NULL
The annual Prudential Eye Awards returns to Singapore for the third time this year. The prominent contemporary award recognizes outstanding emerging artists from Asia. This year, two Indonesian artists have been shortlisted, one of them being indieguerillas whom Indonesia Design has featured recently.
The husband-and-wife duo Dyatmiko ‘Miko’ Lancur Bawono and Santi Ariestyowanti behind indieguerillas has been nominated for the Best Emerging Artist Using Installation category. The featured artwork, Face Off Face Dinner was also part of Indonesia’s leading art exhibition, ArtJog.
The artwork shows two white bikes facing away from each other, their rears joined by a small dinner table. There’s an old saying in Javanese ‘mangan ora mangan sing penting kumpul’ which roughly means ‘meal or no meal, as long as we’re together’. A lot has changed since then; it’s now more accurate to say ‘as long as I have my phone’. Face Off Face Dinner pokes fun at this laughably saddening attitude by placing a screen that divides the table into two, triggering visitors’ thoughts on whether dinner would still be an enjoyable moment when spent facing a screen.
Miko and Santi are “constantly in guerrilla to find new possibilities” and they become full-time artists in 2007. They prefer the use of unconventional media and techniques as a part of their practice as artists.
There are two other contestants in the same category, one from Taiwan and the other one Indonesia. Aditya Novali is a Solo native who studied architecture at Parahyangan University in Bandung and conceptual design at the Design Academy Eindhoven in Holland.
Dubbed Conversation Unknown, Aditya’s installation is a series of transparent plexiglass with 3500 ink drawings of people from the book Indonesian Art World by Dr. Melani W Setiawan. The project is a reminder that art is a process and interaction between the elements of the world of art itself. Contemporary art is defined by the entire world of art as opposed to just one place.
The total prize money is USD$150,000, of which USD$20,000 as well as a specially commissioned trophy will be awarded to the winner of each category. An overall winner will be selected from the five category winners to be awarded the Best Emerging Artist prize to win an extra USD$30,000 and a solo exhibition at START, Saatchi Gallery in London.
The procession will be held at the MasterCard Theatres at Marina Bay Sands on 19 January. There will be a public exhibition at the ArtScience Museum that will run from 16 January to 27 March 2016.