Grant for River Art Project

News of River Art Project receiving grant from the Krishen Jit-Astro Fund 2010.

Reflections: Collaborative process by Aida Redza and Lisa Foo at Melaka Art & Performance Festival 2010

Sunday December 5, 2010
All for Art
By GEOFFREY YEOW

A fund that honours a theatre icon enables local artistes to pursue their dreams and bring their work to the public.

THE grantees of this year’s Krishen Jit-Astro Fund comprise practitioners from various backgrounds chasing different visions, all in the name of art. They are Ho Sheau Fung, Aida Redza and Lisa Foo for The River Art Project; Chong Sheau Ching for A Portrait of Perseverance; Suzy Sulaiman for the Digital Architecture Heritage Trail and Adrian Pereira for The Desa Mentari Youth Project.

The largest award of RM12,000 goes to The River Art Project, the brainchild of dancer-choreographer Aida Redza and light installation artist Lisa Foo.

This experimental project is a mixed media performance encompassing light installation design, dance, music, and visuals, which will be held at two river sites. It will begin with a workshop performance at the Klang River in Kuala Lumpur next March, to coincide with the International Day of Action for Rivers. This will be followed by the grand premiere at Sungai Pinang, Penang, during the George Town Festival in July 2011.

Aida and Foo first worked together last year in The Light Show, a light sculpture exhibition. Since then, their partnership has grown as they share a similar passion in expressing their art accompanied by the elements of environment and nature.

Aida has advocated community projects and social causes while Foo has focused on using recycled material for many of her projects to raise environmental awareness. For the River Art Project, they have approached ethnomusicologist Dr Tan Sooi Beng to provide a mix of traditional and contemporary music to complement the other components.

“We want to show that we can make a difference through our art but we have to find the right balance between dance, music and design first,” Aida explains.

Aida and Foo’s aim is to raise awareness of the importance of recycling and draw attention to the amount of rubbish dumped in the rivers around Malaysia. Foo’s specialty is creating light sculptures of various shapes and sizes out of recyclable materials.

“With this, the public can see that the plastics they throw out can be something delightful, and not just simple waste,” Foo says.

This project will also attempt to dig deeper into issues surrounding rivers and the effect these have on the communities living around them.

excerpt from The Sunday Star