BY MARTIN YEE
KUCHING: If there is an art exhibition here, there’s a high chance that it will receive a lukewarm response, with only a handful of people turning up and buying one or two pieces of artwork.
Very often artists in Sarawak do not enjoy a positive response at exhibitions while there are also very few full-time artists.
“Of course, the government could do its share by promoting local artists and crafts in public places such as our Kuching International Airport, government buildings and institutions.
“However, art is being preserved and promoted as there is a faculty of Applied and Creative Arts at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), while University of Technology Sarawak (in Sibu) has an architecture faculty.
“This is a good thing to have such tertiary institutions but the crux of the problem of inculcating arts and crafts appreciation must start early in the curriculum of elementary and secondary school education,” said Edric Ong.
“Maybe there’s a need also for new directions of art expressions that our artists need to pursue if the good response of the Borneo Cultures Museum is anything to go by.
“People are attracted to what is new and novel,” explained Ong, who is Sarawak’s foremost promoter of local arts and crafts internationally and founder of Society Atelier Sarawak (SAS).
He said the good response to the art galleries at the Borneo Cultures Museum had given rise to the need that our fine art artists may need a new sense of direction.
On the local Sarawak artists fraternity, Ong said there was also a lack of professional artists while those who deal in the subject were mostly part-timers.
“It is hard to give a number if you mean the full-time artists as many are working in other jobs such as teachers, other businesses while doing art as a part-ttime vocation.
“It is tough to make a living as a full-time artist and the two that I know who were full-time all their lives are Michael Lim and Ramsay Ong.”
Sad to say, I think the public at large are not very interested in art, especially local art.”
He said in fact, Sarawak’s fine artists, weavers, craftsman could hold their own in the world.
“The reality is such that only quite a few who have tried to make a living out of it may not find it viable to stay in the trade for too long although there are a handful of professionals.
“Of course, it is always a matter of individual choices because a full-time artist is a career like any other. Whether one can make a living out of being an artist anywhere in the world is tough.
“In bigger cities like New York, London or Paris, there is a whole market chain in the world of art.
“That’s why you have art galleries, managers, art agents, magazine critics.”
He said the good sign was that a number of private galleries had mushroomed in Kuching as of late.
Donald Tan, who is a member of SAS, echoed Ong’s thoughts, saying that the government could play a bigger role in boosting local artists.
“One of the ways the government can support is it can institute a policy whereby a certain percentage of development projects be allocated to local artists so that their art can be displayed, which will promote our local culture.
“Say five per cent or two per cent for local artwork then the local artists’ work are adorned in the malls or shopping complexes or hospitals.”
