‘Carcass-Cornucopia’

1987 by AGNES ARELLANO 

known for her surrealist and expressionist work in plaster,

bronze and cold-cast marble. Her sculptures highlight the
female body and draw from themes surrounding sexuality,
religion, and mysticism. Borrowing from the term of poet
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Agnes attributes her work to
‘inscapes’, that assert an internal unity among various
elements in her installations and sculptures.

The work gives me the themes of creation and

destruction, and the cycles of life from birth to
death. Reminding me how can birth be beautiful
and tragic at the same time, It’s giving me
meaning of how important a human life can be.
‘The Fishermen’, 1981 by Ang Kiukok

Leading the pack is “Fishermen” by Ang Kiukok, which

he painted in 1981. At 40 x 80 inches, it is the biggest
easel painting of the master to enter the market to
date. Composed of three figures pulling the diagonal
lines of a net straining with the harvest of fish as the
red disc of a sun hovers above them, it spells out the
surname of the master.

It connects me to the energy, faith, sweat,

hardships and struggle of the fishermen yet
giving me peaceful and relaxing image of
the vibrant crimson sun labouring together
with the fishermen.
‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, 1665 by
Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer’s 1665 study of a young woman is

startlingly real and startlingly modern, almost as if it
were a photograph. This gets into the debate over
whether or not Vermeer employed a pre-photographic
device called a camera obscura to create the image.

Her looking over her shoulder, locking her

eyes with the viewer as if she’s telling me
different intimate emotions. A very innocent
yet powerful gaze as if it’s really the
windows of a soul.
 Arrangement in Grey and
Black No. 1, 1871 by James Abbott McNeill
Whistler
painted the work in his London studio in 1871, and in it, the
formality of portraiture becomes an essay in form. Whistler’s
mother Anna is pictured as one of several elements locked
into an arrangement of right angles.
Her severe expression fits in with the rigid and
stiff form of the artwork, the color combinations
and harsh texture gives me an underlayer of
sorrow and deep distress, yet somewhat still
being a symbol of motherhood for me.