Works from various collections
Ismiadi was born in 1969 on the Indonesian Island of Lombok. His family is of aristocratic origin, stemming from times when Lombok still was a kingdom…
His childhood was simple and he had to help his mother every morning delivering home made cakes by foot from school to school, office to office before heading to school himself.
Ismiadi studied at STSI (Higher School of Arts Indonesia) in Bali and finished with a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts in 1999.
Before his studies he visited the Vocational Arts School in Denpasar, Bali which brought him up to university entrance.
After his studies he moved to Riau, near Singapore, where he worked for a Swiss painting collector. This kind of work didn’t satisfy him because he had to create purely beautiful images which were easily sellable. He returned to his home island Lombok after 12 months and started working for the Mataram Cultural Park, a local exhibition area in Lombok. He now is the arts program coordinator at a local Chinese Private School and also conducts two Arts awareness Clubs, one for children and one for adults.
Apart from that he teaches Arts combined with mental development for children suffering dyslexia and various other learning difficulties. Ismiadi is the only artist in Indonesia having this ability which has shown a great success rate so far.
His first international solo exhibition was conducted in April 2009 at the Kidogo Art House in Fremantle, West Australia with the theme “Dialogues of Life”. This was a smashing success and shortly this exhibition was followed by two further solo exhibitions, also in West Australia, “The Spirit of Water” in May/June 2009 and “Spinning Yarns” at the Kulcha Multicultural Arts Center in Fremantle, West Australia.
Ismiadi’s name was recognized amongst the West Australian art scene and very soon he became a member of Artsource, WA. In May 2009 he absolved an artist in residence program with Tafe, Northbridge, WA and in September 2009 a second residency followed with the Ellenbrook Cultural Foundation, WA.
In December 2009 he founded the CCTA Artist in Residence Program for international artists on his home island Lombok in Indonesia together with his partner Lucretia Prang, an Australian anthropologist. Together they created the Sasaki Art Space, the location of the CCTA residencies.
In his early childhood Ismiadi was strongly influenced by stones, especially by their shapes. He had no toys, stones became his toys. Later this influence reflected in some of his art work. He started painting on stones. In the river beds he was confronted with limestone. His artistic imagination started to be influenced by the shapes of stones.
Ismiadi describes his artistic expression as a communication with himself from inside but he also takes elements from dialogues which at some time have a very critical expression. This is influenced by his experiences during his vocational school and university time in Bali which he had to finance himself and confronted him with the uglier sides of Indonesian society. Experiences during his time and in Riau added to his critical outlook. There he was confronted with issues such as prostitution, drugs, people smuggling and gambling, issues he had not been confronted with in Lombok, which is mainly a rural society.
He also implements elements of traditional life influencing and limiting people/children’s development and freedom in common. Following that, most of his art work is now social-critically focused.