22. Easy Pickings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Part 11)

They say "if it works, don't fix it". So we carried out our second hunt for Kuala Lumpur street art in pretty much the same manner as the first.

Once again, we started with a subway ride, this time to the rather downtrodden area called Dato' Keramak, also by the stormwater drains. We descended via a garbage-strewn ramp:

to a subterranean level by the Klang River:

Once again, our hardest choice was how to get back and forth across the water, given that there were murals on both sides. We could, of course, have swum in front of the rapids:

 

Or clambered across the rather dubious-looking pipe-bridge that resembled a giant crocodile:

 

 

But, once again, we took the cowardly - but dry - way out by walking back up the ramp and crossing over a real bridge. 

  

Our effort was splendidly rewarded. We saw quite a few artistically drawn portraits like these by Mazen:

 

 

 

Akid:

 

 

and SycoDe:

 

And, as usual, quite a few by very talented - albeit anonymous or illegible - artists:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were also quite a few portraits of distinctly un-human types, like these by Gore:
 

 

Katun:

 

 

and others unidentifiable:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last, but not least, we saw some quite splendid artwork on the round pillars supporting the LRT above - not the easiest surface on which to work:

 

 

 

 

 



So there you have it, some of the gems mined from the longest stretch of street art in the world. Please keep in mind that we barely scratched the surface and you many want to journey to Kuala Lumpur to see what you can dig up on your own. We've given you directions to the mother lode of murals and we've told you about the hazards to watch out for. All we ask is that you not violate any local customs or laws while you're there:

 



21. Easy Pickings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Part 1)



(Mural by Malaysia's Medium Touch)

Unlike most cities in Southeast Asia, street art in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur is out in the open, easy to find, celebrated in an annual festival, and bunched together in select locations. You won't have to traipse over half the city in return for meagre reward.

But you will have to know a few things about KL to make your hunt worthwhile. Like which LRT station to get off at. In the case of today's post, it's the Pasar Seni LRT in one of KL's less salubrious parts of town - along the storm drains of the Klang River:

Both sides of the water are wall-to-wall with murals so you'll also have to know the best way to cross once you've finished viewing your first side. You could, for example, swim across the cascading waters:

Or bow your head and wade through the grungy culverts:



Call us cowardly, but we recommend taking the footpath back up to street level, crossing the regular bridge and taking the other footpath back down to storm-drain level.

Whichever way you choose, your reward will be a few hundred yards of really big murals. How big? Well consider that Heather is about 5'7:

That would make the average mural about 15 ft. high x 30 ft. wide. But these are no average murals, either in size or quality. Their creators have come from around the world, and the works have a distinct cartoon-like appearance to them. Have a glance at this one that came to life via the GIANTS SHALL RISE competition between Katun and Clogtwo:

Clogtwo, whose work appears on the right, is a Singapore-based "visual anarchist" who paints narratives that explore dark humour and social behaviour in everyday life. Katun, from Kuala Lumpur, started by sketching cartoon characters and now focuses on graffiti.

Some of our other favourites were by Ultra Boys, who hail from Belgium, France and Spain:

"Urban Guerilla" by Kenji (Chai), from Sabah, Malaysia, who was bred on comics, cartoon and storybooks and whose iconic dog, Chaigo, has made appearances in a number of countries:

Brindisi-born, now Milan-resident, Mr. Wany, a hip-hop afficionado, break-dancer and graffiti artist. He is art-school trained and has, over the years, worked his way through the worlds of graphic, canvas and urban arts, and more recently has found himself drawn to the world of tattoo:

A duo by Slacsatu, and some of his fellow members from Singapore's Zincnite Crew:

 "The Secret Hideout", which may be the title of the mural or the name of the crew that painted it:

This one called "We Got the Jazz":

And various and sundry paintings by artists whose indecipherable or absent signatures, or low internet profiles have rendered them, regrettably, invisible or unknown (to us):

  

At this point, you've still just scratched the surface of the hundreds of murals by the storm drains at the Klang. But this isn't a race. You may be feeling the heat from Malaysia's year-round 100+ temperature, dehydrated (unless you've remembered to bring a water bottle), claustrophobic from spending hours under the concrete canopy of the LRT line, or maybe just somewhat paranoid from having to tiptoe around the less-fortunate ones sleeping in the shadows - don't bother them and they won't bother you.

