The exhibition, opened on Friday as part of the annual month-long George Town Festival, saw unique art installations from "bra art" to a pink living room complete with pink props to suspended furniture and a cabinet full of antidotes to sentimentality.
In Come Close, four artists – Annabelle Ng, Louise Low, Khing Chuah and Ee Yan – produced thought-provoking pieces to express their views on current issues or their feelings and creativity.
Low's bra art titled Lean on You and Me is an attention-grabbing installation where a car, a trishaw, a vendor stall, chairs and even a wall mural sported one common thing – colourful bras of varying shapes, designs and sizes.
It is the artist's way of challenging a preconception of women, especially when the bra is often considered an "unlucky" item in ethnic Chinese culture.
"I wish to explore the sensitivity against the bra by using it to cover commonplace objects," Low explained.
Visitors to the exhibition were obviously drawn to the works as they crowded round the bra-covered items for photos and selfies.
Inside the exhibition hall, the first thing you see is a full set of living room furniture and props painted in bright pink, or to be more accurate, a Baker-Miller pink.
The installation, by Khing Chuah, is the artist's interpretation of experiments which showed that this particular shade of pink can lower blood pressure, pulse rate and grip strength.
The installation, aptly titled Baker Miller, consists of a sofa, footstools, an umbrella, a suspended window frame with curtains, a door, a coat rack, a coffee table with a fruit bowl, a rug, a television, sunglasses and other accessories such as a handbag and a camera – all pink.
Ee Yan's Antidote to Sentimentality is a cabinet with rows of small boxes and a huge yellow sign detailing the symptoms for sentimentality, the types of sentimentality and the effects of the antidote.
Example: "Antidote to sentimentality can help cure one's addiction to sentiments in life. It helps loosen up one's hold to sentimental values and can assist in running one's life smoothly."
Alongside the Come Close exhibits, are also installations titled The Movers by Korean artists, Sarah See Hee Bark and Bark Chong Hwee.
The couple shared their experience of George Town through documentary photography of places and happenings in the city.
Random pieces of furniture are suspended strategically as part of The Movers, pieces that the artists described as fragments of other people's lives and stories.
Bark Chong Hwee also has an installation of a hanging mobile featuring horses – Swift Horse -- and Cocoon, some are empty shells, some still intact.
He explained that the swift horses do not mean the horse of speed but represents a Korean proverb that means "bad news travels fast" and is his interpretation of the verbal abuse that has become common in modern society and the need to break free from this culture.
The cocoons are symbols of the possible inner transformation of humanity from corrupt minds to something noble and beautiful, like the butterfly that emerges from its cocoon.
The art exhibition will be open to public daily between noon to 7pm until August 31.
Find out more about George Town Festival 2014 programmes and art exhibitions at www.georgetownfestival.com.
Source : http://www.themalaymailonline.com/features/article/a-dose-of-art-in-george-town-from-bras-to-a-living-room-in-pink
