HCMC – Unfrozen Femininity & Life Force

20 – 25 Apr, 09 am – 09 pm daily
PI-CHANNEL shop
31B Le Thanh Ton
District 1, HCMC

Starting today at albb Open Studio Program we present two projects in which guests can participate actively. We invite you to come and work with Hong Kong-based artists,Simone Boon and Marsha Roddy.

In her ongoing Master’s project, Unfrozen Femininity, Simone Boon uses photography’s capacity to record movement and extended moments of time in a flowing gesture. In her photographs, form becomes a snapshot view of a transition, of the ongoing patterns of flow, of identity from a female perspective.

Young women aged between 18 and 25 years are invited to join this project. In the temporary photo studio Simone sets up, they will be asked to perform certain movements or steps as they are photographed. Men and women of all ages are welcome to come and view the process. Perhaps you may also be photographed by Simone.

Since her childhood days, Simone Boon has lived in many different countries such as British Borneo, the Netherlands, Venezuela, Belgium, Malaysia, Austria, and Hong Kong, where she has been based since 2004. Simone is in her last semester for a Masters in Fine Art with RMIT Melbourne, and first visited HCM City for a seminar in 2009. albb Open Studio Program is an exciting opportunity for her to return to share her art practice and create dialogue with the community here.

Each day since August 2009 Marsha Roddy has produced drawings with the intention of connecting to the energetic fields around us. She receives fragments of information, then begins to make marks and lines, each with a different ‘pulse rate’ as it touches the paper. The idea is to feel the world around her at a particular moment in time, and to give form to these sensations on the paper.

Continuing her work with the Life Force drawings in albb Open Studio Program is an opportunity for Marsha to explore and test synergies between location, events and energies and to connect with the life force unique to HCM City. Visitors will be welcomed to join this project by drawing their own lines of connection in response to the energies around them.

Since the mid-80s, Marsha Roddy has enjoyed a career as a production designer, creating sets and costumes for theatre, film and television as well as undertaking interior design and architectural projects.

More recently, Marsha has devoted herself to a Masters in Fine Art with RMIT Melbourne. This has given her time to explore and execute some of the ideas that have remained, until now, inside her sketchbooks. One of the ideas concerns what she calls “energy drawings”, a continuous stream of daily drawings connecting with our conscious and unconscious minds. Marsha’s first visit to HCM City was in 2009 as a part of her Master’s program.

Please visit albb’s blog for more information on the program and participating artist, or follow this project on albb’s Facebook page.

a little blah blah (albb) is an artists’ initiative that since 2005 has operated as a platform for contemporary art through a wide range of channels including projects, exhibitions & events, screenings, talks, a residency program, internships and an open-access archive of art books & catalogues. Our program has evolved in a pioneering spirit, in response to the gaps and needs of the Saigon art scene. Since 2008 we have re-focussed our program to presenting one major project each year, capacity building and the ongoing running of albb Reading Room.