Collecting Colours in Lac Village, Hoa Binh, North Vietnam

 On 6th April I set out from Hanoi with Dr. Nina Yiu and a team from the Vietnamese Women's Museum on trip to visit Lac Village near Hoa Binh, South East of Hanoi.

After a three and a half hour drive we arrived in the beautiful village, finding it beautiful and quiet. The village sits in a valley with tree-clad hills surrounding it and which is carpeted in lush green rice fields. Normally this location would be buzzing with activity, local community members working and international tourists on adventure holidays. Unfortunately, due to the effects of the COVID pandemic there are no international tourists and only handful of domestic tourists from other parts of Vietnam. Normally the local community members would be making clothes, bags, and other attractive products with designs based upon traditional patterns and designs. Other community members would take the tourists on trekking trips through the rice fields and into the local hills. The tourists would stay in stilt houses constructed to follow the traditional construction methods. It was tragic to see it so quiet and devoid of visitors.

Nina and the team from the Vietnamese Women's Museum were collaborating on a project that aims to provide some support for the local communities in this area. The idea is that Nina's students at RMIT University in Ho Chi Minh City would work on designs for clothes and bags that are then made by the local community craftspeople and sold to tourists from the Museum, with proceeds going to support the local community in the future.

Of course, the students do not aim to simply reproduce traditional styles and decorative patterns, they wished to add a twist, to transform the designs and patterns in such a way as to reinvest those designs with a contemporary spirit. Some of the designs were more complicated than those that would be usually made in the village and so Nina came to assist them in gaining an understanding of the contemporary designs and also to provide technical advice, visualizing paper patterns etc. 

Nina was on official business from RMIT but I financed myself to join the trip to Hanoi / Hoa Binh / Lac Village to see this lovely place.

Although the day turned out to be very busy with non-stop meetings for the whole day, I did find time to take a short walk through the village and as I did so I decided to collect ambient colours along the way.

The location of the village and the colours I collected, along with a few photos I took can be found below.

Before dusk we all set off on the three and a half hours drive back to Hanoi.

Lac Village (Google Maps)

The area around Hoa Binh showing Lac Village

(Google Maps)

Hoa Binh seen in relation to Hanoi 

(Google Maps)

Reaching the crest of the hill

Breakfast stop along the way

The hanging food stalls 

Arriving at Lac Village

Village detail

Village detail

12 found colours

'All Animals are Equal #2' - A.Farm, Saigon

On Saturday 2nd November A.Farm held it's second artist extravaganza entitled 'All Animals are Equal #2' out in District 12 of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

In the main building there was an exhibition of work by artists who have been part of the residence project, collectively showing the results of their investigations. The rest of the A. Farm complex was opened up to local artists to showcase their work both indoors and outdoors.

I submitted two of my filmed performances to be included in the collective artist film screening that took place during the day.
After discussion with the organisers the two chosen films presented my performance 'One Step Forward, Two Steps Back' that had been filmed in East Yorkshire, UK and District 7 in Ho Chi. Minh City respectively.

Unfortunately I could not attend the event in person as I had previously arranged to be in Hanoi for the opening of the Vietnam Festival of Media and Design: Hanoi 2019. However, it was a great opportunity for me to show my work locally for the first time since moving here in May 2018. I really hope there will be more opportunities in the future.

'One Step Forward, Two Steps Back', Sewerby Steps, Bridlington, UK

'One Step Forward, Two Steps Back', District 7, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

'PHAN MANH' Fragments - Hiraki Sawa at the VCCA, Hanoi

Hiraki Sawa (born 1977, Japan) gained his BFA at the University of East London and MFA from the Slade, University of London.

Sawa's work has been described as Hypnagogic and after viewing his work I can understand the suggestion.  The world he creates within his videos could indeed be imagined as being sited within the transition between sleep and wakefulness although Sawa himself would claim that he is 'simply shifting his frame of reality' (http://www.parafin.co.uk/artists--hiraki-sawa.html).

The 'reality' that Sawa invokes is akin to that invoked in childhood when a simple toy becomes the trigger or catalyst for the creation of an entire imaginary world.

The organisation / curating of the show worked very well I thought. As I entered the exhibition area the first pieces I saw were small, intimate and required me to bend down to closely inspect the video footage being shown on tiny screens. Subsequently, as the show unfolded, the imagery expanded in scale almost as if I had entered this dream-like world in which inanimate objects such as toy aeroplanes or rocking horses began to move, or sprouted legs and walked away. In other pieces, the groove of a vinyl record became detached from the disc and stretched itself as a thin ribbon across walls or the room space. As I sat in the darkened room and watched the many video pieces I felt as though I were eaves-dropping, secretly spying on what happens when humans (or more specifically, adults) are not around.
The pieces had a consistent feel without being repetitive and I left the show with a smile on my face.

The non-profit art centre, Viacom Center for Contemporary Art (VCCA) is sponsored by VingroupJSC with Doctor Mizuki Endo as Director. Their stated mission is connecting Vietnamese Contemporary Art to the global art scene. The center's flexible exhibition space covers 1,700 square meters and the entrance is free. The VCCA can be found in the Vincom Megamall Royal City in Hanoi.      http://vccavietnam.com/en/

Vincom Royal City at ground level - Megamall beneath