A rich array of paintings by Philippines and Indonesian artists promises to be a focal point in the START Art Fair at London's Saatchi Gallery next week (12-16 October). Singapore gallery One East Asia returns to the iconic Duke of York's HQ building for the sixth year running to present new works specially commissioned for the annual art fair.
The boutique collection features hyperrealist work by regular exhibitors Abi Dionisio and Jayson Cortez, joined by Chelsea Theodossis and iSko Andrade, as well as Pop Surrealism from Indonesian artist Roby Dwi Antonio.
Dionisio's signature pairing of exquisite diminutive embroideries corresponding to large oil paintings revealing the stitchwork hidden on the reverse of the cloth will be a draw to London audiences, who have clustered around her works in gasping admiration for several years running. Flourish is an embroidered butterfly overlaid by flowers that assumes a more web-like, darker existence in the reverse view of the painted partner piece, giving a sense of the butterfly being caught in a trap of its own making. The metanarrative in Dionisio's work is always consistent: what we see on the surface hides the more complex, challenging and untidy reality that lies beneath.
Cortez's hyper-real images of his wife Tracey have also become a fixture in the British capital since his work was first exhibited by One East Asia in the show Peninsular Practices at the Redfern Gallery, Cork Street, in 2015, as part of Asian Art in London. Mother's Details depict his muse swathed in heavy white lace like an historic black and white photograph that has been retouched in colour with the armful of flowers that she clasps. Now mother to the couple's first child, this image of Tracey celebrates motherhood from both a personal perspective of "Mom, Mama, Mother" and a universal viewpoint of "nurturing life in the cycle of the human race" (artist's statement).
Thematically in keeping with the photorealistic tendencies in the group commissioned for START are Andrade's Strength and Growth and Theodossis's One Fine Day 2. Andrade's white lace, translucent ribbon and red cloth bundled up by a thin frayed rope can hardly be described as a still life, instead teetering between the appearance of a hastily-wrapped gift and the suggestion of something more threatening, like coercion and control. The title suggests escape, a moving beyond what has been set out by societal norms, and may reflect Andrade's status as the only male in a family of powerful women that he frequently celebrates through his work.
Theodossis's array of pots and containers with scissors and ribbon-tied bow suggest the uncanny lying beneath the everydayness of the objects represented. Looking for meaning results in fragmented truths, a postmodernist narrative encased within the illusion of reality. Her talent for trompe-l'oeil wizardry recalls the other-worldly strangeness work of Dutch artist Edward Collier (active 1662-1708), whose still lifes of written texts and writing accoutrements were produced for the English market from the 1690s. Collier's works still have the power to disconcert, and Theodossis's paintings exhibit the same quality.
The virtuoso painterliness on display takes a different turn in the final artist included in the show. The only non-Filipino in the group, Dwi Antonio's Epic Fight brings into the mix the current of surrealism that is well established in modern and contemporary Indonesian art. Known for his Pop Surrealism, an international genre shared by a roster of artists including as Yoshitomo Nara and Mark Ryden, Dwi Antonio's work characteristically depicts large-headed child figures and hybrid creatures in macabre situations. Epic Fight, a fine art print on aquarelle paper from an edition of 200, is a textbook example of his discomfiting blend of pop culture and Northern Renaissance images of hell – just what collectors look for.
