Thursday, January 31, 2008

PARIS (7/09 – 22/10/2007)

Arriving in Paris with a car filled to the max, we settled in our studio at the Cite Internationale des Arts facing the Seine and Notre Dame. Life is hard for artists in France, hey! Well in fact it can be, especially if you are Moroccan.
It is ironic to realise that we were attributed the studio dedicated to welcome Moroccan artists, having just spent a week in Morocco ourselves. However, the French government apparently makes it so difficult for Moroccan artists to obtain a visa to France that Moroccan artists rarely occupy this studio!!!
This year the main reason to be in Paris for Geoff and I was to exhibit our respective body of work. During our last promotional tour in Paris, in 2006, the galerie Marie Laure de l’Ecotais - at the enviable address of 49 rue de Seine (in the heart of Paris gallery district) - offered us both a solo show for the following year, i.e: 2007.
I had sent from Sydney by post all my paintings to be exhibited and so, all I had to do, was mount the show, which started on 21 Sept and finished on 21 October. It was my first exhibition in my France and if all goes well I will exhibit again in this gallery at the beginning of 2010.
Our time in Paris was spent with thousands of Scots, all supporters of their rugby team during the World Cup that was taking place in France then. Their HQ was also in the Marais, right behind the Cite so the atmosphere in the streets was never dull…
Otherwise I did very little tourism exploration as I had to complete 8 large digital paintings for the Hanoi show and they had to be dry prior to packing up to go to Hanoi on 24th October with me. So I was a very dedicated and hard working artist in the studio this year, only visiting two exhibitions: one on the work of famous French illustrator, Gavroche, and the work of a cartoonist very well know for his political drawings in the French satirical news paper “Le Canard Enchaine”.
All in all, these few weeks spent in Paris were very enjoyable because I was busy, i.e: not an idle tourist and because the weather was incredibly warm and sunny, a very unreal weather for that season, allowing us to picnic and sunbake on the Quais de Seine.

posted by kristine at 11:37 PM | 0 Comments

TOULON, AVIGNON, THIZY (25/08-7/09/2007)

The south of France is where I landed my first job, way back in 1982. Toulon was then par of my sales territory as a sales rep. and I have many very fond memories from this area. So it is always a pleasure to return to this part of the world each time I am in France. However this time around was a special time, as my friends from my business school, Veronique and Henri were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. So not only was this an opportunity to party but also to meet some of my fellow students and mates from way back 25 years ago! Some of us have changed a lot (mostly the boys) and most of the girls have aged gracefully. One thing has not changed though: we took conversation at eh same point we left it …25years ago. There was no talking about job/career, as we now all know that this is not that important in life. Life and what we make of it was the major topic of our conversation. With a rented car from Marseille I introduced Geoff to my favourite spots along the coast on our way to Avignon where my brother now owns and runs a very nice B & B (www.masdecapelou.com), on the island of La Barthelasse in the middle of the Rhone river, right across from Avignon. Highly recommended if ever you plan to stay in this area! I pursued the road to my family home village of Thizy to visit my parents and my grand father who will celebrate his 100 years birthday in November 2009. So this milestone of course set a date to our next return to France: November 2009, less than a year away!!!
It is always nice to spend time with family and friends - and even Edwige, my ex sister in law -
and at the same time very destabilizing to realise that I have seen and done so much in my life since my last visit, whilst here in Thizy, not much at all has changed and the people are still in their same spot doing the same things……
We took advantage of the space and access to tools and timber to build the stretchers Geoff and I were going to need for our respective exhibitions in Paris and headed off to Paris.

posted by kristine at 11:37 PM | 0 Comments

MOROCCO (17/08-24/08 2007)

