OCTOBER

The fiery hot som tom or green paw paw salad is still my favorite Thai dish as long as it does not cause too much pain to my tongue, nostrils nor overwork my sweat glands. As I partially melted one day on the streets of Silom I watch the cascades of millions of air-con drops hitting the cement ground. I watched the mish-mashed architecture of numerous cultures and designs alongside the random beauty of no-design at all. Where 7-11 shops sit under fake medieval castles dressed in fairy lights and digital screens the size of elephants. Trees with clumps of aerial roots sucked in the humidity while I sucked in tamarind juice and looked for a bit of space.  Vehicles of all shapes were on frantic mega city missions and pedestrians zigzagged through the jams, floods and organized chaos. This is nonstop business with horns, music, whistles, chanting, jackhammers, chatter and the never-ending drone of all those air con units battling the fact that we are in the tropics.  Bangkok as usual was a great pit stop and my time was well spent with old friends, new friends and art biz. The views above were from level twenty of the Silom area building where I stayed. These images make the city look neat and clean. It is far from neat and clean but hey, 9 million humans do make a big mess when all crammed together. As they do in China…

Hong Kong is my next port of call and here I exhibit with a young artist called Ling Pui Sze or CC at CAP Gallery in Sheung Wan. Below - S.Eastaugh, Tony Scott, Angela Yuen and John Batten. The CC + SE show curated by John Batten presented a mixture of my work from small Antarctic paintings, ink drawings from a 2012 Asialink residency in Beijing and works on paper from Bangkok and Argentina. Seemingly geographically confused but the work in the exhibition has all melded together well thanks to John Batten and Tony Scott.

(www.chinaartprojects.com) Landing in the midst of thick puce coloured smog and thick protests was not the best time to arrive into this hyper active city but I do like its buzz and its creative use of umbrellas. My taxi driver from the airport to Mong Kok shows just how busy the locals are with his six tiny digital screens splattered over his dashboard and “no time for protest as I have a job to do with my taxi..”

Outside and inside all over Hong Kong protests change the landscape while I prepare to move to the landscape of the Netherlands.