the final form finally took shape. Originally I conceptualised something quite different, but upon making, did not quite work out as planned. So here it is, a saddle stitched book with nothing on the covers to showcase the materiality of the paint that it is made of.

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Royal College of Art MRes Exhibition & Symposium

A year flies by so quickly. I’ve submitted my thesis, finished my viva examinations and here are the installation and private view photos of my graduation show:

DSC_0365The weight of the paint is > 9.5kg! My classmate Lauren helped to hold up the box so I could better control where the paint is going.

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IMG_20180906_151405.jpgLauren installing her own paintings.

IMG_20180906_145741Harri moving her sculptures into the gallery.

IMG_20180906_122418.jpgOver at the other gallery, Fuen is painting on the wall.

IMG_20180907_164624.jpgFeliciè and her installation.

IMG_20180906_144334.jpgAfter the paint is poured, it needs to be sculpted.

Visitors to the private view:_N5A2326_edit.jpg

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_N5A2369_edit.jpgTouchy touchy touch…

_N5A2382_edit.jpgYum yum yumz…

Loose leaf takeaway catalogue pages Riso printed with Studio Hato.

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I was part of the panel of 6 for the first symposium, “Knowledge Production Through Practice – Deconstruction as Method”. The second was, “Imagining Alternative Futures – Speculative Design to Rethink Existing Structures”. IMG_20180913_135224_BURST4

Happy graduation everyone!DSC_0825.JPG

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Pass-the-Parcel @ StudioRCA

DSC00341Spring term at RCA concluded with a group show at StudioRCA with my MRes coursemates. We called our group exhibition, “Pass-the-Parcel” and we just had our opening on 26 April. As you can see from the poster (designed by yours truly!), it’s jam packed with para-activities all the way to the last day:Poster with namesWe started installing from 23 April.

This is Lauren Iredale hanging her double-sided paintings:IMG_20180424_103839.jpgHarri Hudspith installing her sculpture:IMG_20180423_141427.jpgFuen Chin helping Félicie Kertudo to sew her curtains:img_20180424_181653.jpgFuen again – discussing with Joel Chan how to hang the multimedia component in her work. Joel, an ex-RCA graduate himself from MA Sculpture, helped us out with the installation:IMG_20180424_171701.jpgWalls needed a coat of paint, and this was done by me:IMG_20180423_164120Joel adjusting the projector to show Harri and Laura Sullivan’s collaborative work, Embody:IMG_20180424_182854.jpgXiaoyi Nie, our curatorial contributor, checking out Félicie’s work:DSC00421.jpgJoel again, using a spirit level to check my shelves:IMG_20180424_111143.jpgAnd this is how my 5 paint objects look like installed!DSC00338.jpgDSC00333 straighten.jpgDSC00334DSC00335DSC00336 straighten.jpgDSC00337DSC00345Joel checking the spirit level again for my work installed on another wall:IMG_20180424_160140.jpgHow it looks like installed:DSC00322DSC00323DSC00324DSC00326DSC00327DSC00328Posters are stuck:DSC00357.jpgDSC00375.jpgDSC00352Harri’s seminar, The Way of Perfection, was the first event that took place in the space on 26 April:IMG_20180426_160240Guests started streaming in at 6pm, when our exhibition officially opens:

DSC00794.jpgOur tutor, Kimathi Donkor, participating in Laura’s interactive work, Rubbings, rubbing out her drawing with the erasers and gloves provided:DSC00580.jpgDSC00859.jpgDSC00446.jpgDSC00791.jpgDSC00780.jpgDSC00687DSC00726DSC00760.jpgDSC00765DSC00867At 7pm, Allan Struthers started his performance, What Are You Arguing About Now? Relational Aesthetics:DSC00854I felt like I was filming a sitcom with everybody watching:DSC00825DSC00849DSC00828.jpgDSC00809In the end we named the piece, “Is there anybody up there” and signed our names on the back of the card:IMG_20180426_202039IMG_20180426_202030Laura carried out her workshop, Playing the Field, soon after:IMG_20180426_200439.jpgIMG_20180426_202727.jpgIMG_20180426_202744And that pretty much sums up our opening! Pass-the-Parcel is on till 29 April if you’d like to stop by!DSC00887.jpg

 

AcrossRCA Week – Edible Communities

IMG_20171103_162834So I’m into my third month in London at the Royal College of Art (RCA). It’s been great fun living in a new city, meeting people from all over the world, and continuing my practice with food. Thought that I’d take some time to type up some of the things that I’ve been up to and share them here.