It never ceases to amaze me how our modern days of air travel can blur and sanitise the impression of the real world. Taking off from Mumbai airport, we flew over many square kms of blue plastic tarpaulin covering the slums of Mumbai. If the poverty has been made bearable to occidental tourist eyes in inner city Mumbai, it is largely because the poorest part of the population has been pushed far way from its centre, in a part of town that most westerners would see only from far above.
Landing at Heathrow airport in London was in a way like arriving in one of my many homes. It is so easy to move around London, like it is in any city once you have been there more than once. This time it was just a very brief stop over on our way to Marrakech.
Nevertheless we had time to catch up with Marina, one of my many ex-flatmates from Sydney before I started travelling 3 years ago. She kindly put us up for the 2 nights and after 6 weeks of India it felt really good to spend time with friends again. We also had time to visit Scream gallery in Mayfair-London which had shown some genuine interest in our respective works last year and to remind the manager that we were still around and keener than ever to find gallery representation in London. A quick visit for lunch at the wonderful food market behind the Tate Modern and a few hours at the Tate Modern itself, a brief networking time at the opening of a Cork St gallery and it was time to pack our bags and meet Marina for a last London supper before catching a plane to Marrakech.
This holiday in Marrakech was largely motivated by the fact Rebecca,
my ex sister-in- law, had left boring Woolongong- Australia a few years ago to start a new life as an artist in Marrakech. Hosted by Rebecca and her new very talented calligraphist artist/partner Larbi, we embraced Marrakech wholeheartedly or rather Marrakech took us under its wings! We had a tremendous time, guided by our two “local” friends. All the clichés were there (colourful and lively Medina, fantastic nightly atmosphere on the Plaza….) but somehow, we did not felt part of the tourists’ circus.
We went bezeark with shopping for babouches and kaftans! We even consider (just for one day) buying a “riad” to renovate in charming, but so touristy, seafront town of Essaouira!

We really indulged in that leisure week, knowing that time ahead of us in France and particularly in Paris was going to be dedicated to producing artwork in view of my soon to open solo show in Hanoi – Vietnam (November 2007). One week later, by 25th August we flew out of Marrakech to Marseille.

posted by kristine at 11:35 PM | 1 Comments

Sunday, January 13, 2008

SOUTH INDIA (1st July-15 August 2007)

It is from the hill area of Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand that I finally feel inspired to put pen to paper (or so to speak) and to retrace - in a very summarised version - the last 6 months of my travelling life.
Yes, it is already more than 6 months that I left Sydney (on 1st of July2007) when the cold temperatures finally hit my head quarter of Bondi beach.

The first step of this last trip was to be south India, landing in Mumbai (new name for Bombay), for a 6 weeks sojourn totally unplanned with just the final week booked at a resort on Goa. The culture shock I was anticipating, arriving in India for the first time did not in fact happen. It is true however that the south of India is supposedly radically different from the north. The south is less populated, less oppressive and yes, the people are poor, very poor but even in Mumbai, a city with sprawling slums (very visible from the plan at take off), it is not really much worse than many of the countries where I have spent time such as Cambodia. The sad conclusion I must draw from this experience is that I am no longer the “softy: I used to be, I have, sadly, matured and in doing I toughened up, letting my pragmatic side taking over my compassionate side…..Travelling mostly by train night and day train are excellent and so cheap!), we crossed the south part of India from Mumbai – on the west coast - to Pondicherry (ex French trading “comptoir”) on the east coast.





We stop over on the way at a tiny village of Hampi, a very untouched place which is surrounded by dozen of temples, some in very good state of preservation and others in ruins, with only columns left and scattered on the top of a hill, so reminiscent of Greek temples in Greece and Sicily.
The life in the village and along side the large river remain quite oblivious to the few tourists wandering through and the women still go washing and drying their saris on the banks, while the sacred elephant get his daily morning bath and scrub to the delight of the westerner and local kids.
We then had a couple of days “recovery” in downtown ex French “comptoir” of Pondicherry, where the “passagiata” each evening on the beach promenade brings the millions out to frolic on the rocks (no sand here unfortunately and a no swimming sign), to eat the many snacks available and savour the cooler evening air.

