Day one

Arrived in Kuala Lumpar for a day’s stop over en route-after a 13 hour flight. The air hits you at 7.30 in the morning like a warm wall of heat, with a faint smell of kerosene and rotting vegetation. Appropriately the airport is cut from the jungle 40 miles out from KL and is fantastic in all senses. The hotel is a colonial array of verandahs and red corrugated tin roofs-but with aircon.

KL is reached by a smooth express in 35 minutes and I just have time to tour the old markets and China Town. There is a sense of happy chaos with the odd display of despair and neglect for those living on the streets. I then visited the Petronas towers. Some one tried to scale them last week and was stopped by security on the 60th Floor. They contained a massive shopping centre with every named brand on display. This is modern marketing red in tooth and nail and is enthusiastically endorsed by the Malays –who are beautifully thin and young.

Malaysia is obsessed with modernity. KL in particular is an odd mix of traditional Moslem architecture and uber-modern design. Even the old railway station is like an updated Ahlambra Palace. One has to remember how recent a history it has –original meaning is ‘muddy river estuary’ and was it carved out from the jungle by tin miners in the mid eighteen hundreds, The past is one of gang warfare and vice, cleaned up by colonial administrations and hit by waves of repressive governance and unhindered market capitalism.

It is not so different in this to Bendigo and a past of greed and rivalry that may be part of the final artwork I want to research during the residency.