If you want to know something about art in Bangkok, Steven Pettifor is a person you should speak with. Known at every gallery and by many artists, Pettifor is primarily recognized as an art critic, although he is a

curator and an artist himself. Apart from his written contributions to Asian Arts News and BAM! (Bangkok Art Map), many artists and galleries have hired him to write the text for their art catalogues and press releases.

PAINT YOURSELF

I write about and organize exhibitions. I also went to art school myself. But there has been more demand for my services and more people who want me to write for them. I also have just launched the book Flavors–Thai Contemporary Art, published by Thavibu Gallery.

ART IS?

Anything can be art. It depends on how you package it and dress it up, I guess. I don’t really know what art is; art can be everything and anything. I get a gut reaction from some art. I just don’t like art that, after walking out of a gallery, you forget about in two minutes.

RECOMMENDED SPACES

I’m in the position where I can’t favor one gallery more than the others. And the most important thing for me when I go to a gallery is not its atmosphere, but the show. So I’ll pick three galleries that are having good shows this month. At Teo+Namfah Gallery, this month they have something called SCAPES: Trace & Scar by Adam Nadel. There are photos of landscapes, waterscapes, along with vandalized posters from the New York subways and pictures of the fires from 9/11 taken from his apartment with a micro lens. Nadel is a famous award-winning photojournalist.

So this is quite different for him to do something more conceptual and thematic. I would also pick H Gallery because I like its September show featuring a Cambodian rattan sculptor, Sopheap Pich. You don’t see much Cambodian art in Bangkok, so it’s interesting to see what’s going on with our SEA neighbors sometimes. And usually H Gallery features wall-based works, but this time it’s mainly floor-based.

For the last three or four years, 100 Tonson Gallery has put on some of the most interesting shows. And the owner is very open to having her own gallery transformed in a dramatic way, and I like that. I curated the current show Confectionaries & Conurbations where Chila Kumari Burman mixes personal history with contemporary Indian advertisements. A lot of her works are about female identity as a British Indian woman. And I put her together with Tiffany Chung. Tiffany’s works are more about the development of the Asian cities at the moment in relation to Saigon. Despite the humor, the colors and the pop, their works are quite serious underneath, but are delivered in a kind of entertaining way.