The heat was so oppressive that we had and to restrict our activities to the wee hours of the morning and the late afternoons. The daytime was so hot we had to take siesta after lunch!

Food continued to be delicious as we work our way through the menu and sweet lassis were part of our daily intake. We stayed in a sort of “delux” ashram” kind of place, right on the water front (with no beach unfortunately nor swimming pool).

We hired a motorbike to head south to find beaches to swim at and north to see Auroville, the planned city of “the Mother” and “Sri Aurobindo”, 2 friendly gurus who founded the Ashram empire here. The Mother had this visiona of a utopian new town built around a monstruous speric building in middle of the countryside outside Pondicherry. This town was originally planed to welcome 50,000 people but indeed nowadays hosts barely 3000. Most its inhabitants are reasonably wealthy western disciples who were able to purchase a house in the complex that will at the death or departure be left to the town. Pondicherry was not as I expected this place to be. I anticipated it to be in some way similar to Hanoi, having both been cities submitted to French Colonialism. But in fact the remnants of the French Quarter are minimal and Pondicherry certainly do not hold for me the charm that brings me back year after year to Hanoi. We left Pondicherry during an evening of total chaos as the monsoon finally caught up with us. The sky opened that evening and a terrific thunderstorm fell down a few huge trees throughout the city, thus paralysing the traffic. Somehow we made it just on time with her motorised rickshaw to the train station and the night train delivered us the morning after at the very southern tip of India.
From that geographical position we made a point to stop at all the most appealing beach places but unfortunately our timing to visit this part of India was totally wrong: the monsoon season had rendered the beaches unsafe and very wet!!! We went up the western coast by train and sometimes buses always extremely crowded – after all this is India! - all the way up the western coast taking us through the state of Kerralla and its back waters canals and further north to the other Indian French outpost of Fort Cochin. We spent a few days in this charming town, with its many churches and buildings reminiscent of the Portuguese colonisation as well as the French one. There is even an old Jewish quarter and a disused synagogue and of course the odd Buddhist temples are around, so that any one can chose according to their faith!
Overall India appears to be a fairly tolerant nation when it comes to faith and various religious groups seems to cohabit peacefully. Indian people are very friendly, easy to interact with in English and we certainly did not get into any kind of trouble as we travelled as isolated western tourists. The food is great, not as spicy as I was anticipating (but then again 20 years of exposure to south east Asian cuisine have toughened my palate too), but also not so varied. We essentially ate street food anywhere and any kind and we never got sick at all. Are we that though or are tourists so conditioned at the idea that they are going to be sick in India that they eventually do get sick?
We spent the last 2 weeks of our trip in the state of Goa. By that stage we are fleeing the monsoon rains of Kerralla but they caught up with us in Goa too. We spent one week in the city of Panjim. This charming little town is filled with Portugese churches - nothing more convincing that a few century of heavy Inquisition practice to convert a whole population to catholicism, hey! – From this posting we hired a motorbike to go and explore the world famous beaches of Goa but here again the monsoon rains are destroyed all the “picture perfect” beaches and being the wrong season for tourism - we did not know this!- they were deserted not only by the tourists but also by all its merchants and stall keepers. Any way when it comes to picture perfect beaches very few countries can rival with Australia (and No, I am not biased!). We finished in style spending the last week of our Indian sojourn in a resort in Goa. Yes it was on the beach, but we spent our time enjoying the clean side of the swimming pool - swimming in the rain is lovely and the pool temperature was approximately 30 degrees - the luxury of clean bedlinen (not very common in our previous budget hotel experience) and the indulgence of cooking meals at home and watching stupid HBO movie on our television…. No comments please!
A train ride back to Mumbai to catch our plane to Europe and that was the end of 6 weeks of enjoyable Indian holiday but as far as I am concerned not a particularly culturally challenging experience. It probably would have been very different should we have travel through the north of India. I probably will not return to India as I remained much more attracted by south East Asian countries.

posted by kristine at 5:38 AM | 0 Comments