Monday 26 May 2008

Abdullah Al Muharraqi at MEEM Gallery





At the MEEM Gallery you can see a retrospective of the Gulf’s best-known artist Abdullah al Muharraqi, sometimes referred to as the Salvador Dali of the Gulf. Born in Bahrain in 1939, Al Muharraqi studied in Cairo and Damascus and now has an entire hall devoted to his work in the Museum of Modern Arabic Art in Qatar. He also designed most of Bahrain's stamps! The earliest work in this show is from 1967 and goes up until 2006.

As always, entering the MEEM gallery space itself makes a huge impact, perhaps too much in this case because some of the work then seemed disappointing after that initial impression. However, what was most striking was how uniquely ‘Gulfie’ much of the work was. It reveals the Gulf as a harsh existence revolving around the dark terrors of the ocean. The work creates an atmosphere that is so far removed from the current Dubai PR model of the Gulf it’s hard to believe it came out of the same region. I got more of a sense of historic and geographic reality through this one show than I’ve got in an entire year of being in Dubai. That said I do remember being very affected during last December’s film festival by the harsh and menacing atmosphere in several short films made by local filmmakers. So maybe the link is there even if the unease is now for different reasons.

Many of Al Muharraqi's paintings concern pearl diving and divers. Pearls were a significant industry before the 1930s when the Japanese worked out how to culture pearls rather than relying on luck or god to provide an accommodating oyster. The dangers of the pearl divers’ often short lives and the imbalance between that and the life of the pearl itself are obviously things that Al Muharraqi felt very deeply. The most compelling picture in the show is ‘The Divers Tragedy’ from 1973, which gives a cyclical illustration of the life of a pearl and the diver's associated sorrows.

Many of the earlier paintings focus on this subject and very effectively communicate the horror and the dread associated with this kind of life. However, there is thread which runs through the whole show that is way over on the dark side – starvation, decay, vengeance and environmental devastation as in 'Catastrophe' from 1984. Later work, especially from the past few years has strong political overtones. Several of these paintings worked very well - the palpable tensions in ‘Opposition’ and The Nations Game’ for example. However, there were obviously some sensitivities. The title label of one work was actually obscured by the frame and only if you lifted the corner of the picture could you see the title was ‘The Regression of Arab Civilisation’. It could have been a hanging error but I don’t think so.....

'Martyr's Souls' from 2002 didn’t work so well. An otherwise sensitive image related to Palestinian suffering was eclipsed by a small and bizarre depiction of the perceived ethnic cause that could have come straight out of 1930s German propaganda. Other figurative expressions of this conflict I have seen tend to focus on the contemporary realities of the Israeli military but this was like some kind of time warp. Most weird was the fact that it seemed so gratuitous and badly painted it was almost as if somebody else had done it! It was a very strange exception but a definite reminder that propaganda rarely makes good art.

Friday 16 May 2008

Mushroom Blancmange

I am starting a full time job in June and am already having doubts. The two days I currently work are spent in several frustrating ways. Figuring out how to nail down blancmange in zero gravity seems to have become the overall project. I draft invitations and requests for information which elicit no response and I send emails containing crucial questions about the nature of blancmange development which never get answered.

I mostly sit in a vacuum watching time and my intellectual faculties slip away. 'Why am I here?' I ask myself repeatedly. If something concrete to do does appear I get as excited as a laboratory rat when somebody rattles the food pipe, but invariably it ends in tragedy (farce, if my pride manages to stay above it!).

It wasn't like this at the beginning. In fact, I think it was my linguistic dexterity that gave the blancmange recipe credibility in the first place. So I guess you could argue that I've brought it on myself. However, I did not expect to be subsequently mushroomed. I am now left completely in the dark and not even fed shit! No wonder a recent regional employment survey found job satisfaction in the UAE was extremely low!

Tuesday 6 May 2008

Spare Change

First of all I would like to thank everyone who has emailed over the last few weeks noting with concern the increasingly jaundiced perspective, telling me to hang in there or just reminding me that they love me :).

Here's a little traffic incident which happened on my way to Trade Centre a few days back. I looked out of the bus window and could see straight down into a huge black Bentley. At the first set of lights the driver reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a huge stack of 500 dirham notes. He sat in his car counting the bundle, kissed it and placed it on the passenger seat. At the next set of lights he reached into the glove compartment again, pulled out another stack, counted it, kissed it and placed it next to the other one.

He turned off at the next set of lights so I'll never know how many stacks of cash were in that glove compartment. I couldn't see his face either so he could have been from anywhere. I cannot imagine seeing something like this stuck in a traffic jam anywhere else and it was mesmerising - like watching a scene from a movie.

  • As a postscript to the vision fatigue theme two posts ago I am now on 'vision watch'. The latest was in Trade Centre today: "Nakheel - Where vision inspires humanity".

    'Vision' is the word round these parts but the regularity with which it is now being used has rendered it completely meaningless and possibly constitutes language abuse......

    Another postscript actually.... I don't tend to take things too personally but if anybody comes across a German speaking, Ferrari driving, cement trader in his 40s who thinks all locals are bastards (despite a recent invitation from Mr. A. Sheikh to his private polo club) tell him he's a tosser. He really needs to know!