Tag - Culture

KOTA KINABALU: The 1Malaysia Contemporary Art Tourism (1MCAT) is good platform for boosting the rapidly growing and vibrant art scene in Sabah, apart from attracting more foreign tourists to visit the State. Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun said the programme brought by Tourism Malaysia provides a great opportunity to local artists to showcase their works and promote themselves not just in local market but also among potential international buyers. Officiating at the opening of Art Carnival 1MCAT The Golden 50 at the Sabah Art Gallery here yesterday, Masidi said the local art scene has a lot of great talents that could be promoted in international contemporary arts industry. “From what I have seen, the work of our local artists are very good. What we need to do is just find a way to market these talents and make sure that they could create arts that would not just be appreciated but also provide them with competitive profit,” he said. The weekend carnival featuring various paintings from local artists is held as part of the 1MCAT Sabah 2013 event, to commemorate the golden 50th anniversary of Malaysia. This is the third year that Sabah participates in the 1MCAT programme, where 10 major art events have been rolled out since July and a few more post-MCAT events scheduled to be held. Exciting things are happening at galleries, art shops and various other participating premises in the city, such as the Sunrise Art Gallery, CAG Assylum, South Sea Santuary and Lavinia Private Art Gallery. Exhibitions and art demonstrations are also being held at places outside Kota Kinabalu such as Tempat Melukih in Tamparuli and Apansol Art Studio in Kota Belud. Towards commercially promoting the works of local painters, Masidi suggested their works be incorporated into batik clothing. He said the batik industry offers a huge and still growing lucrative market that would allow local artists to mass produce their arts and reel in considerable income. “If you do a painting on a paper and sell it as an art piece you will only sell one, but turn that into a batik design and you have a lot of art products. “The market is there, there are a lot of buyers even just in Kota Kinabalu who are looking for high quality and unique batik. And batik is not a cheap art either. A simple batik shirt for instance could fetch up to RM2,000 a piece,” he said, noting that he himself has a collection of some 120 batik shirts. Masidi also urged local artists to strive for perfection and aim to create a master piece, not to be content on producing just another piece of ordinary work. Source : Borneo Post

Kota Kinabalu: Rallying all tribes and races to celebrate the grand 50th Golden Jubilee celebration of Malaysia is the deep-seated purpose on Sept 16. Tracing the traditional life styles of Sabah's ethnic tribes back to their age old roots is high on the programme at the celebration epi-center - Prince Philip Park. In fact, organisers of this aspect of the events have made the people-centric theme of the celebration so visible that no body who steps into Prince Philip Park on that day can miss it - authentic live-size replicas of the five traditional houses of the interior Muruts - their Lansaran longhouse; the Rungus longhouse of northern-most Sabah; The Bruneian house of southwest Sabah; the Bajau house of northern coastal north and the walai Dusun of Ranau at the foothills of Mt Kinabalu. This deep touch stuff of the original Borneo culture and peoples is surely going ignite the intense expectations of first time visitors from far-flung parts of the globe who would be curious about every little thing they want to know about this 3rd largest island in the world - who they are, their architectural styles, materials used, functional aspects, who build what, how did they make a living, what do they eat, what do they drink etc. High curiosity is certain among the waves of tourists from East Asia such as China who will find this traditional ethnic showcase very culturally instructive and lots of picture to take home - and then the word of mouth plus what they can see from pictures about Sabah may spread like wildfire. But cultural appreciation is not necessarily the exclusive domain of exotic visitors. Plenty of West Malaysians and Asean people know probably next to nothing who are the people of Sabah. So, the Golden Malaysia Day celebration can surely be a satisfying day to raise mind, body and spirit, because there will ethnic food and beverages on offer, and surely all the amazing diversity of very distinctive traditional costumes to feast the eyes and ears , that is, all aspects of their senses. Who have been in charge of putting up this loud ethnic showcase? The Sri Peloncongan Sabah Sdn Bhd, the Sabah Tourism Board and the Sabah Museum - the operating divisions under the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Environment. It's an all out celebration of a 50th year old Malaysia, formed on Sept 16 1963. Why not? "The 50th anniversary comes only once in all history, never was, and never again and so all of us should celebrate it," noted Sitti Damsal, General Manager of Sri Peloncongan Sabah. Source: Daily Express