SCYA Publication
Art(cademic) Review of a
Social Phenomena …
The Singapore Art Show 2009
SCYA’s arts/culture
correspondent, Patricia Ho
reports at the opening; much-
a-do about something, she
says …
The recent twin/co-joined openings of
the exhibitions Curating Lab: 100
Objects (Remixed) and Air-Conditioned
Recession hosted at converted
warehouse spaces of Tanjong Pajar
Distripark opened with a novel bang;
kicking off this year’s Singapore Art
show with much aplomb …
Brought to you (the discerning audience)
by the curatorial vision of Heman
Chong, Ahmad Mashadi and Lim Oinyi,
100 Objects (Remixed) features an
amalgam of eclectic works/productions
of an inter-disciplinary nature. This is in
tandem with the curatorial intention of
not demarcating any visible boundaries
that would categorize the mythic or
exhibitionary nature of the art-work (or
the artist), the focus instead (as Heman
insists) is on collecting …
There is certainly a desire to do away
with the fixedness of things, of the
documentation of a certain social flux in
Alicia Pan’s Void-deck series of 8
1/2
whereby the artist takes on an
anthological stance by capturing/photo-
logging the going-ons within the
individual flats/spaces of a HDB estate;
not of the mundane (as were the
concerns of modernity’s ‘realism’) but of
a certain ‘anarchitecture’; of exposing
the negative architectural space of ever-
present fixtures.
The same documentational (sans
ethnographic/scientific) approach lends
itself to Lee Siow Wei’s Petri dish of 16
which features minisucule drawings
‘captured’ within glass encasings by
which magnifying instruments are
needed to indeed clarify them as
drawings, not insects! Very apt indeed
Siow Wei!
On a deeper note (my discerning
audience), Alan Oei’s Open Fields
featuring a video series of 3 is
commentary on the impact that
politics/policies governing (public)
spaces have on the integral human
environment/consciousness — where
impromptu proletariat-driven activities
(like soccer/cricket at ‘the field outside
Kembangan MRT’) (cannot be left to
blossom into an underground AC
Milan!) but often have to make way for
bourgeois agendas promoting economic
virtuosity; with such bureaucratic red-tap
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denying the release of pent-up social

tension; what-a-to-do .. ? Depressing but
true …

From here we move on to another

curatorially resonant work titled Let’s
Chat by local veteran artist Amanda
Heng where plucking tow gays becomes Fig. 1. Tow Gay chat.
a situational production or re-production
(reproduced over the years in various
contexts) yet never losing its succinct
relevance because the re-collecting so to
speak is not of tow gays but our
individual/collective social bond. I had
the most interaction with this work (with
Amanda serving me her specialty tea!).
Woot!
Fig. 2**. More works.
Overall, the impact of this co-joined
exhibition is deep and (surely) lasting for
the observer willing to be (or at least
act!) engaged because of its multifarious
and inter-disciplinary nature that
facilitates/exposes layers of
understanding and avenues that one
might not obtain on a smaller scale
venture; bolstered of course, by an open-
ended curatorial direction encouraging
this dialogic effect or as Heman best
puts it, “ .. dialogues upon dialogues.
Fig. 3. “Dude! Where’s my dinner?!”
Interactions upon interactions”.
*Photographs courtesy of Rachel Chan.
Wonderful. **Photograph from source,
http://blogs.todayonline.com/forartssake/tag/singapore-art-
show/