Artists Caravan

Artists Caravan was founded in October 2008 by Ong Xiao Yun and Joey Soh. It depicts a nomadic group of individuals with parallel aspiration journeying jointly on a pilgrimage for art.

Core ideology of the Artists Caravan emphasizes on empowerment of individuals over societies’ manipulation in the course of creation.

We facilitate projects that function like a probe in a society that is showing signs of being desensitize by media overload, economy instability and human created or natural disasters.

Each project pilot Participating Artists towards exploration, experimentation, reflection, research, intellectual stimulation and process of creation that revolves around three central elements – self, others and environment. Whereby self refers to the creator, others – societies and/or communities, and environment depict locations and/or a state of dislocation or displacement in spaces.

Artists Caravan permanent members are:

Chan Mei Hsien, Artist

Joey Soh Pei Ling, Artist

Ong Xiao Yun, Artist

Stephanie Cheng, Artist

url: http://artistscaravan.co.cc/

news: http://artistscaravan.worpress.com

flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artistscaravan/

Commencing the first edition of the Caravanist Festival was the 4 Artists – Chan Mei Hsien, Ong Xiao Yun, Joey Soh and Wei Tian Fang, acquainted with the hasty beats of our urban cityscape, journeyed briefly into, a rustic village called Sasaran Town,located in the state of Selangor, Malaysia. We were provided minimum information of our destination except that Sasaran Town is a fishing village. Given 2 days to survey and respond to this foreign environment, we gathered insight and history of location from our hosts. After some exploration, a site was chosen based on an instant feeling of ‘knowing’ agreeable by every artist in the group. Subsequently, materials were gathered and works were created spontaneously moved by native rhythms, engagement with local communities and personal enquiries.

Works were documented and quickly dismantled to resume the original form of the site before our departure. Upon returning to Singapore, an exhibition – Unversed Roles Exhibition at INSTINC Gallery concluding with an Artists dialogue session.

Title: “Bleeding ground”by Chan Mei Hsien, Site-specific | Location: Sasaran Town, Malaysia | Materials: Strips of paper and thread(brought by artist), found sticks and branches from site

At the site, I found abundance of tree trunks, branches, log and dried tree sticks. Next, my eyes are attracted by the vertical fold and the fading rusty color of aluminium plank standing on the bricks. I set to fill up the gaps and holes with sticks to build an untamed habitation that had rooted over time. I explore the role of drawing by using paper, thread, tree sticks to construct a temporal structural. The white strip of paper flying freely on the sticks against the corroded plank, give an overall sense of tragedy and existential futility. The bleeding blue lines smudged by the unexpected rain, acts as an interesting element in the whole work titled- “bleeding ground”.

Artists-at-work on 14-15Dec 2008