Ethnic symbolisms and political messages, personal moods and still lifes, romantic views and serene landscapes, Philippine rural scenes and the English countryside, realism and abstraction.

These themes and images constituted Ugat Lahi, a group show by six Filipino visual artists at the Brady Art & Community Centre in East London, from 24 to 28 September. The six were painters Arturo Limbo, Roland Manipol, Arnan de Leon, Nene Martin, Giovanni Cuizon, and photojournalist Candy Quimpo Gourlay. The exhibit was organized by the UK chapter of the Circle of Cancer Survivors & Friends. Part of the proceeds from the sale of the works were donated by the artists to the CCSF fund for the benefit of cancer sufferers and their families, as well as health workers belonging to the Alay Kapwa foundation in the Philippines.

Art Limbo is a self-taught artist who has exhibited several times in London and Norwich where he now lives. His works consisted of vegetal and organic forms, geometric patterns, black & white portraits, and an interesting layered-glass painting of a choreographer set in a box frame. His first art show in London was with a group of artists which included Ben Cabrera, Ramon Gaston, and Jose Luis Pradera in the 70s.

Arnan de Leon teaches art to Filipino children in London while enrolled in photography, video and film studies at the University of London. His contribution was a quartet of 50- by 60-inch canvases which nominally depict Filipino folk and ethnic rituals in a surreal style, but which the artist chooses to call "visual exercises…developed organically into a whole that gifts the viewer with the freedom to interpret the pictures according to his own experiences."

The exhibit was opened by The Rt. Worshipful Mayor of the Borrough of Tower Hamlets Councillor Lorraine Melvin and Ambassador Cesar B. Bautista. Also in photo are CCSFUK Patron Mrs. Angeles Quimson, Barbara Solon, Commercial Attaché Vicente Casim, Minister Gilberto Asuque, and child star Gina Cachero of the Angels performing group.

Roland Manipol finished architecture in Manila and took up further studies in portraiture and still-life painting in London. Keen on Filipino rural imagery, his most admired work in the exhibit was "Harvest", depicting a trio of farmers gathering their golden rice crop in a sunlit field with lush green mountains as backdrop, reminiscent of the artist's Batangas roots. His astute draftsmanship is evident in his picture-perfect watercolors of English castles and cottages, and a charcoal pencil drawing of the World Trade Center's twin towers exploding in the terrorist attack on September 11.

Contrasting in style and mood were the works of Giovanni Cuizon, a thoroughly London-bred artist who has a diploma from the Chelsea School of Art & Design and an honors degree from the Central St. Martins School of Art. He also studied for his MA in Fine Arts at the exclusive Florence Academy of Art in Italy. His contributions included two oil paintings of the Hundred Islands in Pangasinan, a self-portrait, and a large-sized pencil sketch of one of the statues in an Italian museum.

When she first came to London, Nene Martin spent most of her days touring art galleries and museums, and visiting historical places and famous gardens. Some of her works at the exhibit, picturesque and awash with light, reflected her pleasant memories of early days in London. She also had some dramatic portraits and serene still lifes. A creative writer as well, Nene won 2nd Prize in the Centennial Literary Competition of the Filipino Women's Association-UK in 1998.

Candy Quimpo Gourlay, a freelance journalist who recently ventured into oil painting, is a full-time mother to three children. Her photographs and drawings have been regularly published alongside her articles which have seen print around the world. She was the London correspondent for Interpress Service and Asiaweek. The pictures she included in the exhibit vividly captured some of the most controversial events in recent history, many of them haunting images of a society in turmoil: striking workers lying down in the path of a company truck, a woman singing 'Bayan Ko' amidst the tumult of a Manila demo, anticommunist vigilantes in Mindanao, and even a poster-like evocation of North Korean triumphalism at the time of the Seoul Olympics. And what about the whimsical photo of the aged nanny of the former dictator, who related to the artist how she had buried the baby Marcos' placenta under a banana tree according to a custom that guaranteed good fortune, and how the tree grew tall and fruitful?

The exhibit Ugat Lahi was part of the annual campaign of the UK chapter of the Circle of Cancer Survivors & Friends (CCSF), set up in Manila two years ago through the initiative of the late artist-poet Doris Aquino, herself a victim of the killer disease, to create a wider awareness of the growing incidence of cancer-related deaths in the Philippines, and to raise funds to help cancer sufferers and their families, as well as health workers and care givers.

The UK chapter was organized in the Filipino community in 1999 by a group of friends which included Fr. Albert Alejo, SJ who is now back in the Philippines teaching in Mindanao, and Barbara Solon, who is the current CCSF-UK's chairperson.

 

(l-r) Marina Castillo, Mayor Lorraine Melvin, CCSF-UK chairperson
Barbara Solon, exhibit sponsor Liza Stewart, and Evelyn Madrid

The six artists with their works

Nene Martin	Candy Gourlay
Roland Manipol	Giovanni Cuizon
Art Limbo	Arnan De Leon