The bleeding hearts club
February 12, 2007 | 12:00am
When David Griggs arrived in the Philippines to take up an Asialink residency at the Ateneo Art Gallery last year, it had the makings of a classic travel horror story. Catching a food virus somewhere in Thailand before boarding his plane bound for Manila, Griggs puked his head off after passing through immigrations at NAIA. Worried airport officers quarantined the artist, before deciding to let him go. He stayed the night at a backpacker’s hostel only to fall seriously ill again. Griggs was then shuttled from hospital to hospital, eventually ending up at Medical City delirious, anxious and devastatingly shell-shocked.
Attended by a doctor inauspiciously named after a dead artist  a certain Dr. Picazo  Griggs made a slow recovery and decided, much to the bemusement of his mates back home (particularly those who had taken bets on the likelihood that he’d just simply throw in the towel and fly back to Sydney) that he would continue his artistic journey into the unknown.
The objects that appear in Griggs’ ongoing exhibition at Kaliman Gallery are the direct outcome of that residency: the shanty in the middle of the expansive exhibition hall; the photographs hanging outside the structure’s ramshackle walls; the large-scale paintings showing images that many Manileños  or at least those who have managed to cocoon themselves from the capital’s decrepit urban sprawl  would much rather forget about. In the same way that Australians are embarrassed to be depicted by clichés such as kangaroos or Crocodile Dundee, there is also such a thing as a Filipino cultural cringe. But this one is a different kind of cringe: a certain bourgeois discomfort from seeing the seamy underbelly of our society displayed to a foreign audience.
This show manifests just how close Griggs has fathomed the depths of our reality, a culture that is, in the most positive terms, neither here nor there: in Asia, but not quite Asia in the sense of how the politics of economy considers it to be simply China, Japan or, perhaps now, even India. We are the most worldly of cultures; yet we are also the most awkward: a heady amalgam of animist beliefs and Malay, Chinese and Muslim influence, a Catholic outpost and a bastion of Americana  "bred in the convent for 350 years then reared by Hollywood for another 50."
Given such a provenance, it is easy to see how "The Bleeding Hearts Club" is set up like a riotous, larger than life, fantastical fiesta bedlam of images that distills the baroque sensibility of an horror vacui society that is not only slowly coming to terms with itself, but is also building on its unique position as the convergence of all that we wish and do not wish to become.
When I see Griggs’s works, I do not see (as I more often than not do) a Western artist taking liberties with other people’s sufferings  bedazzling viewers with a fascination or fetish for the "aesthetics of suffering." Rather, I see him as an individual who is truly in the process of finding himself, seeking comfort in what he has seen and continues to see, and sharing his unique vision of reality with those who are so open-minded.
When Griggs came to the Philippines, he did not just venture into it as someone from the outside looking in. He chose to go deep within to look out; in the same way that other contemporary Filipino artists are positioning themselves in reference to their colleagues, among them Poklong Anading who was with me in Sydney recently to undertake the Ateneo Art Gallery Studio Residency Grant (which also took him to Melbourne and Bendigo in Victoria courtesy of La Trobe University), as the artist selected from among the three winners of this year’s Ateneo Art Awards.
I may be guilty of showing a certain bias when I say that there is indeed a growing buzz about art that comes from, or is influenced by, an engagement with the Philippines. And so I think, building on his recent "Primavera" selection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Griggs’ career and the development of his imagery can be considered to be truly prescient.
In my opinion, what Griggs is trying to propose in his exhibition is that there is no single way to navigate the travails of human existence. There are societies that are well-ordered, yet somehow oppressive; and then there are societies that are self-assured in the knowledge that, though the quest for social, political and economic justice continues, the search for meaning prevails, and remains a deeply personal one.
The heart that bleeds is deeply, profoundly Griggs’ own.
I received a most interesting invitation from the Ayala Museum to participate in a discussion with its outgoing director, Dr. Nina Baker, about how Filipino artists can make an impact on the world stage. I wish Nina well as she embarks on her new role developing Ayala’s international programs, and hope very much that her initiatives will help to further the inroads that have already been made by our local artists, in their personal capacity, or through the network of our alternative, artist-run spaces which are connected to many similar independent institutions overseas, in presenting a forward-looking agenda for Philippine art that is enlivened by criticality, circumspection and professional delivery.
