Samsui Women Singapore

Colourful modernist

A centennial show pays tribute to an artist who was constantly searching for a new idiom.

LIU Kang: A Centennial Celebration, now on at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), takes off from where his 1981 Retrospective , held at the same venue, left off.

Between that year and his demise on June 1, 2004, at the age of 93, Liu continued to paint, hold smaller displays and write profusely on art. His eldest son, Dr Liu Thai-Ker, a prominent architect-planner in Singapore, conceded as much during the recent opening of the exhibition which celebrates 100 years of the artist’s birth.

Dr Liu, 73, says the centennial show plugs the gaps since his father’s last major exhibition in 1981. In 2003, Liu Kang had donated some 1,000 works in oil, pastels and other media to SAM.

A 300-page book, Liu Kang: Colourful Modernist, and a compilation of his essays (a Chinese-to-English translation), accompanies the exhibition, which features about 100 works in oil, pastels, pencil, crayons and pen, and screenings of interviews with the artist. Colourful Modernist has some 200 illustrations and hitherto unpublished archival photographs of the artist.

Liu Kang had several other shows during his lifetime. There were the touring exhibitions in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1983; the Liu Kang At 87 show (SAM, 1997); Liu Kang At 88 (Singapore Soka Association, 1998); Liu Kang At 90 (Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles, 2000); his first China show in Beijing in November 2000, and Liu Kang: Drawn From Life (SAM, 2002).

It was all Liu Kang this and Liu Kang that, very monolithic. Apart from what is known about him – he is a colourful modernist – the centennial book does attempt to open new flanks of discovery.

While the book of essays purports to present “fresh insights about the artist’s engagement with European and Chinese modernisms in the Singapore context”, perhaps it is time to take a more in-depth look at his works, vis-a-vis those of his contemporaries, like Cheong Soo-pieng, Chen Wen-hsi and Chen Chong Swee, and see how their styles might have impinged on one another’s, and his meeting with Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres and his muse, Ni Pollock, in Bali.

We could compare Liu Kang’s proclivity for “flattening, merging planes” with Soo-pieng’s stylisations of elongated limbs and torsos, or look at his more Post-Impressionist and classical mould and lively colour blocks in relation to Henri Matisse. Or focus on the developments of his works during his Parisian days.

Episode 151: Fortune and fortitude: Stories of the Chinese ...

Professor Pookong Kee joined the University of Melbourne in October 2010 as Director of the Asia Institute

He was previously Professor of the Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies and Director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Studies at the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) in Japan.  This was preceded by a three-year appointment as Director of the Chinese Heritage Centre in Singapore. Before his return to Asia in 1999, he had worked in academe and the public sector in Australia.  He was Director and Professor of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Victoria University from 1994 to 1999, following a stint with the Senior Executive Service of the Australian Public Service.  He was founding Assistant Director of the Bureau of Immigration and Population Research (Assistant Secretary, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs). His earlier posts included: Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne (1987-1989); Research Fellow then Senior Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (1981-1987); and Research Fellow, East West Population Institute, East-West Center, Honolulu (1980-81).

He has a PhD degree in Psychology from the Australian National University, a First Class Honours BA degree in Psychology and a BA with majors in Economics, Politics and Psychology from the University of Adelaide.

His recent teaching and research interests include the causes, processes and consequences of the global movement of people, Asian Diasporas, and Asian-Pacific affairs generally.

Born and raised in Malaysia, he is a naturalized Australian citizen.

VOICEOVER
Welcome to Up Close, the research, opinion and analysis podcast from the University of Melbourne, Australia. 

JENNIFER COOK
 I’m Jennifer Cook. Thanks for joining us. The word diaspora comes from the Greek dia speiro and means to scatter seeds. And it’s this journey to new lands and a longing to return home that seems to capture something so essential to the human condition. Today, the word is used to capture any form of a real or imagined community situated far from its cultural, linguistic or genetic origins. In this episode of Up Close, we’re going to examine the Chinese Diaspora and ask what the immigration of more than 37 million Chinese people tells us about China itself and the markets people have made in all regions of the world outside the Middle Kingdom. Also, we ask what are the feelings towards China among the so-called overseas Chinese.  Joining us in the studio to help us answer theses questions is Professor Pookong Kee, director Asia Institute here at the University of Melbourne. Kee, thank you so much for joining us.

Down memory lane in clogs, growing up in Chinatown

One more story to tell, memories of Singapore, 1930s-1980s

Hua song, stories of the Chinese diaspora

Asian migrations, sojourning, displacement, homecoming and other travels

Asia Journal of Global Studies, Vol. 3, Nos. 1 and 2