4D3N Art In Nature June Holiday Programme in the Highlands

ART in NATURE – a first charKOL@Moonriver art programme

INTRODUCTION TO LAND/ENVIRONMENT ART
For learners of all Ages
Fee: S$500 (All Inclusive :Food, Transport & Accommodation)
Date: Thurs 24 June to Mon 28 June, 2009
Duration: 4 Days 3 Nights

LOCATION
Moonriver Lodge (www.moonriverlodge.com)
Sigar Highlands, Lojing, Kelantan, Malaysia
(10 Mins from Cameron Highlands)

INTRODUCTION
For over 70,000 years, human beings have been engaged with the environment and the land artistically.  During the late 1960s and early 1970s, artsists moved art outdoors from the galleries to engage the environment. Today, land artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Wolfgang Laib have moved Land Art into the gallery using materials from the environment to transform the interior space.
As an underexposed contemporary art form in Singapore,  Land Art is an intriguing way to engage with nature and the public.  Singaporeans identify with the urban landscape,  as such, we will work towards stepping out of our comfort zones with materials such as water and light, earth, sand, grass and other natural or found materials.
Our aim is to invite ourselves and viewers of the artworks created to slowdown and contemplate the beauty and mystery of nature. Participants will learn how they can explore concepts through the use of natural materials.  We hope to provide an  experience of life by seeing and exploring the natural forces of the world and its multitude of connections and to more fully integrate that consciousness into our lives.

ARTISTS’ PROFILE
Twardzik Ching Chorleng, Singapore
Twardzik Ching Chorleng is an artist and arts educator whose practice centres around land art and interactive public art.  Recently nominated as an up and coming artist in Singapore in the Presidents Young Talent award 2009, she is one of the notable contemporary artist in South East Asia. She has exhibited extensively in group and solo exhibitions throughout Canada and Singapore and is a regular recipient of meritorious awards and scholarships including Hanna Kristmanson Ceramic Scholarship and the Ceramics Canada Award. Leng’s work is included in numerous public and corporate collections in Singapore and abroad. She holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree from University of Regina, Canada, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in ceramics and a Diploma in Ceramic Arts from Alberta College of Art and Design, Canada. She is currently an active artist and full-time lecturer in the art department of the National Institute for Education at NTU and has an upcoming project at The National Museum of Singapore.

Vincent Twardzik Ching, Canada
Born in Canada, Vincent Twardzik Ching completed his  Bachelor of Fine Arts specialising in Drawing from the University of Regina, Canada in 1998 and has lived and worked in Taiwan and Singapore as an Artist and Art Instructor  for the past decade. Vincent has exhibited in Canada and Singapore including Plum Blossoms Gallery, Sculpture Square, Wetterling Teo Gallery,The Office Gallery,The Substation Gallery and most recently Charkol Art Gallery. Recipient of an Honourable Mention in the prestigious Phillip Morris Asean Art Awards in Singapore 2001/2002 he is currently a full-time artist and art Instructor at the Little arts Academy and a part -time lecturer for NTUC Seed Institute and Wheelock College in their early Childhood Development programmes.

REGISTER NOW!

Registration is now open. Early bird discount of 10% is applicable for those who register before May 28, 2010.
Email: moonriver@charkol.com for registration form

Please click the document for more info on itinerary and lodge.

Art in Nature[1]

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010

I have just managed to catch my breath to start posting again on The charKOL Journal. And the last posting was to usher in the new year for 2009! So, it’s been exactly a year. Where are we today? We founded charKOL in June 2008. It’s the craziest, scariest ride – the number of times we’ve had to re-examine ourselves. To start and toss and turn, to start and toss and turn, to start and toss and turn, yet again. In our aspirations, in our activities, in our sleep. The countless of times we ask – do we go on? The countless of times of – no answer. I found out, nobody really says no. People who think no are already long gone. And nobody really says yes. Everyone seem to need a reason, a justification, an affirmation, a guarantee. And the one time that you do hear a yes, that is, if you even dare utter it, is your own heart. It is unsounded. Pounding. It is the beat that connects to the next dot. 

