THE STAR

Sunday May 21, 2006


Serious playthings

Black dogs, Harley-Davidsons and train coaches are all the rage in Toys at Wei-Ling Gallery. Artists Ahmad Shukri Mohamed and Umibaizurah Mahir tell VERONICA SHUNMUGAM why. 

WALKING into a gallery filled with Ahmad Shukri Mohamed’s paintings is like visiting a friend.  

You spot the signature splish-splash style. There’s the repetition of black prints depicting animals (that bring back memories of the days when kids used to draw using Kalkitos). And there’s the paste-on pastiche of a Harley-Davidson, a cartoon personality and other iconic images.  

“So, what’s Ahmad Shukri saying this time?” you ask. 

Ahmad Shukri’s pastiche paintings and Umibaizurah’s organic trains are all the rage in Toys at Wei-Ling Gallery.

“Who let the black dog out?” seems to be the answer. The phrase, according to Ahmad Shukri, is his wry take on what he found to be the iconic American image, that of a “black dog”, and a poor berated Dubya (US President George W. Bush). 

Indeed, the 17 paintings of his Kedai Hiburan (Entertainment Store) series on display in the exhibition Toys at Wei-Ling Gallery in Kuala Lumpur are about the right to toy around with luxury possessions, public perception, the environment and human lives.  

Kedai Hiburan (Who let the dog out II) and Kedai Hiburan (Who let the dog out III) are Ahmad Shukri’s main offerings. Both proffer veiled criticism of Bush conjured up from a pastiche of a popular song and what the artist describes as the Malay viewpoint and ways of expression. 

“I am attracted to the Malay preference for metaphors and use of screens, whether in the form of a house window that is never without a closed curtain or when it comes to (interpreting) the Muslim concept of aurat,” says Ahmad Shukri, who has also made a direct reference to curtains in Kedai Hiburan (Who let the dog out III) where lace curtain fabric was laid on top of the painting’s matt black canvas and sprayed on with glossy black paint to create a lace curtain background only visible at an angle. 

“The US is the world’s superpower at present. That this has worked both ways has made me feel uncomfortable,” he says. 

Ahmad Shukri is inspired by the irony of US aggression.

Not unlike another Malaysian artist, J. Anurendra, who also grew up on Captain America-type cartoons and now paints the irony of US military aggression today, Ahmad Shukri has tried to reconcile American animal rescuers stopping at nothing to save an injured or trapped animal with news footage of US military ferocity. 

“I admire the American concern for human and animal rights but I’m also disturbed by American military might and aggression. It’s like looking at two different worlds. And I wonder which is real?” he says. 

Ahmad Shukri’s smaller works such as Kedai Hiburan 1 throws together a Harley-Davidson and the image of a scarlet-clad woman next to the corporate logo of Virgin Atlantic in a reference to toys of adulthood.  

Kedai Hiburan 14 talks about what makes a toy as its main feature is a panther that Ahmad Shukri predicts will one day feature in toy shops like plush toy dinosaurs peeking out from toystore windows these days. 

Kedai Hiburan (Who let the dog out II)
Ahmad Shukri's better half, Umibai-zurah Mahir, has another view of toys, toy shops and gift-giving.  

“Toys, to me, are not just gifts. The giver may be out to manipulate the receiver with a gift of a toy and in this case, it is the receiver who becomes the plaything,” she says. 

“My works have been inspired by nature, especially the textures of skins and stones,” says, Umibaizurah. 

Organic shapes and textures thus make up the main feature in her Gerabak (Coach) series. While the odd-looking coaches are her artistic take on toy trains, they are also her way of giving a human face to the many train machines that ply all over KL these days. 

“Often, KL-ites have trains passing by or over them. It’s a part of their daily lives now. And the advertisements on or in them, as well as the passengers of the trains, have become another mirror of what’s going on in KL and the country. On Valentine’s Day, for example, you’ll see a lot of guys carrying bouquets on the LRT!” observes Umibaizurah. 

Umibaizurah Mahir is inspired by nature.
The word “gerabak”, she feels, brings to mind a sense of moving forward and continuous motion; movements synonymous with machines. Yet, she stresses that machines like trains carry people who “fill a coach full of stories”. 

In reflecting on the quieter facets of life, Umibaizurah has also used rustic and unobstrusive colours in and on her sculpture materials. For example, several coaches have been made from ceramic of a dusty jade green hue and painted with delicate roses in rust red. 

There are also interesting contrasts in textures; in one gerabak, a piece of “deadwood” made of rough and dotted dark brown clay seems to have “grown out” of “seashell” made of glazed chip ivory-hued ceramic.  

“I didn’t want the colours to stop traffic or to be of just one clear-cut shade and intensity. I mean, even mud has spots of green in it,” she says. 

Each gerabak has also been mounted using a different assortment of steel platforms and wheels. Contrasts of this sort, explains Umibaizurah, are meant to reflect her preference for thinking outside the box. 

“After all, in ceramics, nothing can be the same. The heat (of the kiln) and the effects of glazing used in the creating process can change the outcome of colours applied to sculpture. So, a lot of the outcomes are accidental,” Umibaizurah concludes.