Brand spanking new, and smack up against Biku Tea Room, here’s CARGA. It’s a retail emporium taking traditional Indonesian ideas and materials and throwing them sideways. In delightful ways. Tradition with a twist.
In case you were wondering what that big wall of old shutters is doing near the beach in Seminyak, it’s a multi-faceted development called Potato Head Beach Club brought to you by the makers of Potato Head Jakarta (above), a description-defying place that opened back in January 2009. The brainchild … Continue reading
This year there are only five places to go Christmas shopping in Bali. Number Two: Word of Mouth, on Jalan Kunti near Bali Deli. The place is a showroom-playroom with a cafe and bar. Talk about one stop shopping. If you have to find gifts for everyone on a long … Continue reading
I was contacted a few months ago by a niche events organiser asking if I would provide a cultural morning in Ubud for a celebrity wedding in August. I always welcome the opportunity to infect influential people with my incurable passion for all things Balinese, and this particular party was … Continue reading
This year there are only five places to go Christmas shopping in Bali. Number One: Deus Ex Machina in Canggu, otherwise known as the Temple of Enthusiasm. I’m enthusiastic about shopping here, not only because there’s something for everyone (it’s a one stop shop), but also because you can eat. … Continue reading
When in Bali, please take my advice and listen to word of mouth — meaning Word of Mouth Bali, of course, the showroom-playroom of Valentina Audrito (below, out in front) and Abhishekar Khumbat (below, third from left), on Jalan Kunti in Seminyak. Val and Abhi always colour outside the lines … Continue reading
I’ve just had another massive overdose of masterplans. I have feeds and searches set up to keep tabs on new developments in Bali. It just doesn’t stop. Here are just a handful of the scores of new projects that have drifted across my desktop lately. Read on, to get a … Continue reading
A large-scale exhibition entitled Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance will open in February 2011 at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, one of the world’s most respected institutions for Asian art. This is big news. Exciting news. The show includes works on loan from numerous international collections, many which have never … Continue reading
You may remember Emerald Starr and Ken Ballard’s Sacred Mountain Sanctuary in the Sidemen Valley. It was a pioneering eco-resort with an earnest emphasis on eco. Now it is being “reloaded” at last, by the Karma Resorts’ developer, Selected Estates of Asia.
Tuesday night we attended the opening of the 2010 Balinale Film Festival at Cinema 21 in Kuta. This was the Bali premiere of Eat Pray Love, one third of which was shot in Bali, and the evening was touted as a gala event with a red carpet reception, VIP seating … Continue reading
In case you were wondering about the massive construction project in between The Legian and KuDeTa on Seminyak beach, here’s the scoop. It’s called The Seminyak. How imaginative. Especially since it’s right next door to The Legian. How much did they pay their marketing think tank to come up with … Continue reading
Our gallery of ancestral arts, ornament, weapons and textiles in Seminyak has been open for more than a year. Better late than never, at long last we have our website up. At present, there are 66 pieces from our inventory shown in the “collections” area of the site. We’ll be … Continue reading
San Francisco must be the most enthusiastic city in the world when it comes to antique textiles, rugs and tribal arts. This week sees the soukification of the retro Motel Capri by the Antique Rug & Textile Art Association. While we are primarily lovers of flat textiles, and it’s a … Continue reading
With museum exhibitions and fairs all over the calendar, San Francisco has no “season” for tribal arts and textiles. The most notable fall fair Tribal SF 2010 starts later this week. It’s organised by the local independent dealer’s association, SF Tribal, and kicks off with a champagne preview reception on … Continue reading
August and September (and now even October) are the high season in Bali and it is always hectic. Parties. Gatherings. Visitors. Vernissages. Launches. Lunches. Dinners. And all manner of special events and festivals. The huge number of visitors, both those we know and those we don’t know, makes it impossible … Continue reading
We’ve been applauding the Fowler Museum at UCLA for years. They’ve shown a keen understanding of Indonesian culture, and nobody beats the Fowler at curating and hanging a great show. Their shows always balance the aesthetic and the didactic in the best possible way. Now they’ve done it again, with … Continue reading
Well gosh, with traffic already gridlocked and infrastructure overloaded, it’s hard to feel warm and fuzzy about this new 5.2 hectare mega-development in Kuta spread along 250 meters of beach. That said, the long-disused site where Kuta Beachwalk will be built has been like the missing front tooth of Kuta’s … Continue reading
San Francisco’s De Young Museum has just opened a splendid little exhibition of selections from their tremendous collection of world textiles, entitled To Dye For: A World Saturated in Color. It focuses on various techniques used around the world to imbue plain thread with pure colour, including tie-dye, ikat, and … Continue reading
The Yak Awards is a grand orgy of self-congratulatory silliness (see acrobats at the party spelling out YAK in bodies, above), and if you understand that from the get-go, you’ll be a fan of the Yak Awards, just like we are. It’s a small-island phenomenon that’s basically a barrel of … Continue reading
Sandow Birk is one of the most interesting artists working (hard) in America. I began following his work at first because our friendship is a Bali bond. Then I continued following because it’s impossible not to once you start. There’s a plethora of plots to follow in Sandow’s work, all … Continue reading
The Living Room balanced the effect of KuDeTa’s annual I’m an Angel party this year by hosting a I’m a Devil party on the same night, July 31st, the last day before Bali’s official party season begins. We chose to go to the devil, since KuDeTa parties these past five … Continue reading
It’s too splendid to miss. An exhibition of 300 artefacts from Sumatra opened last night at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. “Sumatra: Isle of Gold” runs from today through 7 November 2010, giving us all plenty of time to plan a Singapore stopover to see the show, which is … Continue reading
They call August the silly season in Bali. Well, I’ll drink to that. I did drink to that come to think of it, starting at the end of July. I toasted silliness in general on July 25th at the birthday beach party for Ian Macaulay of Elite Havens and a … Continue reading
We are in Brussels today, where the arbitrary is deliberate, and the unexpected is . . . well . . . expected. Eccentricity is ordinary, serendipity is a ubiquity, and we keep bumping into people we know, as if it were all scripted . . . for the theatre of … Continue reading
Last Saturday I presented a program on Indonesian arts and antiquities for a group of young CEOs in Ubud, at Gallery Macan Tidur. Based on these snapshots it looks like I gave an animated performance – – despite the fact I was on crutches, having only just been liberated from … Continue reading
The Ashmolean’s Jousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art has a splendid online database of textiles. One of the collection’s superstars is this radiant sun, blazing at the centre of a 19th century Rajput royal flag. The colour is so full of muscle, it knocks you off your chair, … Continue reading
Due to convoluted immigration and security procedures, passengers arriving at Bali’s airport are now forced to queue for up to four hours before they are finally released from its insalubrious underbelly. Ours is now surely the worst airport in the world in terms of user satisfaction. Only the Russian communists … Continue reading
This pair of bowls is exquisite. It is the pairing that makes them so. Together, they tell us so much about blue. And about how we see objects in the world. Offered at Bonham’s Chinese & Asian sale on 10 May in Knightsbridge. The estimate is £600 to £1,000 the … Continue reading
Stereo.type, the subject of the current exhibition at Kendra Gallery, is one of the myriad projects of artist-designer-activist Ebon Heath. It consists of metamorphosed typography which transmits subtle messages about printed words themselves and their broadest meanings. The title Ebon selected for his website, “listeningwithmyeyes” voices eloquently the peculiar effect of freeing … Continue reading