Artcoholics Takes Street Art to Gallery

18 Feb 2010

• Ragam
• The Jakarta Post

Munarsih Sahana
CONTRIBUTOR/YOGYAKARTA

Members of the Barbarados group of visual artists Yogyakarta merely shrug their shoulders when people call their art "artcoholic", as most of them admit to liking alcohol and a state of in-ebriation.They display the typical traits of the "punk" generation with tattoos all over their body, piercings in their ears or nose and mohawks.

The artists, however, have not taken offense to the term "artcoholic", interpreting it as a description of their high spirit and aspiration to do their best to create visual artwork."Other artists drink [alcohol] too, but they conceal their habit Dont judge us by our personal appearance, but instead look at our art and the quality of our artwork," said Farhan, a member of Barbarados who learned photography at college.Barbarados is in fact the name of an imaginary peaceful island where they dream of long afternoons painting and planting trees.

The word is a combination of barbarian (culture), which symbolizes absolute freedom and Barbados, the name of a famous island in the Caribbean.This group of 36 artists is currently holding its second exhibition at Taman Budaya Yogyakarta, featuring mostly street art, in which artists express their ideas spontaneously, adding phrases in their paintings, similar to the graffiti found in public spaces.Whatever thought pops into their mind when they paint will end up on their artwork, be is their best wishes or prayers, Farhan said.

Curator Aa Nurjaman was keen to work with the group, whose members are graduates of art schools majoring in craft, fine art and photography, because he believes in and admires their spontaneity.They are honest to themselves and do not pretend to create art that will fetch high prices for the sake of satisfying curators or collectors, said Nurjaman.Nurjaman, who also curated their first exhibition a year ago, found this group had a different way of practicing their art "With their spontaneity and genuine ideas [already on display], and their way of distorting objects in their work, I expect they will move toward stronger abstract work," Nurjaman said, citing the group had the logic of street artists.They get inspiration from the street, with some of the artists even living in the streets.

Participating artist and organizer Bambang Harnawa said the exhibition not only showcased their different works of art, but also protested about the widening gaps between different groups of artists in Yogya-kartas post-art period."While some artists have become very rich, others have been getting poorer because of capitalistic practices in the art business", Bambang said, adding that the theme of the exhibition was "The Rakus of Something Wrong", an expression that does not exist in any dictionary.

Rakus means greedy in Indonesian, which Barbarados interpret as something wrong in the Indonesian art scene. He admitted, however, the group was not interested in creating pop art although this genre is more lucrative.His work Rehat Sejenak (A Momentary Break), portraying a man seated on a red couch with his right hand pointing a gun to his head, alludes to the times he felt like taken his own life.Marco, an Australian artist, created video art about an collector aiming for high profits by buying cheap paintings and selling them on at a much higher price.

Agustinus Murtopos A Message to Me, with a dominant dark grey color, expresses the anguish he felt when his mother passed away in 2009 and other sad events.His work Street Justice depicts his anger toward Indonesias judicial system. "I think the best way to try corruptors is through street justice," Murtopo argued.He also criticized broadcast media in his work Dua Muka Media (Two Faces of the Media) with a painting of a television accompanied by text questioning if TVs were angels or satans.

A few of the works - paintings or installations might be too provocative for some visitors, containing daring phrases or content deemed obscene. However some works are more contemplative and carry religious messages, such as Opera Azzu-mar 17-18 by Tresna.Tresnas picture of flocks of animals living in harmony is splattered with verses in Arabic in the corner of the painting. Allatif, in his work Pembawa Pesan (The Messenger) drew a picture of a person making a sign of love using his hands over a cross.

Barbarados members insist they are committed to developing their own genre.To stay true to their commitment, a few of the artists own their own businesses to finance their art One member, for example, earns a living as a boxer and displays paintings of boxing. For the current exhibition, though, Barbarados is still raising money to pay the rent for the exhibition room.