Holy Alloy - Pearly Gates
Kamthorn Paowattanasuk
4 October – 30 November 2008

For the past two years Kamthorn Paowattanasuk has been visiting monasteries in the Greater Bangkok Area, not exactly to study the Buddha’s teachings, but to check out these temples’ artistic aspirations. In the process he has discovered the contemporary monastic fashion for building unnecessarily large chapels heavily adorned with gold-painted cement idols of the Buddha, Hindu gods or Kuan Yin (Goddess of Mercy). The temple gates are made of ‘alloy’ (expensive aluminum alloy usually found on the ornate gates of new rich Macmansions) to reflect wealth and attract the faithful to places of worship that have become mere tourist attractions. However costly the raw material, the craftsmanship is low in quality, giving rise to a new school of temple art in Thailand, which should be classified as ‘Saksit Alloy’ or Holy Alloy.
Acutely observed and technically superb, ‘Holy Alloy – Pearly Gates’, a photographic series in eye-popping colours by Kamthorn Paowattanasuk, may stun you and make you laugh, causing you to exclaim: “This is a monastery?”

Dreaming City
by Martin Argyroglo
From 6 – 30 September 2008

In French photographer Martin Argyroglo’s hypnotic ‘Dreaming City’, the urban space is feverish with accidental theatre, waking dreams fixed in suspended time. The people captured in found scenes all seem to de waiting for something, a moment of lucidity, perhaps, a trace of the divine.

Life is beautiful
Manit Sriwanichpoom
From 31 July – 31 August 2008
[Opening party on 31 July at 6.30 - 9 pm]

With their clear gaze and innocent smiles, these fourteen children represent thousands upon thousands of other guiltless victims just like them scattered across Thailand. They were born with AIDS virus that was their inheritance from their parents. But growing with HIV is not their only misfortune. The society that surrounds them also conspires to stigmatise them by cutting them off from the world of normal people; they are forced to struggle against one more virulent disease, namely the ‘virus of prejudices.’

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Japanese Legs - L'en dedans
Claude Estèbe
14 June - 31 June 2008

For foreigners in Japan and even for the natives the gait of Japanese women is an endless source of fascination. Their flexible and unusual way of squatting, standing and walking seems to come from complex etiquettes of an ancient civilisation. Uchimata turning the feet inside was praised both for showing naïve innocence of childish postures celebrated in the traditional nihonga painting or for showing sophisticated seduction, like in oiran dochu, the courtesans parade of the Yoshiwara quarter in old Edo. We see these postures bodily and culturally fitted for women walking in kimono still used by garish young fashion victims in miniskirts of the post-modern bladerunnesque Tokyo. In a country were everything goes so fast, with fashions changing every three months, people's physical attitudes have remained virtually unchanged since centuries showing a "cultural permanence". All these girls are executing a slow fleeting ballet. Their are quietly standing in a relaxed way but, at the same time, their poses are dynamic. There is an inside tension and we feel they are about to move around, but in their own sweet Japanese way…

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Our Lady of the Low Countries
Michael Shaowanasai
February 9 – March 30, 2008

Brilliant and bizarre performance artist Michael Shaowanasai, better known in Thailand as super heroine Iron Pussy, reinterprets the symbols of feminine divinity to transform himself into a revered public monument. Inspired by a penetrating dialogue with a handsome Dutch theologian, he bestows his new divine persona with the title ‘Our Lady of the Low Countries.’

“Thailand, especially Bangkok, is a lowland country too,” he says. “When we look up to our celebrated icons, we only see 180 degrees, or just one side, of them. This is why Our Lady is photographed on a pedestal in the middle of a busy traffic circle. People drive around Her and get a 360 degree view.”
Whether you find Michael’s work delicious or offensive,
Our Lady’s high-wattage glamour and sanctity is sure to electrify.