New Straits Times article dated 7th April 2009

One of my paintings is featured in the article below in NST Malaysia today.

The caption: Rajinder Singh’s ‘Rain’, (acrylic on canvas) at the Iskandar Malaysia Contemporary Art Show 2009.





Farouk's art
By Anis Ibrahim

2009/04/07

CONTEMPORARY art is often misunderstood. It's seen as pretentious, intentionally controversial, even self-indulgent.

Contemporary art pieces, after all, are never just watercolours of pretty flowers or idyllic scenes of village life.

And if the meaning behind a piece of art isn't instantly obvious, some will give up trying to comprehend it and head towards the nearest "friendly" painting in the gallery.

As a result, Malaysian contemporary art is undervalued and unappreciated, says art collector Farouk Khan.

"Appreciating a classical painting is much easier than understanding contemporary installation art," he says. "You need to think a bit harder to appreciate contemporary art."

But therein lies the value of contemporary art, he adds.

"Contemporary art is more intellectual. It's current, it's 'now' and relevant to what is around us."

Farouk and his wife, Aliya, own 800 Malaysian contemporary art pieces, among the country's largest private art collections.

They own works by established artists such as Jalaini Abu Hassan and Ahmad Shukri Mohamed, and Farouk is always on the lookout for emerging artists and encourages others to do the same.

Young artists whose works he started collecting in 1996, he says, have developed into some of the country's best contemporary artists.

Identifying a good artist involves looking at profiles and not simply picking out famous artists.

"I look at where they've exhibited and whether they've been at art residencies," Farouk says.

"That's a good guide to see how far someone's gone and how far he will go."

Farouk is involved in the Iskandar Malaysia Contemporary Art Show 2009 (IMCAS).

Currently running in Johor Baru until June 14, the show features 1,000 works by more than 100 contemporary artists. Some 150 pieces belong to the Aliya and Farouk Khan collection.

Farouk concedes that not everyone can afford to own art, so his tip is to buy art while it's young.

"Buy good quality art by artists in their prime in their 20s to 30s, when it's cheaper. Don't wait until they reach their 60s. By that time, their art will cost tens of thousands of ringgit."

He says the strongest case for contemporary art is that it represents the cultural development of the country.

"Years down the line, art produced this year will be a record of Malaysia's history, its politics and culture. That's what I see when I look at pieces I bought 10 years ago."

Prospective art collectors would be happy to learn that the price of art never drops. Art, especially contemporary art, always appreciates in value. According to Farouk, the prices of contemporary art have risen higher than for classical art for the simple reason that it is more relevant to the times.

"People can relate to contemporary art better. There is no concept of 'the right time to buy'. The right time is whenever the art is available."

Unlike in foreign art markets, Malaysian art prices have not been affected by the recession.

Art works in China and Europe, for instance, have become more affordable in the wake of the economic slump.

"Our base is so low that our art prices have not been and will not be affected. That's another reason to buy art as and when it's available."

The cultural significance of contemporary art should be reason enough for the country's public institutions to expand their art collections.

Farouk says that while private collectors dominate the art scene at present -- "They don't mind parting with their money to buy art" -- he is happy to note that the National Art Gallery has increased its budget for acquisitions.

"I'm very glad that the new director-general, Dr Mohamed Najib Ahmad Dawa, has raised the gallery's annual budget for contemporary art to RM1 million.

"Ever since he took over, there's been a strong movement towards buying more contemporary art, which is very good.

"The gallery should keep its collections up-to-date, so this is a move in the right direction."

The irony is that Malaysian contemporary art has sold for much more overseas.

In May last year, an artwork by Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann, which sold for RM12,000 locally, fetched RM117,000 at a Christie's auction in Hong Kong.

Similarly, a piece by Jalaini Abu Hassan sold for RM196,000 at another Christie's auction.

As his eyes sweep over the creations on display at IMCAS, Farouk says: "Look at this. Anyone can see that Malaysian contemporary art is a world-class product.

"What a shame it would be if we can't see that ourselves."

Why has the British establishment never quite accepted the Singh Twins?

Why has the British establishment never quite accepted the Singh Twins?
Written by independent.co.uk
TUESDAY, 31 MARCH 2009

Amrit and Rabindra have always produced their fabulous art the only way they know how: together. Peter Stanford meets a singular pair

You're doing very well telling them apart," Amrit and Rabindra Singh's elderly father remarks as he watches me talk to his daughters. "I still get them confused." The identical twins, dressed in matching Punjabi outfits, right down to the earrings, necklaces, bangles and jewelled bindis in the centre of their foreheads, smile indulgently at his joke. Even their laughter sounds the same.

But these Sikh sisters long ago stopped worrying about being mistaken for each other and have turned being twins to their advantage. They have made it part of their brand in the art world, where they are known and celebrated as one artist: the Singh Twins.

