The journey continues for Eddie Choo Wen Yi, now studying at Taipei National University of the Arts, as she records the island round trip 环岛 utilising her “Madline” apparatus on a motorcycle. Long haul rides result in oval-shaped doodles, while coloured inks mark in-town travel. Looking at the wall tracing of Formosa island and round shapes in the exhibited works, circular references denote a starting point that ends at the same spot. A trolley with the artist’s apparatus allows visitors to make their own mad lines on postcards, an enjoyable activity for one unable to draw a straight line. This contrivance is like an art-making pedometer, and exposes the banal nature of gestural expressionism, a popular mode in Malaysian paintings.
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| Installation snapshot |
Furthering the Automatism concept is a cardboard box affixed with the recording compass, which Eddie handheld from Taoyuan airport, back to her home in Puchong. Accompanying this box is a stop motion video which documents this voyage, a period of physical displacement forgotten by the traveller, who typically only has recollections of one’s destination point. The artist herself edited out an airport stopover in her video, which goes to show that every journey has lost memories, as we go through the grand tour of life. In Chen Huai-En’s wonderful round trip movie Island Etude 練習曲, the teacher asks, “(H)ow is it travelling by yourself? Is it fun?” The protagonist answers with a laugh, “OK loh…”
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| The author's mad lines created with the artist's trolley with recording apparatus on exhibition postcard |