TOMORROW - EXHIBITION OPENING
The Mystique of the Orient and other Drawings by Nicolas C. Grey
6 – 9pm Thursday, June 5, 2008
MAIN GALLERY, Java Café & Gallery
56e1 Sihanouk Blvd, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

SEE DETAILS BELOW

FUGITIVE DENIM
A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade

By Rachel Louise Snyder

The multi-billion dollar textile industry is perhaps the world's best barometer of globalization's effects – both nefarious and beneficial. After all, everyone has to get dressed in the morning, and that means they need clothes – clothes that are usually made in far-off countries, under the auspices of a rapidly changing cluster of trade agreements and quota treaties.

The remarkably complex chain of events, from the cotton field to the factory floor to the catwalk, is the focus of writer Rachel Louise Snyder's captivating new book, FUGITIVE DENIM [W.W. Norton & Company]. In crisp, witty prose Snyder delivers a fascinating portrait of a global industry facing monumental change as the deadline to scrap a global trade system looms.

The Mystique of the Orient and other drawings
by Nicolas.C.Grey

5 June - 30 June
Java Cafe &Gallery, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Welcome to "The Mystique of the Orient and other drawings" by Nicolas.C.Grey in his premiere exhibition at Java Cafe and Gallery and also his first in Cambodia.  For this exhibition he will showcase 28 works that have been produced during his passage through Asia. These illustrations are exquisitely executed and will hopefully give viewers an alternative view of Asia and its diverse morsels, through the eyes of one Nicolas.C.Grey.
 
Among other things Nicolas has written and published underground comics, painted cinema hoardings, and exhibited with Britart in London. He now lives and works in Phnom Penh.

"For this exhibition, I have, in part, created a series of drawings that in a small way convey my feelings about Asia.
 
Having lived in various Asian Countries for the past few years, I find them to be wonderful places full of mystery and delight. But as the modernization of Asia continues, through mass products, global communications and cheap air travel, I feel a certain standardization of aesthetic.

As a child growing up in London, Asia always had a certain mystique. A strange dark continent filled with unknowable things. I am interested in what the earliest travelers must have felt, coming to a land so different from their own, as if waking up in a strange dream.
 
This is the Asia that I see, an Asia that, perhaps, lives entirely in the darkness of my imagination."
- Nicolas.C.Grey