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Community
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Stories of Vendors
Chun Woei, Wei Ming and Helen, three young friends, have conceptualised Urban creatures. Fellow creatures themselves, they relish being captioned as 'Weird" and believe that no matter how people perceive visual arts, there is a community out there who are into weirdness and the lifestyle of the arts that they share. Chun Woei states,"We do not always do as we are told and we have no rules to follow when it comes to creative work. So we are able to beautify ugly things".
"By us being us we want people to think that people can actually be themselves and create new things. They can be who they want to be instead of following in other people's foot steps," is Wei Meng's outlook. Who are they really? Chun Woei matter-of-factly answers, "We are young people who love our culture and traditions and but view culture in a modern way. We try to bridge the gap between the older generation and the young so that the young will accept and keep their traditions". Being unable to perceive their new concepts, especially as I had my roots deep in Zulkifli Buyong, Bayu Utomo, Dylan and the Grateful Dead, I asked for an example. How would you two young men celebrate Chinese New Year? Wei Ming deliberates and answers, "We go back to tradition but add to it. We create our own New Year Cards called Motion/Digital cards and send them via e-mail with music and graphics. We snap shots of the celebration with a lomocam to do lomographs and lomowalls thus bringing a different eye to tradition." So why are they keeping the traditions? "Sometimes we walk too far and we start to forget what's behind us."
They do seem to be a generation who look at traditions in a lot of other different ways. Together these friends have created a series of beings, called Urban Monsters, which seem to reflect their own feelings of being a mutated kind of species with a different lifestyle from the others. The Monsters are made up of different races and are part of a society of Urban Creatures. "Consider our product as an entry point into our world, to have a piece of our world, a key to open a new door to new discoveries."
Each figure is made from molded poly resin and individually painted by these three artists/creatures. They are also caged and why? - "its up to you to set them free", says Chun Woei. Apart from this, the group has produced an event called Beautiful Junk which was well accepted in Penang.
Chun Woei is 30 years old, a graduate of Equator Academy of Art in Penang. He started to venture into experimental work after graduating from Wanganui School of Design in New Zealand, where he majored in computer graphic design. Wei Meng is 22 years of age and studied graphics and multimedia design in Equator while Helen is a graphic designer. Together
these three young people form the Urban Creatures Audio Visual Design
Lab, working on motion graphics, broadcast and print design for television
stations. Written
and photographed by Ambiga Devy |
Urban
Creatures - Viewing Traditions and Culture with a New Eye
The
group represents a bunch of new young artists with some astounding works.
As for example, the Cha Siew Pau and Har Gau T shirts is a way to promote
the steamers in which the T- Shirts are wrapped - a traditional cooking
utensil found in most Malaysian Homes.