The Elami and Co team headed into the far north of Gianyar to visit the brand new Arta Derau Prints. Co-founders and established artists Sekarputi and Agugn have created the space to be an artist’s residency, exhibition gallery, print-making studio and all round creative compound. Such an unusual and much needed vision for the arts in Ubud. Thank you to the team for having us visit! Can’t wait to see what beautiful things start to happen at Arta Derau Prints over the first year.

About the founders

Sekarputi Sidhiawati is a visual artist who focuses on stories about the empowerment of women to give them and herself the drive to continue working. She mainly works with ceramic, a material that represents domesticity and women in general.

She was born in Jakarta in 1986 and completed her formal education at the Faculty of Art and Design ITB-Ceramic Art studio. She is now known as the founder of the studio Arta Derau, while consistently working in the art world. After working in Bandung, in 2018 she moved to Bali to expand her ceramic studio business. With a focus on women-related issues, Puti is a finalist of several fine art awards such as the Soemardja Art Award (2010) and the Bandung Contemporary Art Award 2013. She has joined several prestigious exhibitions include Jakarta Contemporary Ceramic Biennale, National Gallery of Indonesia (2014); Temperature Affect, Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics Jakarta (2017); Manifesto, National Gallery of Indonesia (2017); Termasuk, Darren Knight Gallery Australia (2018); Southern Constellations: The Poetics of the Non-Aligned, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljublana-Slovenia (2019).

Agugn is a graphic artist who experiments with traditional printing techniques like linocut and woodcut. Since his debut exhibit in 2013, his works have been showcased globally, including NY, Paris, and Tokyo.

Ceramicist, mother, teacher – Sekarputri Sidhiawati wears many hats and owns each of them with admirable bravado. We were lucky enough to join forces with her for our fourth instalment of The Dinner Series – The Artists Dinner – hosted by Sekarputri and her husband Agung Prabowo at their Tegallalang home studio, Arta Derau.

Sekarputri’s charming ceramic pieces have long struck a chord with all of us at Elami & Co. Her exploration of soft organic shapes, feminine colours and strikingly relatable statements on life and society, worked in perfect synchronicity with the evening’s theme of fertility, femininity and Mother Earth. She created 139 individual pieces – little bird-shaped cups, oval platters and goblets, among them – from which Thy Neighbour presented their modern Thai eats and cocktails.

No two pieces from The Artists Dinner collection are the same. Each plate, cup and bowl is marked with its own motifs and is laden with character. She extracted clay from her own backyard (the rice-field our guests dined upon) to create every bespoke piece for the evening. And the best news? Her entire collection is available for sale.

We decided to hit the quirk button for this edition for an art-fuelled evening under the stars. We took over the rice fields behind Arta Derau ceramic studio.

Poorich Suvarnapadip from Thy Neighbour was behind the pans, turning out eight courses of his bright, progressive Thai fare using ingredients harvested from the surrounding paddies- we’re talking snails and rice field crabs, here.

Artist and Elppin designer Carina Hardy also came on board, exhibiting her world-first Back to the Breast eco-inflatable installation, previously featured at Thailand’s Wonderfuit Festival.