Rahime Harun 1954-2008
Champion of the arts
By OOI KOK CHUEN
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Around 1993, I asked Rahime Harun in jest when he was getting his gleaming new Mercs. He laughed off the suggestion, preferring to plough his money back into Malaysian art, which he boasted was one of the finest.
At the time, he had just acquired a three-storey building for his art gallery and promotion business in Taman Melawati, Kuala Lumpur, and already owned the AP Gallery outlet at Central Market in KL.
Rahime, art entrepreneur extraordinaire, art administrator, printmaker-artist, and writer, died suddenly of a heart attack while in Melbourne on March 11, leaving behind wife Zarina Ariffin and daughter Nazura Zahian.
At the height of the 1985 recession which blighted several art galleries in KL, Rahime was smart enough to switch to more saleable smaller works and prints, his core money-spinner.
At that time, sculptors Raja Shahriman Raja Azzidin and Mad Annuar Ismail, printmaker Juhari Muhammad Said, and a loose group of newly graduated artists from the then Mara Institute of Technology (ITM) who called themselves Matahati had burst onto the scene, startling even stalwarts like Datuk Syed Ahmad Jamal (then National Art Gallery director), who was more used to the halus (fine) Malay sensibilities.
Matahati’s Bayu Utomo Radjikin, Ahmad Shukri Mohd, Ahmad Fuad Osman, Masnoor Ramli Mahmud and Hamir Soib (and original member and photographer Soraya Talismail) are now big names, and it’s no coincidence that the Matahati group is currently having unprecedented simultaneous exhibitions at four venues, including the main one at Galeri Petronas.
Rahime was one of the main patrons of this group, and continued picking up choice works to ensure an unbroken story of their career paths.
Also, through prints of these works, and those of many other college-trained artists. he advocated a greater appreciation of Malaysian art and its display in public and private spaces of various buildings.
In an interview with him in 1995, he confided his formula for collecting art: U (Unique) + A2 (Aesthetics and Assimilation) = Value.
It is his largesse of significant cultural assets, for that is what his art collection is, that should find a proper home, especially as they are still on loan to Malacca museums.
Some of these works were displayed in the eye-opening two-parter, In Pursuit of A Dream at Galeri Petronas, then at Dayabumi, in 1995.
Penang-born Rahime (he had a twin brother who died a few years ago) started as an acting curator at the National Art Gallery before he quit in 1983 after nearly eight years to set up his business called AP (simply Art Promoters) with his first outlet at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton, then at Jalan Sultan Ismail.
A graduate in Industrial Design from ITM (1972-76), he had also worked as designer at Kraftangan Malaysia and a display executive at Metrojaya.
He was also an important figure in the Anak Alam interdisciplinary arts commune dominated by Mustapha Ibrahim and Abdul Latiff Mohidin, with live-in artists like K. Thangarajoo.
His passion is matched by a determination to improve himself in related fields to serve art better. In 1984, he got a scholarship to do a Diploma in Entrepreneurship Development (Art Business) in Turin, Italy, and in 1995, he was back at UiTM (as ITM is now called) for his Master of Art and Design Education in tandem with Britain’s Montfort University.
He also became more involved as an artist in his own right, mainly as a printmaker, and has taken part in at least two dozen group exhibitions.
As director of the Shah Alam Art Gallery from 1997 to 2001, he organised several important thematic exhibitions but despite all his accomplilshments, he had a persistent and underlying desire to return to the National Art Gallery, especially now that he was greatly fortified with greater expertise and experience.
Return he did, as the gallery’s director in 2005, but health reasons forced him to quit even before the year was out and before he could implement his five-year plan.
Many may still see Rahime as a highly competent art business entrepreneur and administrator. But it is the work he did which had no labels, such as organising arts orientation tours for ministry top brass, pushing his ideas in policy groups and other forums like the Arts Council, that characterises him best.
He was always trying to reinvent the work and thinking module, working well behind the scenes, never mind that others were not on the same wavelength or had the same dream.
Rahime Harun’s death is the loss of a passionate champion of Malaysian culture.
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