Last week was AcrossRCA week and as the name suggests, it is a week where we get a chance to collaborate with people from different disciplines across the college on a project. The project that I’m involved in is called “Edible Communities”, and what we’re trying to do is to foster a community through – you guessed it – food! The title picture is how our mobile kitchen looked like, which we built from scrap material scavenged throughout the college ^-^

On the first day, we had breakfast together and a potluck lunch (my kind of bonding session ;p) and drew up plans for how we wanted out mobile kitchen to look.

IMG_20171030_100320Waffles cooking for breakfast!

IMG_20171030_131653Tada! Our potluck lunch – everyone made something (I made the dumplings with the help of my Singaporean friends at Lee Abbey ^-^).

IMG_20171031_123220Day 2 – We had Finn from MA Sculpture a couple of years back to help with some serious building. Yay!

On Day 3, we visited Duchess Farms (http://www.duchessoil.co.uk/) and learnt a lot about sustainable farming practices from Oscar, which I won’t repeat here. I’m not a farmer, but I was very inspired to do my part as a consumer to make better choices…

IMG_20171101_111434.jpgTaking the overground to Duchess Farms at Hertfordshire…

IMG_20171101_111815.jpgOn Oscar’s wagon!

IMG_20171101_112353.jpgThis barn is 200 years old, and it’s a really good painting studio as you can see in the background ^-^

IMG_20171101_120048.jpgMax feeding vegetable scraps to the Dexters on the farm.

IMG_20171101_124043.jpgOscar and his rapeseed crop – and Cam ^-^

IMG_20171101_125116.jpgThat is John Lennon’s house in the backgound 🙂

On Thursday, we put finishing touches to the mobile kitchen, bought groceries… and we’re ready for our opening on Friday!

img_20171102_170940.jpgOur mobile kitchen collapses into this handy little thing ^-^ The legs become trolley handles and Xiao Mo here is trying it out.

img_20171103_134942.jpgWe tried to use quality organic ingredients…

FB_IMG_1509742271593We made our pasta from a scratch, dyeing it pink with beetroot juice, and blue with purple cabbage 🙂

IMG_20171103_163110.jpgIMG_20171103_163133.jpgOur noodles ready made, and our vegetables neatly chopped for the opening at 5.30pm!

23270227_1307896382647851_650740298183371407_o.jpgGuests can snip off bits of ingredients from this hanging rack as toppings for their noodles.

23155120_1307894939314662_4076318066126921961_oOur guests are here!

23120011_1307894992647990_997901035845770554_o23270444_1307894709314685_2348250246271910606_o23157220_1307895275981295_4520373270189666775_o23244494_500152647015743_8500212723187023853_nWe also made vegetable dumplings out of pasta skin! Our noodles are meat-free 🙂

That concludes our project! I hope we can take our mobile kitchen more places ^-^ And this is the most complete photo I can find of all the people in our wonderful group:

IMG_20171030_131735.jpgClockwise around the table from left: Sara Ozvaldic, Smriti Prasad (from whom I stole some of the photos on this blog post), Ni Wangxia (from whom I stole the photo of the dumplings :D), Wang Keren, Joseph Gabriel, Ryo Tada (who took the photo of the pasta making process), Nora Silva, Ines Neto dos Santos, Kathleen Reilly, Henriette Holz, and last of all, yours truly ;p

FB_IMG_1509662339815I’d like to conclude with this picture of us walking around the farm with our blue shoes (photo by Ines) 😀