Guo-Liang Tan, Block 37, Studio #01-03
How does one speak of abstraction and what can the abstract say? As part of his residency, Guo-Liang Tan (Singapore) has initiated a number of conversations with other artists, writers and curators around the operation of abstraction as an artistic strategy today. This panel will gather part of this ongoing investigation to situate abstraction beyond its usual formal discourse and reconsider its relevance to the fields of semiotics, socio-politics and phenomenology. Tan is a visual artist working primarily in painting and text. In his work, the painterly and the textual act as surfaces for performing affect that can conjure a haunting or a promise.
Moderated by Guo-Liang Tan, speakers include Dr Kevin Chua, art historian; Joleen Loh, Assistant Curator, National Gallery Singapore; and Ian Woo, artist.
Saleh Husein, Block 37, Studio #01-04
Saleh Husein’s (Indonesia) current research looks at Arabic descendants in Indonesia. This research crosses borders between art, politics, economy, and also science and centres around how they see themselves in the contemporary. Through themes of identity, transition and journeys, he is exploring the story of the Arabic society in Singapore, seeking artefacts and archives that look at the relationship and histories between the two groups from the perspective of its citizens. Husein will present new work developed whilst in residence at NTU CCA Singapore that considers the temporality and asynchrony of migration.
Zac Langdon-Pole, Block 38, Studio #01-05
Zac Langdon-Pole’s (New Zealand) work straddles cross-cultural experience and with it he seeks to investigate procedures of cultural exchange. The implications of such investigations are to reveal often overlooked, lyrical relationships between broader socio-cultural processes, objects, images and individual people. Langdon-Pole will present the film, Pieces of 8 (2015), which depicts a yellow canary bird in a cage. The film references the historical usage of canaries in mining, where they would accompany miners in a small cage, their death serving as a warning signal if conditions became unsafe to consider broader notions of danger or anxiety.
Dennis Tan, Block 38, Studio #01-07
Dennis Tan (Singapore) will present the work-in-progress construction of a traditional Indonesian Kolek sailboat. Through construction of the boat, Tan will investigate ideas of self-organisation and the transmission of skills and knowledge through generations of oral history in the Riau Archipelago and how this enables the continuity of cultural communities. Tan’s practice suspends conceptualism, tinkers with found objects and the environment as a gestural structure upon which the loop closes with the behaviour of its recipients. To date, this inclination sets the tone of his evolving practice.
Guo-Liang Tan, Block 37, Studio #01-03
How does one speak of abstraction and what can the abstract say? As part of his residency, Guo-Liang Tan (Singapore) has initiated a number of conversations with other artists, writers and curators around the operation of abstraction as an artistic strategy today. This panel will gather part of this ongoing investigation to situate abstraction beyond its usual formal discourse and reconsider its relevance to the fields of semiotics, socio-politics and phenomenology. Tan is a visual artist working primarily in painting and text. In his work, the painterly and the textual act as surfaces for performing affect that can conjure a haunting or a promise.
Moderated by Guo-Liang Tan, speakers include Dr Kevin Chua, art historian; Joleen Loh, Assistant Curator, National Gallery Singapore; and Ian Woo, artist.
Saleh Husein, Block 37, Studio #01-04
Saleh Husein’s (Indonesia) current research looks at Arabic descendants in Indonesia. This research crosses borders between art, politics, economy, and also science and centres around how they see themselves in the contemporary. Through themes of identity, transition and journeys, he is exploring the story of the Arabic society in Singapore, seeking artefacts and archives that look at the relationship and histories between the two groups from the perspective of its citizens. Husein will present new work developed whilst in residence at NTU CCA Singapore that considers the temporality and asynchrony of migration.
Zac Langdon-Pole, Block 38, Studio #01-05
Zac Langdon-Pole’s (New Zealand) work straddles cross-cultural experience and with it he seeks to investigate procedures of cultural exchange. The implications of such investigations are to reveal often overlooked, lyrical relationships between broader socio-cultural processes, objects, images and individual people. Langdon-Pole will present the film, Pieces of 8 (2015), which depicts a yellow canary bird in a cage. The film references the historical usage of canaries in mining, where they would accompany miners in a small cage, their death serving as a warning signal if conditions became unsafe to consider broader notions of danger or anxiety.
Dennis Tan, Block 38, Studio #01-07
Dennis Tan (Singapore) will present the work-in-progress construction of a traditional Indonesian Kolek sailboat. Through construction of the boat, Tan will investigate ideas of self-organisation and the transmission of skills and knowledge through generations of oral history in the Riau Archipelago and how this enables the continuity of cultural communities. Tan’s practice suspends conceptualism, tinkers with found objects and the environment as a gestural structure upon which the loop closes with the behaviour of its recipients. To date, this inclination sets the tone of his evolving practice.
Ian Woo is an artist and musician influenced by forms of modernism, perceptual abstraction and the sound structures of music improvisation. His paintings and drawings are characterised by a sense of gravitational and representational change.
As an educator, Ian leads the MA Fine Arts programme which focuses on developing artistic practice as research. He developed the curriculum for studio practice research through validations by Open University and Goldsmiths University. He has supervised artists who have had representations in the Venice and Singapore Biennale, as such, he has been instrumental in shaping the artistic profile and history of Singapore art since the turn of the millennium. Ian has exhibited globally and his works are in the collection of major institutions such as ABN AMRO, Singapore Art Museum, The Istana Singapore, National Gallery Singapore, UBS, and the Mint Museum of Craft & Design, USA.
His paintings were featured in the publication Art of the New Cities: 21st Century Avant-Gardes, a publication by Phaidon Press, 2013. Since 2016, together with Beth Harland, David Thomas and Laura Lisbon, Ian has been part of the experimental painting collaborative project Impermanent Durations – On Painting and Time. As a musician, Ian has composed and performed on the bass guitar with ID and Qianpima. He has performed at Singapore’s C.H.O.P.P.A Experimental Music Festival from 2008–2017.
An Abstract, Speaking: A panel discussion by Artist-in-Residence Guo-Liang Tan