It’s when you know whoa – we’re still alive. Very much so.

TO THE SECOND DECADE
-PEK

Christmas at charKOL: For Down Syndrome

Christmas Gift Baskets

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR

Calling All Art Educators

If you’d like to provide art education programmes to children and young adults from 3 months - 21 years of age, kindly contact info@charkol.com with your CV for an appointment.

We are also particularly interested in those who specialise in providing art programmes to SPECIAL NEEDS children.

SEND TO INFO@CHARKOL.COM

Call For Submissions To CharKOL Gallery

Dear Artists

 

Dear ARTISTS

 

As we continue to shape up charKOL Gallery, we are pleased to announce that we’ve set up an online platform to promote art collection. We’ve decided to use the blog platform, check out www.charkol.wordpress.com. It’s a little giddy at the start, but once you get a hang of it, you’ll soon realise it’s actually really versatile. We’ll be posting more images. If you have images from that you’d like to contribute to our blog, please do send to info@charkol.com with your name so that we can credit your photo contribution.

 

So, here’s a

Call for Submissions to CharKOL Gallery.
Here’s how it works:

 

1.   Send in low res images what you intend to place on our online gallery

2.   Include  title, media, dimensions, year for EACH of the work

3.   Include retail price and also the price you intend for yourself.

4.   Group images in series if you’d like us to post the works as a series

(we can post your work singly or in a series)

5.    Include a brief bio and contact information (we can’t pay you if we can’t contact    you)

6.    Include write-ups about your work – individually or collectively. The longer the   better. We’ll edit for you.
(This is to help us understand your work better and in turn explain your work to the art collectors)

7.   Send us art essays too, if you have them

8.   We will get back to you on the selected pieces and price.

 

SEND TO curator@CHARKOL.COM

 

Please help spread the good word J

 

Thank you in advance for supporting charKOL Gallery!

 

Sincerely

The Directors of charKOL
-Peng Ean, Leng, Vincent, Peng Keat-

The New Conceptual

The New Conceptual
November 2008-January 2009
CharKOL Gallery’s inaugural exhibition entitled “The New Conceptual” is a group show of ten local and international artists. The show looks forward by looking back to the birth of conceptual art or idea art, where artists attempted to make art which was essentially unsalable in protest against the over-commercialisation of art. The spirit of the day was to create an art untainted by concerns for profit. The artists in this show have all persisted in creating their highly individualistic works and all are what you could term thinking artists. Regardless of  the current or past trends they seem willing to put themselves on the line in order to pursue art which they feel is worth the effort.

Featuring Cheo Chai-Hiang, Cecily Cheo, Amanda Heng, Peng-Ean Khoo, Susie Lingham, Sakthivel, Vincent Twardzik Ching, Twardzik Ching Chor Leng, Brigid Watson and Joshua Yang.

Founders

 

Peng-Ean Khoo

juggles the intricate duality as a business professional and a poet-artist.  A chartered accountant (ICAEW UK since 1997) by profession, Peng-Ean read Economics at Cambridge University, U.K.  She trained in London with Price Waterhouse in the Products Group, and subsequently, in the Technology Group, Boston of PricewaterhouseCoopers. 

As a poet-artist, Peng-Ean has read and exhibited in the Greater Boston area and Singapore. Her publications are included in international literary and other journals, websites, anthologies and magazines. She has since moved back to Singapore and started her own business consulting firm providing business advisory and solutions to start ups, creative businesses, and social business enterprises.

PEK has added Micro-Financing and Down Syndrome to her list of ponderings: motherhood and family, post-colonialism, environmental awareness, children’s rights.  She continues to explore what makes us human through art, poetry and entrepreneurship. She maintains a blog www.ponderwithpek.wordpress.com

 

Twardzik Ching Chor Leng

has been practising Installation art and Land art for more than 10 years.  She has exhibited extensively in group and solo exhibitions internationally and locally. Founder of the arts group Landing Space that is active in promoting Land Art in Singapore, she is also an independent curator as well as a member of WITA (Women in the Arts). A regular recipient of meritorious awards and scholarships including the Hanna Kristmanson Ceramic Scholarship, the Ceramics Canada Award, and the Crown Life Entrance Award, Leng’s work is included in numerous public and corporate collections.