So we respectfully suggest that this would be a good time to call it a day and take the short path up to the refreshing view of KL's Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque) and the city skyline:

We'll pick up where we left off, in our next post.



20: A Close-Up Look at Cambodian Artist Touch Khchao

One of the first people we met in Battambang -- Cambodia's second-largest city and resurgent arts hub -- was British ex-Pat, Darren Swallow. Darren is the kind of person you'd like to meet first in every city. He's friendly, outgoing, knowledgeable, seems to know just about everybody in town, is co-owner of the three-storey Lotus Bar Gallery (on Street 2.5), and is also co-owner of the funkiest memorabilia shop this side of Portobello Road.

As we talked to Darren and looked around at his eclectic collection, our eyes kept being drawn to a number of extremely colourful and detailed prints that were clearly of a contemporary and local nature. Darren promised to introduce us to the artist, which he did a while later when his wife -- the other co-owner of Lotus, and the memorabilia store -- Touch Kchao, entered the shop.

Street Art Piece by Touch Just Outside Lotus

Like Darren, Touch was open, friendly and communicative, but in the quiet and smiling way that is characteristic of many Cambodians. She is a graduate of Battambang's famous art school, Phare Ponleu Selpak and one of the city's most successful artists. She is also someone with strong and well-formed opinions about women's issues and the environment. We enjoyed talking with her about these and other issues over the course of a couple of days.

Touch was already well-known in Battambang. She had exhibited a powerful and colourful series of paintings (Restful Places) focusing on the need women have for a place -- not in the external world, but deep within their hearts -- where they can be free and relax in peace, joy and tranquility. The images are truly incredible and you could study them for hours:

 Restful Place No.1      

Restful Place No.2     

Restful Place No.3

Restful Place No.6

Fortunately for Touch, but not so much for us, she had already sold all of the originals in the series, so we ended up buying two of her limited edition prints and one printed on canvas:

This Love is for You

The Sun at Night

(Title Unknown)




The next day we spoke with Touch about her painting technique and her current projects. She was eager to show us some of her new works, but they were at home. In Canada that would normally mean that she would bring in a few canvases the next day and we would drop by the store again to see them. In Cambodia it meant coming back to the store a few hours later -- after Touch had picked up her daughter from school and taken her to daycare, then hopping on the back of her motorcycle and riding off to her home.

It must be said that motor biking in Cambodia is not exactly what you would call relaxing -- hundreds of motorcycles of every size, shape and age wove in and out of traffic, no one staying in their lanes (were there lanes?) and hardly any traffic lights, which didn't really matter since no one paid attention to them any. It didn't help that neither of us had been on a motorcycle in several decades, something that would come back to haunt Heather as she tried to dismount and rammed her knee into the metal frame.

As we entered Touch's home studio, our hearts still firmly in our throats, we were greeted by an array of incredibly detailed and colourful paintings in various shapes and sizes. One, called Everything Grows from Her, we immediately fell in love with:

Everything Grows from Her

But there was a problem. There was a small hole in the canvas and Touch would have to reweave and paint it. That would take too long for us -- we were off to Siem Reap the next day -- but in the meantime Touch showed us her technique which involved taking a pointed bamboo stick, dipping it into paint and, in a flurry of brushstrokes, applying it to a very small bit of the canvas. This was hard, detailed and time-consuming work and we could easily see how it could take up to a year to create a large artwork.

We also saw a number of other interesting originals that we would have purchased on the spot:

Yellow Flower

Wonderland in a Tree

To us they appeared finished. But we realized that Touch was looking at them through different eyes. Where we saw completion, she saw colours and images to be added, brushstrokes to be strengthened, and textures to be changed. She thought it would take another six months to finish.

But we also saw -- and Touch confirmed -- that she was an artist who was very much attached to her work as an outgrowth of her person and her culture. It was almost as hard for her to part with a painting as it was to part with a member of her family. And why not? It  only took nine months to deliver a baby. It required a full year to create a painting.

If you love Touch Khchao's work as much as we do, and you're happy with limited edition prints, please do yourself a favour and visit her website:
http://touch-khchao.fineartamerica and buy something. We don't get a penny out of it -- just the satisfaction of knowing that another very talented artist is gaining exposure and reaching her potential.