Walk through gallery bares environmental gems
The Erehwon Center for the Arts located in Old Balara, Quezon City is never lost when mediating art among its surrounding communities of the underserved and less privileged. A recent walk through its galleries, particularly the permanent collection, would reveal a number of environmentally conscious works, as well others too of similar theme during the occasion of the annual fiesta of the center’s founder Raffy Benitez in late August. It was also the informal launch of Book 3 of Erehwon Projects, Access Activate Rewind by Laya Boquiren, where the gallery’s past undertakings, current and future plans are expounded on in scholarly manner – there is method in such madness.
Though the center may be partial to social realists whose works are well represented, the gallery itself being a favorite place of the late critic Alice Guillermo, there is however an eclectic if not catholic sprawl in the overall layout, with paintings, murals and sculptures trying to strike a fine balance between present day headlines and an aesthetics unbound by time, space or politics. The here and now is not nowhere, but the science of it can easily slip out of the viewer’s glance in the wink of an eye.
Edgar Talusan Fernandez’s “Ang Manggagawa at ang Kalikasan” is a studied updated representation of working class themes, in this wise the laborer who has to leave the countryside to try his luck in the big bad city, but the painting’s silhouetted outline is not promising - the urban blight hovering like a cross to bear while the simple life left behind becomes a symbol of nostalgia and plain longing. Pablo Baen Santos’ ‘Oplan Tumba’ mural and Antipas Delotavo Jr.’s after-Guernica canvas suggest how the masses have to deal with state impunity, forces deadlier than any climate change because more immediate.
National artist Napoleon Abueva’s sculpture “Basa na” captures a woman bracing herself for the monsoon rain, her solitary figure quite exposed to the elements, yet instead of vulnerability imparts a steadfastness and resilience characteristic of many Filipinos in typhoon-ravaged areas, knowing there is no option but to soldier on. Other sculptors in the permanent collection are Agnes Arellano and Julie Lluch, where feminist themes and Biblical allusions are cast in stone relief and terra cotta.
Ray Paz Contreras’ “Bantay ng Kalikasan” and Ferdinand Cacnio’s “Nature is our playground” – both sculptures – and Rafael Maniago’s painting “San Fernando carabao” are three more works paying tribute to the idyllic countryside, the importance of trees and safeguarding nature.
Erehwon Book 3 also makes mention of the Art and Anthropology project in conjunction with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which featured five Filipino American artists and five based in the home country working on a collaborative mural, with a plethora of found objects dating back to pre-colonial times all set against a backdrop of what looks like a balanghay, the boat of ancestral seafaring Filipinos. This collaboration paved way to draft plans for an American Museum of Philippine Art, which is seen to heighten the cross-Pacific exchange of art and its adjuncts.
The late professor and critic Reuben Ramas Cañete helped strategize the setting up of the museum under Erehwon auspices, and three of his works culled from “Cosmography” are part of the gallery’s collection.
Arte Botanika: Piging held during Earth Day 2016 showcased works made of materials organic or recycled from discarded objects on sea and land, while Pumapapel Volume 3 in early 2015 had more than 100 artists whose works were drawn or made whole on basic paper.
Another large scale project was one commissioned by the Quezon City government, with 10 murals drawing a timeline of the birth and growth of a city, once the country’s capital but whose vibrancy and green spaces were never lost.
The cavernous gallery formerly a bread factory now also houses the mural “Tagaligtas 44,” a homage to the Special Action Force soldiers who died in Mamasapano, each commando bearing the likeness of the original through careful study and research and the sure hand of resident painters.
At the annual fiesta and other special occasions the Erehwon Jazz Orchestra plays, a big band with a repertoire of old swing standards, on the rooftop at sunset where it feels like the center of the world.