A Different Way Of Painting: A Different Way Of Thinking about Painting

Group exhibition curated by Tony Godfrey

with new wall painting At Ease acrylic and pencil on wall 2017

from the catalogue:

What is this show about? Why am I curating it in Jogja?

Firstly, because I sense that we are at a turning point, both
here and worldwide, where what is happening in painting
appears uncertain. Secondly, because in travelling between
Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines I noticed a number
of artists who had studied in the UK. How they painted and
how they thought about painting was often very different from
how other painters worked in the region. I thought it would be
interesting to bring some of those artists to Jogja so artists here
could see a different perspective on painting.
I must emphasise, I am not saying this is how other people
should paint or think about painting. There is more than one
way to make a painting and more than one way to think
about them.

How do we paint? Who do we paint for? Who do we want to
paint like?

There was a time, probably before you, dear reader,
were alive, when the answers to these questions were clear to
most people. Then, in the Seventies, with conceptual art and
Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru in Indonesia the question “Why paint
at all?” became the more important one to answer.
8 In 1980 when a big exhibition of new painting entitled New Spirit in
Painting was launched in London it had all sorts of painting in it, abstract,
figurative, expressionist, monochrome. There was no master discourse any
more, and no set menu. When a much better version of that exhibition
opened in Berlin a year later entitled Zeitgeist, it also included sculptures,
photographs and installations. Painters could do other things and people
who did other things could relate to painting.

So I cannot believe there is any single correct or preferred style or story
to painting since then.