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By Sandra Cate. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2003. xiv, 218 pp. (Coloured photos, figures.) US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 0-8248-2357-5.
In this elegantly produced book, Southeast Asian Studies, Anthropology and Art History are enriched with a thorough and meticulous study of art, artists, patrons and social contexts not previously documented or analyzed to this depth. The multi-faceted discussions in Making Merit, Making Art are constructed around the 28 mural scenes from the Buddhist canon painted in England between 1984 and 1992 by a group of young Thai artists under the direction of Chalermchai Kositpipat and Panya Vijinthanasarn. The mural site, Wat Buddhapadipa ('The Light of Buddhism' Monastery), located in Wimbledon, near London, is the first Thai-style temple outside Thailand. Its building and decoration was endorsed by the Thai king, Bhumibol Adulyadej (himself a painter), and was funded by elite Thais representing a broad range of worldly and spiritual endeavours. These temple murals have since engaged Thai art historians, artists, collectors, lay and ordained members of the Buddhist sangha and the general public, both in England and at home.
In seven chapters that bring us back and forth between England and Thailand, and 'face to face' with a broad cross-section of people involved with the murals, Sandra Cate documents how multiple discourses, operated in the creation and interpretation...