This was published 7 years ago
There's more to Bangkok than sexotic freak shows
By Daniel Scott
Innovation: Bangkok Paintbar encourages patrons to paint.Credit: Daniel Scott
The young Thai woman stands at the top of the metal staircase. Her head is cloaked in a shoulder-length orange wig and her lips smeared with silvery-blue gloss. She wears a knee-length blue dress beneath a frilly white apron and sports three legs clad in black tights and silver-blue slip-on shoes.
Slowly and deliberately she descends the stairs, rounds a table and moves across the floor, the jumble of legs stepping forward one by one.
This is not some sexotic freak show, with which Bangkok is too readily associated. It is Jupiter by local performance artist Wilawan Wianthong, playing out at the Bridge cafe and art space, behind a shopfront in the city's busy Sathorn district.
The piece's principal action consists of Wianthong lifting her false leg, stemming from her midriff, and removing the shoe from its foot, while we look on and giggle uncertainly.
"People may think what is the point of me doing this," says Wianthong, "creating an image of a woman with three short legs dragging one leg around in various situations with grace, but why are people trying to make meaning from it? I don't give it any definition."
Ah, modern art, so mysterious. Or is that willfully obscure?
Whichever, Bridge has quickly become the capital of cool in this sticky Asian metropolis, an art space exhibiting the creative talents, both local and international, from countries including the UK, France, South Africa and Belgium.
It not only offers something different from Bangkok's ornate temples, Thai cuisine, shopping and river cruises, but gives an insight into the city's evolving alternative cultural scene.
Bridge arose from the protest movement of 2008, with young Bangokians in particular wishing to express their dissatisfaction with the Thai system.
It was named originally from the nearby Saphan Taksin, spanning the Chao Phraya river, but has come to symbolise a bridge between Bangkok's artists and the public, a place of collaboration and of creative journey.
Apart from giving Wianthong a space in which to strut, the four-storey cafe and gallery has displayed the work of street artists like Asin, who decorates skateboards with cartoon-like chicken insignia, and Truk, who uses steel, "connects to big brands" and is inspired by tattoos.
The latest exhibition is Look by a Parisian artist, "with interventions by Anais Descarpenterie and live music from One Hand Clap on the rooftop".
Our day of Bangkok art begins at the Museum of Contemporary Arts, a sleek, well-lit exhibition space completed in 2012 and devoted to Thailand's most comprehensive collection of modern painting and sculpture.
It houses 800 pieces, collected by communications mogul Boonchai Bencharongkul, displayed over five floors, and showcases a different side to Thai fine art, much influenced by modern Western styles.
It's intriguing work, especially those paintings by Thawan Duchanee, a dark artist who studied metaphysics in Holland and died in 2014.
"Look up to the dazzling stars in the darkness of night," Duchanee is quoted beside a canvas depicting the firmament, "and you will be able to see the splendid order of the mysterious galaxy, which can be both awesome and fearful".
Other striking works include Dancing, a huge rectangular piece laden with skeletons painted by Sriwan Janehuttakarnkit in 2011, and a triptych depicting Heaven, Middle Earth and Hell, in which our planet is represented by a giant ribcage, with Obama at its sternum, and other historical figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and Chairman Mao appearing between the ribs.
A lunch and a reminder of more traditional art forms – a puppet show by a troupe formed in 2010 – follow at the Artist's House, a floating century-old teak building on the canal in Khlong Bang Laung neighbourhood.
Then, after witnessing the bold and the bizarre at the Bridge, we end our day at the Paintbar, set in a New York-style top floor loft, where the onus is on us to fill a canvas with guidance from a painter.
"The concept is that people that have no experience can paint here," says Paintbar owner Eddy, whose motto is "paint, sip, repeat, the best thing that will help you will be drinks."
As I attempt to emulate a Bangkok river scene, viewed through old-style shuttered windows, my painting loses definition and becomes a blur.
But then, as Wilawan Wianthong assured us earlier, modern art doesn't have to have meaning, it simply has to be.
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Qantas fly to Bangkok from Sydney and Melbourne. Qantas.com.au
STAYING THERE
The five-star Peninsula Bangkok is on the Chao Phraya river at 333 Charoennakorn Road, Klongsan. Deluxe rooms from THB 9800 ($373) per night. Bangkok.peninsula.com
TOURING THERE
Museum of Contemporary Arts, open Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm, Weekends 11-6, THB 180. macabangkok.com
Bridge Cafe and Art Space, Charoen Krun Road, Yan Nawa, Sathorn. Wednesday-Monday 10am-10pm. Facebook.com/bridgeartspace
Artist's House is best reached by boat from Tha Chang pier, stopping at Khlong Bang Luang. Open daily 10am-6pm.
Paintbar, 46/4 Sukhumvit soi, 49 Klhong Tan Watthana. Three-hour painting sessions from THB 799 per person. Paintbar.com
Daniel Scott was a guest of Peninsula Hotels and Qantas.
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