Their style is a fusion of Indian tradition and contemporary Western influences which they label "past modern". Each canvas is produced jointly and combines the bright colours, intricate designs and flattened perspectives of intricate Indian miniature paintings with modern political, social and cultural themes. Among their best-known are From Zero to Hero, featuring the Beckhams, and Art Matters, a piece commissioned to mark Liverpool's tenure last year as European Capital of Culture, but Singh Twins' works are to be found across major national and international collections. In 2002, they were only the second British-born artists, after Henry Moore, to be accorded an exhibition at New Delhi's National Museum of Modern Art. And the windowsill of their neat, calm, book-lined studio, next to the family home halfway up a sandstone hill between Birkenhead and the Irish Sea, is lined with awards that are sparkling in the spring sunshine.

"One thing that might help," offers Rabindra, as I once again address her as Amrit, "is that I tend to find myself, almost subconsciously, standing on the right." Indeed, the reddish shawl each wears is, helpfully, over her right shoulder and Amrit's left until the photographer mentioned it and Rabindra duly moved hers to match her sister. There is undoubtedly an element of playing with hapless visitors' confusion over which is which, but the twins regard their shared identity, I quickly come to realise, as more than a game or a marketing device. They have turned it into something to highlight the tensions they have encountered, as citizens and as artists, in being both British and Asian.

"Western contemporary art is all about the individual, the inner self," reflects Amrit, the more talkative of the two, as the three of us perch at the end of the long studio table where their latest painting – based on events in Palestine and looking at the impact of politics on everyday lives – lies half-finished. "So in Western art, it doesn't matter if anyone else understands the work, as it is about the individual artist and what they are feeling. This was certainly the view when we were studying art at university [from the mid-1980s until 1991 first at University College, Chester, later Manchester]. We were constantly being told that to be individual was healthy, that we had to be more different from each other, be influenced by different Western artists from each other, but that didn't seem valid to us. From the point of view of Sikh, Indian or even Asian philosophy, the community comes first and the individual is second."

The clash between the two codes, say the twins, left them, like many other British Asians, under sustained pressure to abandon their cultural heritage. Their final degree grades were even reduced because they wouldn't yield – though they subsequently had the marking overturned after a seven-year battle with academia. The prejudice they encountered – at one stage an examiner was reported to have remarked, "Give them a 2.2, they won't mind because they'll soon be in an arranged marriage" – might have broken some, but it brought out the rebel in the sisters. "It was when we were at college," Rabindra recalls, "that we started to deliberately wear the same clothes to challenge the notion of individuality. We'd always had the same clothes, but until then had not necessarily worn them on the same day."

They see their art, too, as a challenge to questions of identity and what is acceptable or fashionable. It favours narrative, detail, colour and time-honoured techniques – none of which are qualities likely to see them lionised alongside their contemporaries, the Young British Artists. Yet it is also very modern and even edgy because of its exploration of what it is to be British and Asian simultaneously.

"We were told by our tutors that the miniature was outdated," Amrit remembers. When they first wanted to exhibit, they would routinely receive "nice letters, saying how much they liked our work, but perhaps we'd do better in an ethnic gallery in the East End of London". They have, with their success of the past two decades, turned the tables – though they feel that a "London, art- establishment elite" continues to look down on their work because of its traditional Indian roots. They decided early on not to sell their works in order to build a touring collection, but do accept commissions and have, of late, allowed some pieces to go into national collections. But it is hard to say what their paintings would command on the open market; substantial five-figure sums are mentioned by dealers.

Though they are "twin-dividuals", they insist, the Singhs spend 99 per cent of their time together. They simultaneously discovered a passion for Indian miniatures aged 13, while spending a year travelling with their father around his native Punjab. They jointly devise and execute most of their works, their skills interchangeable. "We could probably tell which of us has done which part, but otherwise only those very close to us could work it out," says Amrit. Some pieces, especially in the various series they have completed on particular themes (such as "The Hart Project" and "Facets of Femininity"), are wholly by one or the other. "But we don't see it as my work, your work," Rabindra stresses. "It is not that we can't do things on our own, but this is a joint venture. Our thinking, our ideology, our political-social outlook is identical."

She does concede that the sisters have different characteristics. "I am a perfectionist, which is not always a good thing, and Amrit is the one who gets it done." But they also say the last three words in harmony.

Their mode of working, the twins point out, has parallels in the medieval age, when monks would work together on a single illuminated manuscript. And there is something rather monk-like and self-abnegating about the Singh Twins. For all their warmth and humour, they continue to see themselves as outsiders and are more comfortable talking about their work than themselves.

The twins' Sikh father came to Britain when he was nine. They were born in Richmond, Surrey, but moved to the Wirral when they were still small and encountered what they describe as low-level racial prejudice as youngsters – name-calling and, on one occasion, a brick through their window. Though now in their early forties, they continue to live in the extended family home with their father, uncles and cousins. They used domestic settings a lot in their early work – part, as Amrit puts it, "of celebrating the more positive side of the traditional Indian lifestyle rather than girls locked in their bedrooms and forced marriages".

One of their best-known works is based on the wedding of their elder sister, Nyrmla. A print of it is propped up at the entrance to the studio. Typically, it includes both the traditional ritual of the bride's hands being henna-ed with images of globalisation and reminders of consumerism in the Power Ranger toys lying on the carpet. "There is always," says Rabindra as we study it, "a serious message in our work – which includes saying to youngsters who are going through similar pressures to the ones we experienced as teenagers that it is OK to explore your Indian identity, that you can be British and Asian, and have the best of both worlds."