Sticky Fingers Art Prints Cambodia is a spin-off from art, design and imagery behind The Cambodian Space Project - Cambodia's most successful music export. In just a short space of time Sticky Fingers is taking a life of it's own and now provides training and work for a super cool team of young Cambodian print makers. Big thanks! to 1961 Art Hotel and The Vintage Shop for their part in making it h
appen. Sticky Fingers Art Prints Cambodia
#40 Street 118 Space Four Zero PHNOM PENH
www.stickyfingersprints.com
update: Crewkoos saw our art prints on Facebook and thought we were worthy of an interview! So here it is, Sticky Fingers Art Prints Cambodia feeling very happy to be included on this blog that features some of the most happening artists, illustrators and designers from around the world. Sticky Fingers Prints are now available at #40 Street 118 one block from the riverside or call 069 571 100 or email us at [email protected] Click for more photos
Sticky Fingers printing collective of Phnom Penh
Haunting Voices, by Sticky Fingers printing collective. Left to right: Pan Ron, Ros Sereysothea and Sinn Sisamouth. ? P1170791.JPG
Pan Ron was the most risque of Cambodian singers of the 1960s to mid-70s. She sang saucy, sexy lyrics that would be banned in today's conservative Cambodia. She hopped genres from traditional Khmer music to covers or localised takes on western rock, twist, cha cha, mambo, jazz and folk. But creative types threatened the murderous Pol Pot's ambitions, so Pan Ron's individuality ensured her death. She reportedly survived until the 1978 Vietnamese invasion, reportedly disappearing on the long march out of Phnom Penh, and probably murdered by the Khmer Rouge. Any individual thought, particularly from artists, became a target. "Ultimately, it was a collective madness," says Hobart-born, Phnom Penh-based rock guitarist Julien Poulson. He believes a village stupa full of skulls and bones he was shown included Pan Ron's remains. "It was a murderous situation where humanity itself gets so debased and removed from its purpose that it's just insane. Nobody can really explain why such genocide happened. But the Khmer Rouge had this idea of returning to an agrarian utopia, and any individual thought, particularly from artists, became a target." The Enigma by Sticky Fingers printing collective, featuring Cambodian singer the late Pan Ron. Poulson, 47, went to Cambodia in 2007 to record traditional music to accompany video: gong, xylophone, percussion and string instruments such as the khim and tro. He became enthralled by a rich body of music that, before 1975, had been influenced by Motown, the British music invasion and psychedelia. Advertisement
There was Ros Sereysothea, the queen of Cambodian rock 'n' roll. She opposed the Khmer Rouge but was forced by Pol Pot to marry one of his assistants and entertain exclusively for the regime. Her remains have never been found. Or the "Cambodian Elvis", singer-songwriter and record producer Sinn Sisamouth. He was killed in 1976, with one account, possibly apocryphal, of him being marched to the execution scene, requesting to sing a song, and, once he had finished, the Khmer Rouge shooting him anyway. "It's still music you'll hear everywhere here,'' Poulson says, ''every tuk-tuk driver with a radio playing it, every soup stall, every market seller.''
Many of the original physical records were deliberately destroyed or were lost, but through the Bophana Audiovisual Centre, founded in Phnom Penh in 2006, Poulson has tracked down eight-track cassette tapes and rare, mostly scratched original 45 rpm singles from in and outside the country. In 2009, Poulson established the Cambodian Space Project. The "carousel" of a band has had up to 22 singers, dancer and musicians, mostly from Cambodia, helping revive some of the music from the era, including that of the murdered artists. The band has toured internationally and recorded in Detroit with Motown producer legends Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore. Poulson found his lead singer, Srey Thy, whose "powerful" and "alluring" voice in Khmer sounds "very Indian and kind of yodelling", at a beer garden, surrounded by high bamboo walls and turrets containing spotlights. She owned a little handwritten book of songs. He watched Thy order a dozen women dancing to a karaoke band off the stage, then step up and sing the "beautiful and haunting" Somleng Guitar. She was unaware it wasn't an original song, being a Khmer version of Peggy Lee's 1954 hit Johnny Guitar. At the time, Thy spoke no English. In 2011, to promote the band, Poulson hired a young print maker, Visal Heng, a former street kid, to make six pop-inspired Cambodian Space Project screen prints. They proved so popular Poulson established the Sticky Fingers project in Phnom Penh, at which young Cambodian print makers have now produced 30 works, including images of that lost 60s and 70s era and musicians such as Ron, Sereysothea and Sisamouth. Poulson hopes Sticky Fingers, whose works will be exhibited in Sydney, will become self-sufficient to employ more young artists and print makers. Poulson, Thy and other Cambodian Space Project musicians will perform at the exhibition. He also hopes to bring Cambodia's psychedelic and free era to a wider audience. "We're not searching for just one lost rock 'n' roll star," he says. "We're seeking a whole lost rock 'n' roll world." Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/golden-era-of-cambodian-music-given-its-second-airing-20130912-2tnbf.html
