by Nurul Nadhirah Binte Mohammad Khalid, BA(Hons) Fine Arts Level 2 (2019)

Actually, painfully beautiful...was an exhibition featuring the works of Level 2 students in the Diploma in Fine Arts programme (currently Level 3) that were produced over the course of their entire second academic year. The students were given four themes, one at the beginning of each term to start off and develop their ideas: Wilderness and Domesticity; Unconscious Spaces; Notions of Flight; and Tangents and Parallels.

The LASALLE Open House 2019 was a much anticipated event that showed how 'passion and love for the arts can be turned into a passport for entry into a promising career
in the growing creative industries'. It was an affair during which the vibrant campus green in McNally campus teemed with activity from both the high-spirited students and visitors alike, as they mingle among the various forms of creative expression. Showcases, performances, complementary workshops and hands-on demonstrations were some of the on-campus activities.

In Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto, she declared that, "The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self. This is the self feminists must code.” This notion of an assemblage is central to Dipali Gupta’s exploration of female sexuality and its place in contemporary society. For the uninitiated, assemblage theory provides a framework of thinking through the relationships of a body’s component parts, which are constantly shifting in response to the exterior.

I first encountered Tatsuo Miyajima’s work in 2016 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), where his solo exhibition: Connect With Everything, forced me to confront time as both a construct and an irrefutable force of nature. I had to reexamine my perception of time in relation to human existence and have since completely recalibrated my artistic approach to my own meditations on the human condition.

Ellen Altfest is an American painter who has devoted her practice to painting from life. She takes her visual inspiration from domestic plants, vegetables and more recently, the male figure. On a warm, sunny afternoon at the LASALLE Winstedt campus, she conducted a walking meditation workshop which she referred to as The Hundred Steps. Participants included students from the BA and Masters Fine Arts programme and this piece reflects the journey that we set out together, which turned out to be tranquil yet self-reflective.

In his talk in our humble lecture theatre at LASALLE, David Trevelyan, artist in residence for MA Art Therapy, openly shared with us his personal life story, his past as a young boy with dyslexia and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). His struggle to perform in school was translated into an addiction to drawing, where he sought solace in a world defined and governed by himself.

There was a voice; only not yet a voice, not yet a voice spoken out by someone, but only typed out on a piece of paper.

There was a piece of paper, only not yet a piece of artwork, but simply a pamphlet of the exhibition.

There was an exhibition, which holds 24 artists’ works, but not yet his work.

There was his work, with nothing shown in the gallery space, but only his words.

There were his words, only not spoken by him, but simply typed out at the very end of the listed artists, on the plain piece of pamphlet of the exhibition.

Reflection, thought and identity. These were the three words that subconsciously made their way to my mind when I was going through the gallery spaces for the President’s Young Talents 2018 exhibition. I was in a state of constant reflection and thought throughout my visit, and I think that says quite a lot about the quality of work by the participating artists.

It has been more than three months after Lee Wen’s passing as I pen this piece. I write from the perspective of a stranger, unable to offer personal anecdotes or inside information. In the days since 3 March 2019, there were numerous moving tributes published online and on social media, by individuals on whom the artist had an impact. I write not only from a distance, but perhaps also too late?