Susi Johnston Bali Blog

Fine tribal and Asian art gets more attention now than ever, but where are the avid buyers of yesteryear? If the (almost) concurrent BRUNEAF and BOAF fairs in Brussels this June were any indication, there’s plenty of solitude for art afficionados to quietly contemplate the works on offer (like Davide Manfredi’s Modang panel, above).

Lately there’s also plenty of solitude for the dealers at tribal art fairs to meditate on their fate and what the future holds. Andres Moraga (below, with Clive Loveless), apparently had ample time to sample a pseudo stogie at Chez Richard on the Sablon, where the fair’s experts, organisers, cognoscenti, collectors, dealers and groupies rub shoulders with the rogues, ruffians and renegades of the tribal trade daily, weather permitting. Weather does not always permit in Brussels, and this year it did. Still, few buyers ventured forth.

For those who feel acronymed-out, BRUNEAF = Brussels Non-European Art Fair, one of the most respected and active international events for African, Asian and Oceanic tribal arts. And BOAF = Brussels Oriental Art Fair, a relative newcomer that looked promising for a few years as it built patronage. Both fairs this year, and also the (almost) concurrent BAAF (Brussels Ancient Art Fair), were subdued events in comparison to years past. Read more…

The island of Bali is at risk of sinking into the Indian Ocean under the weight of all of its magazines. I put the latest issues of Bali’s mags on the bathroom scale, and it tipped almost ten kilos. How can an island so small generate so many magazines? And will there be any trees left in Kalimantan if this continues?

From broadsheet freebies to global glossies, there are more magazines on this island than its advertisers can possibly support. We wonder which ones will fold, and which will flourish?

Read on, to get the Sleeping Tiger’s take on just 26 of Bali’s bajillions of magazines. (Note: the magazine titles are links to their sites.)

Read more…

I was last in Lhasa in November 1987 and haven’t felt a great inclination to go back. Seeing recent photos and hearing the tales of friends who have been there since, I’m not sure I would feel comfortable in Lhasa anymore, so great are the changes that have re-shaped the city.

Now I learn that St Regis (Starwood Group) is opening a five-star hotel in central Lhasa (rendering above). Read more…

An exhibition “Indonesian Textiles as Art” opened on 19 July at the Museum Pasifika in Nusa Dua, Bali. We were there. We saw. And we agreed wholeheartedly with the stance of Georges Breguet who mounted the exhibition, that the best textile arts of the archipelago are indeed art, and should be viewed as such. Read more…

It’s a fun theme for an exhibition, “Hunters & Collectors.” And an interesting opportunity to consider the history of collecting itself as an anthropological phenomenon.

The age of plundering in the jungles is over, and attitudes toward cultural property and buccaneerism have shifted 180 degrees. Still, you can relive the romance and recklessness that helped build the Southeast Asian collections at the Singapore Asian Civilisations Museum, an institution which began in 1849 as the Raffles Library.

Flora and fauna, as well as ethnographica (above), photographs and fine tribal artefacts make up a significant part of the show. On through 21 September.

Linda Garland has daringly directed the design for director Rob Cohen’s new island retreat in the far east of Bali. In case you missed it in Architectural Digest, read the story with photos here. The district around of this rustic retreat on the shores of Seraya, is looking to become the next Munduk. Only eleven people in the world will know what we mean by that. Fine. Read more…

Start Here: Too Much Text

If art works demand a seven page “curatorial essay” then perhaps there is something amiss, some loose threads in the fabric. Shall we examine some random loose threads trailing out with frayed ends from this unravelled exhibition? Bearing in mind that loose threads can be fibers broken from the fabric they should have been warped or wefted into, and they can also be long, trailing anomalous strands never intended to mesh into the main fabric in the first place, but snaked outward from it to become incidentally entangled in other stories. Such wayward strands could easily snag on dinner forks, dissertations, discourses, or discarded hairbrushes, and stay fast there forever, much to our amusement or annoyance. So here we go with loose threads splayed outwards from Tisna Sanjaya’s Cogondewah show at Kendra Gallery in Bali, which opened last Saturday, 11 July, to moderate applause. Read more…

It was a full moon, with a partial eclipse, and it was also my birthday. July 7. Auspicious, indeed. A well-chosen day for the grand opening of Oazia Spa Villas, a most unusual newcomer on the Bali spa and rental villas scene. The party was themed “white,” although it felt as if it should have been themed “white Russian” instead. Certainly a glamourous evening, and a triumph for the creators of Oazia, but one had to wonder, with so many Russians there, where was the vodka? Indonesia’s draconian policies on imported alcohol are strangling the social season. Anyone for another arak sangria?

Three cheers, nevertheless, to Oazia’s developer, Russian interior designer, Veronica Blumgren (above), for pulling off such a grand fête in the temporarily dry climate of Bali.

Clients often get us involved in designing and fabricating beds. This can lead to insomnia for all of us, including the end users of the beds. Conclusion: bed design is a nightmare. Most beds we see out there are designed for a “look,” but with little regard for how a bed is used. A bed should be comfortable to get into and arise from, especially in the dark, and in states of altered consciousness. A bed should have no sharp corners or gratuitous hard surfaces. This seems obvious. Then why are platform beds so wildly popular at present? They are ankle bangers, shin scrapers, knee-de-cappers and toe compactors. Show of hands: Who has never stumbled or banged themselves on the edge of a platform bed? Read more…

Life is complicated. We just finished (almost) building a house. Building a business. Building a gallery. Bali can be stressful. Imagine that.

I rarely long to go anywhere in particular. When you live in Bali, the travel bug doesn’t bite so hard. But now, after all this stress and the complexities of making and decorating a house, I really want to get away to something completely different. And simple.

The Perivolas in Oia on the Greek island of Santorini looks exactly right. Simple. Without the formality and rigour of a modern-minimalist tropical house, which is what I live in. That’s a change I could welcome right now. Read more…