‘Street Mining: Contemporary Art from the Philippines’ features the works of Poklong Anading, Louie Cordero, Victor Balanon, Nona Garcia, Kawayan de Guia, Mm Yu, and the collective ‘Broke’. The show runs at Sundaram Tagore Gallery from 20 January to 2 March 2018 and has been guest-curated by ‘Broke’ co-founder Gary Ross Pastrana.
I am meeting Gary for a conversation about the exhibition, to view the works together, and to exchange thoughts about contemporary Filipino artists. I enter ‘Street Mining’ to find the inviting space of Sundaram Tagore hosting various qualities of movement in thoughts, ideas, and perceptional offerings that are all bound together by the curiosity of exploring space and life – between viewer, artist, and the world, between the organic and the engineered, and between urbanity and our conception of it. ‘Street Mining’ is an observation of modern life in the Philippines, and a cruise via which to explore observation as a personal and social value as well as transferable skill and artistic craft.
The pieces include Anading’s ‘Bandilang Basahan’, a tent made of street collected rags with a screen placed underneath, showing a video of the artist retrieving his materials from the streets of Manila, installations of billboard sign miniatures by Broke, oppositions in abstract and photo-realistic nature documentation by Bandalon, paintings, photography, installations, and collage material by Yu, de Guia, Garcia, and Codero.
Read Sarah-Tabea Sammel’s interview with Gary Ross Pastrana on The Artling.
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