How 9,000 sqm and 20 years of art began in Bacolod
Here’s how the origin story goes: in 2004, entrepreneur Bong Lopue III and visual artist Charlie Co shook hands at a gas station along Bacolod City’s Lacson Avenue. The latter was gassing up when Lopue, in the midst of a morning jog, knocked on Co’s car window to strike a partnership that would produce one of the most enduring art spaces in Visayas and in the country.
One name change and two relocations later, the space has evolved into what we now know as Orange Project. Today, the gallery leads a complex of establishments up north in Bacolod to form the city’s 9,000-sqm art district and carries two decades of exhibitions, programs and domestic and international collaborations under its belt. As it marks its 20th anniversary this month, we trace how the space began to define the artistic life not only within the region, but also beyond.
An odd but perfect match
The businessman-artist pairing might seem odd at first. But as co-founders of the space, Co and Lopue are each other’s perfect match. Aside from running a retail business, Lopue was also into art and architecture—interests that found their juncture in his desire to develop a space for local art in Bacolod. He wanted a venue, in his own words, in which the city could take pride and show off to its guests. Aware that he couldn’t run this himself, he tapped the artist to direct a gallery which, at the time of their chance meeting in 2004, was still under construction.
One of the first art installations to greet art district visitors from Lacson Ave. is Megumi Miura, Brandon Braza, Zabiel Nemenzo, Zander Lopez and Zanna Jamili’s “Corazon del Arte.”
Lopue shares that two things made Co, who was roughly 20 years his senior and whom he knew only as his classmate’s uncle, the ideal partner for this project. First, Co was an artist. By extension, he already had a network of creatives to help jumpstart the project. They got the ball rolling two weeks since their handshake, without any formal written agreement.
From the start, the two have shared the vision to dedicate the space to young and contemporary artists in the city. Co recalls warning Lopue of the financial precarity of this direction. But the third-generation scion of Bacolod’s longest-running department store and supermarket chain simply did not see art as a profit-making venture. As he maintains, “I did not establish Orange to be my (commercial) business. My goal was to show local art.”
So in 2005, they officially opened Gallery Orange on the second floor of a building (which was orange in color, hence the name) facing Lacson Avenue. Co describes their activities in their early years as experimental with a hint of recklessness. They would do things that aren’t market-driven, they would create their own rules.
Eventually, the space grew in size and programming. It would move twice within the art district—first in 2014, then most recently in 2018 to its current two-level building. Tucked inside the complex and away from the main road, the location signals the co-founders’ growing confidence in the gallery’s presence. In the latter year, they also renamed the space to Orange Project as a nod to their expanding programming.
To this day, Lopue lends Orange Project its spaces for free while a portion of the gallery’s operating expenses come from Co’s personal support. As the latter shared, “What you give comes back a hundred times, a hundredfold.” Their continuing support, along with the gallery team’s consistent efforts to link with institutions here and abroad, engenders more freedom for the artists and the broader art community.
There is also less commercial pressure to a certain extent. While Orange Project remains a selling space, it also extends its initiatives to residencies, public programs, installations and other projects that are not profit-making in intent. At present, the gallery mounts dozens of exhibitions each year, regularly joins art fairs in various parts of the country, and maintains partnerships with artist-run spaces, residency programs and academic institutions within and outside the Philippines. Co highlights the importance of these exchanges: “Whatever facilities we’re creating in the art district—these are all geared towards bigger collaboration.” In this way, local artists, when they learn from outside, can “come back a better artist, which is a gain for everyone,” he adds.
9,000 sqm for the arts
As Orange Project forged two decades of growth, so did the surrounding art district go through a series of pivotal changes. Taking the histories of these two spaces together, we can best understand Co and Lopue’s shared vision. What we know as Bacolod’s “art district” is half a block of mixed establishments, such as restaurants, bars, a barbershop, and a tattoo studio, located behind Lopue’s Mandalagan shopping mall.
The lot was acquired by Lopue gradually and would see changes in tenancy through the years. From 2007 to 2015, it was populated mainly by bars and other food and beverage businesses. But at present, art spaces dominate the district. Among these is the creative specialty store Werever Projects, alternative learning center The Open Space, alternative exhibition venue Block 17, local film screening venue Safehouse Theater, and forthcoming artist studios. Almost every corner of the complex also brims with public art, mostly murals and installations, commissioned by the co-founders from artists based in the city. Management of the business establishments remains with Lopue, while Orange Project oversees the art spaces that by extension are allowed to use their locations rent-free.
The philanthropic origin of both the gallery and the art district mirrors the broader prevalence of similar initiatives in the Philippine art scene. But their origin from the private sector is what distinguishes Orange Project from art districts elsewhere in the world, such as in Mumbai, Koganecho and Beijing, whose emergence was largely led by the state or are top-down in direction.
Considering these factors makes it even more interesting how Orange Project and the art district maintain their growing commitment to art— evident in the increasing priority they give to spaces not only for its consumption (exhibition venues and merchandise stores), but also for its production (studios, public art commissions). Twenty years in, it is safe to say that they continue to retain their core and resist economic pressures, such as gentrification, that usually mar similar spaces.
And while a large part of their success was sparked by Lopue and Co, the vision is also sustained by the diligent team of artists, gallery workers, tenants and publics who support the spaces in their own ways. Through their efforts, Orange Project and Bacolod’s art district are poised for 20 more years of genuine support for the arts.
