The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Ismail Hashim was born in Penang, Malaysia in 1940. He holds teaching certificates from Malaysia and England, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) majoring in Fine Arts from Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang (1975), and a Master of Fine Arts from Washington State University, United States (1979). He now teaches graphic design at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, where he is currently also Director of the Arts Centre. Beingone of the very few Malaysian artists working in the photographic medium, Ismail Hashim has exhibited widely within Malaysia and overseas, including the United States, Europe, Japan, the Middle East and South­ East Asia. Group exhibitions in which his work has been represented include 'Salon Malaysia', National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 1968; 'National Photographic Competition', National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 1973 to 1975; 'Photographic Exhibition', New York, United States, 1979; 'ASEAN Exhibition of Paintings and Photographs', touring the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, 1981; and 'Treatment of the Malaysian Landscape inModern Malaysian Art 1930-81 ', National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 1981. Since 1974 his work has won numerous national and international awards, not only in photography but also in printmaking , typography and logo design. International recognition includes prizes in the 'ACCU Photography Exhibition', Japan, 1975-76, and 'Photographic Exhibition', New York, in 1979. In 1993 he mounted his first solo show at the Novotel Hotel, Penang. Renowned as a graphic designer, painter and a skilled draughtsman, Ismail Hashim is identified most often as a photographer or, more exactly, a creator of meticulously crafted, hand-coloured black and white photographs. Whilehis photographs appear to be straightforward, unstaged scenes of nooks and crannies of Malaysian life and environment, their design clearly reflects the selective eye and mind of the photogra­ pher. The economy of superimposed colours, while usually faithful to the real hues of the objects, reveals the artistic transformation of reality. Ismail Hashim chooses the photographic medium partly because photographs can record things as they are. Self expression comes in the sensitive selection of objects 'sitting together at the moment in which they are captured on film'. It is this apparent MALAYSIA ISMAIL HASHIM The barber shop 1985-93 Hand-tinted photograph 47x47cm Collection: The artist unstaged quality that he findsmeaningful and aesthetically pleasing. In reality, his presentation of objects is anything but straightforward. His design sense combines with the keen illustrative eye of the graphic designer, and he turns the blandness of the ordinary visual environment into something which demands not to be taken for granted. Old and worn-out bicycle seats are deftly transformed into aesthetically pleasing icons of Malaysian life. In his work The barber shop, the barber's chair, old but sturdy, demands attention as an emblem of the recent Malaysian cultural past, inviting recognition as a record of iconographic changes in life and culture. It presents itself as an art object not dissimilar towhat used to 25 pervade the traditional life of ordinary rural and urban Malaysians. The rustic charm which Ismail Hashim manages to extract from his scenes of or­ dinary life is often imbued with a feeling of neglected beauty. And the sense of nostal­ gia or regret for technological advancement in material culture becomes almost a subtle social comment. Ismail Hashim beautifies the rude, the drab and the funny, moving the viewer to weigh the aesthetic and human implications of industrialisation and cultural change. Zainol Abidin Bin Ahmad Shariff