On finding inspiration from a multitude of sources
By Ho See Wah

A&M's Fresh Faces is where we profile an emerging artist from the region every month and speak to them about how they kick-started their career, how they continue to sustain their practice and what drives them as artists. Read our profile on Philippine artist Bree Jonson here.

You took Industrial Engineering for your undergraduate major from Ateneo de Davao University. Could you talk more about how you transitioned from this to making art? And at what point in your life did you decide to pursue a career in this field?
I already knew from the start that I wanted to be in the creative field. At various points in my life, I had written, played music, and drew, and my first passion is writing and literature. In fact, most of my sketches are rough lines and words, rather than fully fleshed-out figures.

For my thesis, I had to time the minute actions of all the workers in a factory and figure out how to lessen the number of movements in order to increase productivity. I had an awakening then, perhaps akin to the disorientation Karl Marx experienced upon observing the same sight: humans as mere units of economic production. Thereafter, I longed for the forests and animals of my youth in Los Baños, a province three hours south of Manila, where canals have fishes, migratory birds flock overhead, butterflies flit about, and lizards, frogs and gigantic spiders abound.

I wanted to drop out of university and I only stayed because of my parents. But because I knew what I wanted, I pulled off a “long con”. After I graduated, I went to Manila under the guise of looking for a job and instead, enrolled in UP College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines. Even though I quit after a semester, I continued painting.

Could you share how you’ve maintained your practice after getting into the art scene? What are the important factors that kept you going?
First and foremost, I had to make it sustainable. Being away from both my parents and having to survive on my own after having such a conservative childhood was a huge wake-up call to the harsh realities of the world. I joke that if I had known it would be this bad, I would not have done it at all.

It is the art that keeps me going, and nothing else. The ultimate ideal is to find a higher order that is above the chaos of modern life. Art is refinement even in its brutishness and destitution. And for me, a relevant, timeless message that I want to deliver with my work is the connection we have with nature, and the need to revive that. The world is bigger than just us humans, and there are others that are equally as important. My mission is to find new ways to reconnect.

Bree Jonson, ‘The Red Queen’, 2017, oil on canvas, 152.5 x 122cm. Image courtesy of the artist and OUR ArtProjects.

Could you talk about how you developed your technical skills in painting, given that you were not trained formally in this?
I trained as an apprentice under Jason Montinola, who was a good friend of Ivan Roxas. I was lucky to be able to hear these two great painters talk about technique, skill and their favorite painters. I learnt about these, as well as more on art history during sunny afternoons with cups of coffee.

However, skills and techniques are just one part of the equation. I also bought many books and pored over art and literature. I read many articles online and downloaded PDFs and movies that I was thematically interested in. I gobbled it all up with the enthusiasm of a child, and I still do. Knowledge is something I hold in high regard. Every new information is a thread that can be sewn into my body of work.

How did the opportunity for your first solo show, ‘Therion Mythos’ at OUR ArtProjects, Kuala Lumpur, come about?
I was painting in the studio in a state of non-productive work, exploring the scant materials I had on hand. The owners of the gallery saw a piece and asked if I could do my first solo show with them. I gladly obliged.

What was the process like preparing for it?
Preparing for a solo exhibition for the first time is an overwhelming task. I worked night and day. There is nothing romantic about it. I did not have a flurry of manic ideas that inspired or excited me. I felt a lot of pressure, and oftentimes succumbed to it. I have learned a lot about studio work since then.

Now, I take it slow. I read, write and maintain an inquisitive mind. My work has also changed and has taken on two styles. There are the more expansive and grandiose canvases with figures abound —sketched in, etched out— everywhere in interminable chaos. Then, there are the smaller and more intimate, introspective works with less structure and more spontaneity.

I have accepted that I am not just one thing, and the subjects I tackle range from environmentalism, multi-species ethnography, human-animal relationships, sensitivity, sensuality, sex, death and life. I trust that in the years to come, all of these different bodies of work will make sense, just as how the various streams of rivers eventually flow into one deep, blue ocean.

Who has been a mentor or what has been an important artistic influence? And why?
There is a book I picked up in Tokyo that I keep going back to, and I have lent it to friends, or shared passages from it over the years. It is about the works of artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss. The way they saw the world, their process, the invitation to simplicity and quietude, and the idea of ludic gesture grounds me in times of distress, as well as refocusing my attention to what really matters.

Among others are the photographs of Ana Mendieta; the sacred symmetry of Agnes Martin; the threads of Jose Leonilson; the disquieting objects of Christian Boltanski; the unmade bed and dancing men of Felix Gonzalez-Torres; the restorative spiders of Louise Bourgeois; the tigers of Jorge Luis Borges; the stillness of Paul Strand; the bellowing emotions of Bachmann; and the poem that I have read twenty times and counting: Constantine P. Cavafy’s ‘Ithaka’.

And when I was younger, there were the words and music of Cynthia Alexander, a great musician hailing from Davao City, where I spent my adolescence. Her words, music and paintings always brought me to a different place, a fantastical solace where hope still remained.

What has been an important piece of advice?
“Take a leap.” To learn to believe is to suspend one’s disbelief. Take a leap into the unknown, get lost in the forest of your passion, let it break you and put you back together again. It is all part of the process in your own becoming.

Could you share your favourite art space or gallery in the Philippines? Why are you drawn to that space and what does it offer to you and your practice?
Artinformal, a gallery in the Philippines that I have worked with since 2015. I see it as a safe space that offers growth and the proliferating of ideas. They have never demanded that I do any particular thing other than to find my own visual language and speak it.

Finding one’s own language is a daunting task. It cannot be done in days, or even years. Even in my sixth year of working as an artist, I am still constantly arriving, never quite there yet, in exploring different ways of communicating.

Bree Jonson, ‘Notes on Stillness’, 2019 at Yavuz Gallery, Singapore, exhibition installation view. Image courtesy of the artist and Yavuz Gallery.

What are your hopes for your local art scene, and regionally as well?
Taking into consideration the current pandemic, many in my community have fallen through the cracks, and have lost their jobs and establishments. The safe spaces where we used to commune, where we have continuously lost and found ourselves over the years are now gone, or nearly gone. Locally, importance is placed on community and collaboration, openness and inclusion. I wish for the local scene to grow out of outdated conceptions and push forward together, and for this attitude to remain even after this challenging period.

Regionally, I hope for more collaboration between institutions and galleries. Having artistic mobility within the region is key to defining our own cultural integrity and uniqueness. For example, I would love to walk to the Cultural Centre of the Philippines, a beautiful 1966 brutalist building by Leandro Locsin, and see important art from, say, Thailand.

I also hope for bigger projects that are more readily available to the masses, in an implementation of Guy Debord’s détournement: a public display of images that disrupt daily life, and induce new patterns of thinking to passer-bys.

Work-in-progress for an exhibition in January 2021 with Artinformal.

Are there any upcoming exhibitions/projects that you would like to share more information on?
I have a show in January 2021 with Artinformal. After three years of not exhibiting in the Philippines, here I am, finally. I am glad to be working on this, and I plan to transform the space in order to emphasise the works. This will mark a change in my direction to where I have always wanted to go, where there is a lot more experimentation, variegated and raw. I am nervous yet excited at the same time.