In this regard, the public is well-served to take note of the output of two exemplars presently showing at Galleria Duemila: Impy Pilapil, who continues to surprise through the decades with her poetic vivifications of stone (the glass starburst that looks like an embryo ensconced in a marble uterus is my favorite); and Maria Cruz, whom I have written about in the most superlative of terms many times over in the past, and have nothing further to add other than my continued approbation of her investigations into color theory and semantics, in her first commercial show in Manila.
David Griggs: The Bleeding Hearts Club ran from Dec. 1 to 23 2006 at Kaliman Gallery, 56 Sutherland Street, Paddington, Sydney, Australia. Tel +612 93572273.
Visit www.kalimangallery.com
Attended by a doctor inauspiciously named after a dead artist  a certain Dr. Picazo  Griggs made a slow recovery and decided, much to the bemusement of his mates back home (particularly those who had taken bets on the likelihood that he’d just simply throw in the towel and fly back to Sydney) that he would continue his artistic journey into the unknown.
The objects that appear in Griggs’ ongoing exhibition at Kaliman Gallery are the direct outcome of that residency: the shanty in the middle of the expansive exhibition hall; the photographs hanging outside the structure’s ramshackle walls; the large-scale paintings showing images that many Manileños  or at least those who have managed to cocoon themselves from the capital’s decrepit urban sprawl  would much rather forget about. In the same way that Australians are embarrassed to be depicted by clichés such as kangaroos or Crocodile Dundee, there is also such a thing as a Filipino cultural cringe. But this one is a different kind of cringe: a certain bourgeois discomfort from seeing the seamy underbelly of our society displayed to a foreign audience.
This show manifests just how close Griggs has fathomed the depths of our reality, a culture that is, in the most positive terms, neither here nor there: in Asia, but not quite Asia in the sense of how the politics of economy considers it to be simply China, Japan or, perhaps now, even India. We are the most worldly of cultures; yet we are also the most awkward: a heady amalgam of animist beliefs and Malay, Chinese and Muslim influence, a Catholic outpost and a bastion of Americana  "bred in the convent for 350 years then reared by Hollywood for another 50."
Given such a provenance, it is easy to see how "The Bleeding Hearts Club" is set up like a riotous, larger than life, fantastical fiesta bedlam of images that distills the baroque sensibility of an horror vacui society that is not only slowly coming to terms with itself, but is also building on its unique position as the convergence of all that we wish and do not wish to become.
When I see Griggs’s works, I do not see (as I more often than not do) a Western artist taking liberties with other people’s sufferings  bedazzling viewers with a fascination or fetish for the "aesthetics of suffering." Rather, I see him as an individual who is truly in the process of finding himself, seeking comfort in what he has seen and continues to see, and sharing his unique vision of reality with those who are so open-minded.
When Griggs came to the Philippines, he did not just venture into it as someone from the outside looking in. He chose to go deep within to look out; in the same way that other contemporary Filipino artists are positioning themselves in reference to their colleagues, among them Poklong Anading who was with me in Sydney recently to undertake the Ateneo Art Gallery Studio Residency Grant (which also took him to Melbourne and Bendigo in Victoria courtesy of La Trobe University), as the artist selected from among the three winners of this year’s Ateneo Art Awards.
I may be guilty of showing a certain bias when I say that there is indeed a growing buzz about art that comes from, or is influenced by, an engagement with the Philippines. And so I think, building on his recent "Primavera" selection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Griggs’ career and the development of his imagery can be considered to be truly prescient.
In my opinion, what Griggs is trying to propose in his exhibition is that there is no single way to navigate the travails of human existence. There are societies that are well-ordered, yet somehow oppressive; and then there are societies that are self-assured in the knowledge that, though the quest for social, political and economic justice continues, the search for meaning prevails, and remains a deeply personal one.
The heart that bleeds is deeply, profoundly Griggs’ own.
In this regard, the public is well-served to take note of the output of two exemplars presently showing at Galleria Duemila: Impy Pilapil, who continues to surprise through the decades with her poetic vivifications of stone (the glass starburst that looks like an embryo ensconced in a marble uterus is my favorite); and Maria Cruz, whom I have written about in the most superlative of terms many times over in the past, and have nothing further to add other than my continued approbation of her investigations into color theory and semantics, in her first commercial show in Manila.
Visit www.kalimangallery.com
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