Tromarama

Edouard Malingue Gallery announces the very first solo exhibition in the UK of Tromarama curated by Ying Tan in collaboration with Open Eye Gallery.

Part of the Liverpool Biennale fringe programme, Tromarama will transform the interior of an ordinary private residence into an enigmatic, reflective space. Together, through moving image, sound and juxtapositions of domesticity, they provide an exploration of how the digital world redefines our existential existence. Tromarama is a collective formed in 2006 by Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans Maruli and Ruddy Hatumena. Graduating from the Institute of Technology in Bandung, the three are among the first generation of artists who were confronted with the impact of the digital revolution in Indonesia during the early 2000s. This exhibition presents a selection of recent animations and lenticular prints, as well as a new work, which was created especially for the occasion.

The exhibition features animations that combine HD photographs of animated objects, such as shoes, suitcases, desk lights and wires, with images of the urban Indonesian landscape. Although each work exists in a seemingly foreign public sphere elsewhere in the world, it interacts with a private one that we, the audience, all possess ourselves. They activate otherwise impossible narratives within a domestic space, behind a closet, through a bedroom window, inside a kitchen cupboard. A new work highlights the playfulness of tea making, an otherwise mundane and joyful ritual undertaken countless times in everyone’s daily lives in the UK. 

Play, in the sense of “fresh, intriguing and humorous” pulsates through the body of Tromarama’s practice, which combines video animation with music and installation. Each work, rather than existing in viewership isolation, is woven into the larger social fabric of the things we do both inside and outside our homes. 

At the heart of Tromarama’s practice is the creation of an inclusive narrative through the use of form and colour, objects and figures, sounds and rhythms. Each work literally animates the ordinary and weaves its existence into a tale of tribulations fuelled by consequence. As such, their work infuses the ordinary with novel means of contemplation in the context of urban life, developments and political reverberations.

Tromarama have been exhibited widely and have held solo exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum (Japan), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne). Group exhibitions include the Samstag Museum of Art (Adelaide, Australia), APT 7 QAGOMA (Brisbane), Singapore Art Museum (Singapore), MOCA (Taipei), MOCA (Shanghai), Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt) and upcoming exhibitions include the 2016 Gwangju Biennale.