Bangkok--5 Feb--Bangkok Art and Culture Centre
Installation.
Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, 9th Floor Gallery
Pathumwan Intersection
For the last four months, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre is open for use, it is now the time to reveal what has made possible the realization of this facility for the arts in mid-town Bangkok.
Campaigned for by the network of artists for more than ten years, with various means from protests gatherings, marches, fun-raising parties, to legal actions ( taking a governor to court), the movement has left some concrete evidence other than the BACC building itself.
On display on the 9th floor of the BACC are some two thousand pieces of artwork on cloth created during the 2001 campaign named “We choose the Art Centre, Not Trade Centre” Artists and art lovers were inspired to create the longest piece of art, four-thousand metres long made up of the pieces of cloth on which many expressed their views on the issue of the Art Centre. They were then stringed together, and were carried along the route between the Bangkok City Hall and the proposed site of the Art Centre in Pathumwan, which was four kilometers away.
Although not great masterpieces, the rough-and-ready art works were done with some great spirit, with angry, biting comments of which many were directed at one former governor who had in mind a very different building scheme for the mid-town site. The sharp and often humorous results would probably elicit smiles from viewers.
Discovered amongst the many pieces are some from the hands of well known artists such as Vasan Sitthiket, Chumpon Apisuk, Hongjon Sne-Ngamchareon, and Taweesak Srithongdee. Other pieces were simply executed by students or passers-by and even vendors happy the join in the cause and the fun, and whose efforts are now to be immortalized by being shown in a museum.
This is an on-going installation, if you have material or photographs in your possession you wish to contribute this installation, or to the BACC archive, we shall be most grateful to accept it..
The Bangkok Art and Culture opens daily from 10 am to 9 pm, closed Mondays.
(The installation will be on view until further notice)