Tony Albert & Timoteus Anggawan Kusno at Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore

Tony Albert & Timoteus Anggawan Kusno
Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore
5 Lock Road, #01-06
Gillman Barracks
25 February – 26 March 2017

On the morning of Sunday 23 January 2011, a farmer in Yogyakarta discovers a crop circle in his rice paddies. Local Air Force launches an aerial investigation, photographing the 70m diameter geometric pattern from a helicopter. The resulting press release concludes the crop circle was imprinted by a UFO from the height of 1000 feet and from a number of different angles.

In Tony Albert & Timoteus Anggawan Kusno, Tony Albert presents a new series of work titled Crop Circles of Yogya, developed during his residency at the Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta (supported by Asialink). Albert appropriates farmer’s conical hats into wearable UFOs, takes portraits of Yogyakarta locals wearing the objects, and then highly embellishes the subsequent photographic prints with stickers of widely recognisable pop culture symbolism. Notions of otherness – the ‘Alien’ – are subverted through the saturation of Western iconography adorning these images. Exploring how developing countries engage with the Western world, and vice versa, Albert interrogates imagined and constructed understandings of otherness. Situating himself as a visitor, Albert engages local tradition, personal narrative, and collectively relatable symbolism, to ask – who is the Alien here?