Indonesia Research

For the first of our editorial briefs, I have chosen a magazine article from GQ about Kopi Luwak coffee. The idea is that civet cats from Indonesia feed on coffee berries, which pass through their digestive system and out of their anus. This is then washed and dried to make coffee at a whopping £50 per cup (can be sourced at Selfridges if you really are desperate to try this delicacy!) For this article I have started to brain storm ideas and look at research to inspire me and give me more insight into Indonesia.

With Indonesia being in the Far East, it seems to be pretty heavily influenced by oriental design. The colours are fantastic and am looking forward to incorporating them in my work. Indonesian shadow puppets appear to have significant value in their culture and are very intricately crafted. Paper cutting is not something that I have dabbled with before and so could be one direction for my next project to venture into.

Colours tend to be orange, terra-cotta, red and yellow, as can be seen in the images above. I like the use of black and the shadows are very precise, obviously the lighting in Indonesia will be much brighter and warmer than here in the UK!

I didn't have the idea of creating a civet cat puppet initially, although I won't disregard the idea completely at this early stage. It may be worthwhile gathering ALL of my ideas together and presenting them to see which has most mileage to carry forward. This is a lesson that I learned quickly in the last project as I found I tend to chop and change from one idea to the next and losing time and effort along the way. This time I am putting structures in place so that this does not happen. I am listing ALL of my ideas to begin with and then choosing one and sticking to it.

I had one idea of showing a cat metaphorically having flowers and butterflies and elements of luxury and prettiness coming from its rear end. I really like this idea and there is plenty of scope to play around with different elements and do so fittingly in an Indonesian style. Whilst researching butterflies on a simple Google search, I stumbled upon Cissy Cook. Her work does vary from mine. It is very pretty and has elements of beauty whereas I tend to have characters appearing all over the place. However, she does deal with white space in a similar way...

The idea of mixing collage with hand crafted things such as these delightful butterflies appeals to me. She deals with bright colours well which I will need to do for this project to convey that Indonesian origin. I also like the white frame, I think it looks expensive highlighting the hard work and effort that has gone into creating the work and worthy of a gallery space.