 Leng holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree from University of Regina, Canada, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics and a Diploma in Ceramic Arts from Alberta College of Art and Design, Canada. She has lectured in Lasalle College of the Arts, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and the National Institute of Education (NIE). She is currently the Head of Fine Arts at the National University of Singapore High School.

 

 

Vincent Twardzik Ching

 is a full-time artist and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree holder from the University of Regina, Canada. A  recipient of  the Honourable Mention award in the Philip Morris Singapore art competition 2002- 03, he has been residing and exhibiting in Singapore since 2001 and is included in several private collections in Singapore and abroad. As an avid walker and observer of nature his work records the tropical urban environment through the study of colour combinations over specific times and places. His work gathers further impact from a personal   belief in humanity’s ability to find inspiration and renewal from such experiences.

With more than ten years teaching experience, enthusiasm and knowledge of the practical and theoretical aspects of visual art, he enjoys sharing his experiences and knowledge with students. As a teacher he firmly believes that all children can benefit from the visual art experience and takes as his teaching philosophy that each and every student is ,“a mine rich in gems” only needing encouragement and guidance to reveal their special qualities.

 

Khoo Peng Keat

lives, breathes and coaches entrepreneurship. He is intimately familiar with building the enterprise support structure for start-up companies typically under bootstrap financing environments. Peng Keat provides business advisory in start-up matters ranging from kitting up an office, leveraging financing sources, stretching the working capital and constantly pushes his clients to realise their entrepreneurial dreams, especially when the going gets tough. 

Peng Keat holds a BA (Hons) Finance from University of Manchester, UK and acquired his MSc in Construction Management from University of Birmingham, UK in 1998. His areas of focus are eco-tourism resort township development and business development in the South-east Asia region. He is constantly evolving cost-effective virtual and real-time financial accounting and reporting systems that will improve operational efficiency and solve cross-border operational needs for start-ups and SMEs.

Re-visiting Another Woman

Re-visiting Another Woman

 

by Amanda Heng

Photographs and text, 2008
Variable dimensions

 

Amanda Heng, born in 1951, is a full-time artist who adopts an interdisciplinary approach to art-making. Her works focus on the intersections of eastern and western values and the traditions and gender roles in a multi-cultural and rapidly-changing  Singapore. Her recent works discuss  the issues of communication and human relationships in urban condition. Often, she would collaborate with both artists and non-artists. Amanda was one of the members who established the Artists Village  in 1988. She is also active in curating and organising shows, forums, and workshops and lectures on contemporary art. She was a former civil tax officer.

 

A full-time independent art practitioner, Amanda Heng adopts an interdisciplinary approach to her art practice and is often concerned with issues of communication and human relationship in urban condition, history and identity, and gender politic. Her works have been exhibited in Cleveland Performance Art Festival USA (1997), the 3rd Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia (1999), the 1st Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Japan (1999), the 7th Havana Biennial in Cuba (2000). Werkleitz Biennale in Germany (2000), Performance Art Festival in Spain (2001) and Channel N at Kyoto Art Center (2001). Her other art activities include co-directing theatre production “Bernard’s Story” written by Dana Lam (2001), performed in theatre production “A Woman On the Tree in the Hill” directed by Ivan Heng (2001), which was presented at the Singapore International Performing art Festival. She has also organised and participated in various exhibitions, public forums, workshops, research projects and art events such as, The Space, fringe event of 1992 International Art Fest in Singapore, Women And Their Arts (1990), The 1st Asian film Appreciation workshop (1994), Memories of Senses (1994), Women About Women (1997), The Friday Event (2000) and Open Ends (2001). Amanda was involved in the founding of Artists’ Village, the first artists-run space in Singapore, in 1988, and WITA (Women In The Arts), the first artists-run women collective in Singapore in 1999, which is currently establishing the archives of women in the Arts in Singapore.