HOM Art Trans – formerly known as House of MATAHATI – are the brains behind Young Guns. As far as art awards go, they stand in good stead, as HOM Art Trans are partly responsible for another accolade, the Malaysia Emerging Artist Award (MEAA). They formed the latter with Galeri Chandan a couple of years back, but 'Young Guns is all theirs and they’ve got their very first batch of awardees showing their works at MAP in Publika this month. What’s different between the two is this: Young Guns is judged on a post-mortem basis – on an artist’s performance over a specified period of time. Meanwhile, MEAA is given based on a jury’s vote on the artworks that were sent in specifically for the competition.
Twelve lucky artists were deemed worthy enough to be called the first Young Guns: Samsuddin Wahab, Haslin Ismail, Seah Ze Lin, Najib Bamadhaj, Anisa Abdullah, Chong Ai Lei, Fadilah Karim, Akhmal Asyraf Mohd, Donald Abraham, Azam Aris, Ruzzeki Harris, Al-Khuzairie Ali and chi too. These lucky 12 have all created artworks especially for the inaugural Young Guns outing under the theme ‘Nyala’, which means ‘flame’ in Malay – a nod at the artists’ ‘flaming aspiration to persevere in their career’ and a ‘manifestation of the artists’ continuous efforts to shine in the art world’.
For more on Young Guns, see feature.