Datuk Syed Ahmad Jamal made no apologies for revisiting and condensing a memory, singular or spliced into a fugue, into a new reality, composite perhaps, but this interceded reality came off as surreal, with a mischievous humour. Startling apparitions, both spectators and participants, were spread out in a 2-3-2 format. Were they actual acquaintances or composite characters from the artist's early London art-education days half a century ago and revisits in between, who morphed into dubious forms in 2006? Given Syed Ahmad Jamal's habit of light-shaft repertoire, there was the theatricality of the shafts of rainbow lights emanating from the top right. In Weekend Party, his light was bereft of the symbolically divine, but had a rambunctious air of Rock n' Roll, and even the later-day discomania, Night Fever! Night Fever! What brought about the 10 works that combined mock Realism and calligraphic musical rhythms in a bon vivre spectacles? Datuk Syed Ahmad Jamal excelled in various roles as an artist, a sculptor, academician (taught at the Specialist Teachers Training Institute, retiring as its principal), administrator (director of the National Art Gallery Malaysia and the Asian Cultural Centre), curator, writer-critic, decor and costume designer (stage plays Desaria, z:oo-m, Tok Perak, Puteri Gunung Ledang and Keris). He was accorded a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery (1975), and a grand Retrospective called Syed Ahmad Jamal: Pelukis (2009), with a 600-page-plus coffee-table book; and a major Historical Overview by the Nanyang Gallery of Art, Kuala Lumpur (1994-1995). He won the National Artist Award in 1995, and got the 'Datuk' title in 1996. His tutelage was at the Malay Teachers' Training College in Kirkby, Lancashire; Birmingham School of Architecture (not completed); Chelsea School of Art, the Institute of Education (London University); the School of the Art Institute Chicago and the University of Hawaii. He was also honoured with country awards by the governments of India, the United States, France and Australia.