1
10
3
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Contributors
Contributor
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First Name
Yong En
Surname or Business Name
Nah
Years Affiliated
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2013
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1986
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Singapore
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Nah Yong En is interested in exploring how the intrinsic properties of artworks work through our sensorial perceptions and our minds. His works are based on the thought that seeing more of the world doesn’t mean seeing more, nor being able to see more. His current photographic project, Buildings and Trees, takes a look at the places we live in and attempts to bring to attention objects and structures that are a natural part of our living environment but which we never notice. Nah received his MA in Fine Arts and BA (Hons) in Painting from LASALLE College of the Art Singapore in 2012 and 2010 respectively. In 2011, he won the Platinum Award in the 30th UOB Painting of the Year competition and was given the opportunity to participate in an artist residency programme at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan.
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Singapore
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Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
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Nah Yong En
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Nah Yong En
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Southeast Asia
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Text
Centre for Contemporary Art
��Engaging Perspectives:
New Art From Singapore
Centre for Contemporary Art
1
�Published on the occasion of the exhibition
Engaging Perspectives: New Art from Singapore
At Gillman Barracks Blks 1, 37, 38, and 39
26 January – 31 March 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Curated by Eugene Tan
Engaging Prespestives:
New Art from Singapore
Eugene Tan
Centre for Contemporary Art
Nanyang Technological University
81 Nanyang Drive
Singapore 637458
Email: contactcca@ntu.edu.sg
First published August 2013
ISBN: 978-981-07-6930-7
Editors: Eugene Tan and Khim Ong
© 2013 Centre for Contemporary Art
© 2013 Texts: Individual contributors
All images copyright of the individual artists and publisher unless otherwise stated
05
09
Trappings and Dwellings:
Reflections on New Art from Singapore
Tan Guo-Liang
37
In This Time, of These Particularities
Joleen Loh
63
Artist Infrastructures:
Zhao Renhui and Debbie Ding
Sam I-Shan
80
About the Artists
Exhibition photography by 36frames
Book design by Kingsmen Exhibits Pte Ltd
Printed by First Printers Pte Ltd
86
Notes on the Contributors
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
90
Index of Artists and Works
94
Acknowledgments
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the
publisher. The publisher does not warrant or assume any legal responsibilities for the publication’s contents. All opinions
expressed in the book are of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Centre for Contemporary Art, Nanyang
Technological University.
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�Engaging Perspectives:
New Art From Singapore
Eugene Tan
Perspective has always been a seminal concept in art. This can be seen with Brunelleschi’s discovery
of vanishing or single-point perspective in the fifteenth century, which transformed the way artists
represented the world through art, to the role of perspective, or more accurately, perspectives,
in art production today. With the passing of modernism and the advent of postmodernism and globalisation,
it is acknowledged that there is no longer a valid single perspective in which to view the world.
Instead, we are now marked by multiplicity and disorienting relativism of perspectives. In an age of
aesthetic pluralism, artists working today find it necessary to engage with various concepts of perspective
through their work. The first is through the perspective of the continuation of styles and forms derived from
European and American modernism which still dominate the international art scene. In spite of the opening
up of art to other sites of production around the world, the global art scene is still dominated by styles and
discourses developed by western modernism. This is evident both in the art market, as well as
major international exhibitions and biennales. As such, artists working around the world still feel
the necessity to engage with this perspective of Euro-American modernism. The second is with perspectives
that have arisen locally from new political independence and rapid economic development. With globalisation,
many societies around the world have experienced intense change and transformation, often characterised
by clashing ideologies and experiences. The intensity of these changing experiences from a personal and
local perspective has become an important focus for artists. Lastly, in our increasingly networked world,
artists have had to also contend with how their personal and local experiences relate to the wider
global situation.
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�ENGAGING PERSPECTIVES eugene tan
The works of the nine artists and collective in the exhibition are characterised by their engagement with
the different notions of perspective. Working in Singapore and hailing from a generation born in the 1980s,
their works take their personal engagement with the local as a point of departure to present multifaceted
perspectives about Singapore, but yet highlighting their connection to the globalised environment,
thereby presenting new perspectives about the world in which we live. The work of Debbie Ding (Singapore
Psychogeographical Society), for example, presents her perspective of Singapore and other cities throughout
the world through various physical markers that populate our urbanised cities, revealing structures and
networks that govern our everyday lives. Frayn Yong’s work, meanwhile, highlights the fragility of the
underlying structures of society, particularly in our interconnected and globalised world.
His work, in particular, explores the relationships between natural and man-made structures that dominate
our societies. Bruce Quek examines how the lightscapes of our cities give rise to new perspectives about our
man-made environments and with them, new systems of meaning making through a new media installation
that composes the work in the real-time of the viewer. The work of Black Baroque Committee also takes as
its starting point, the prevalence of new media and technology in our everyday lives. Their work explores
the new forms of image making that dominate our societies through the popularising of digital cameras.
Their installation draws upon the physical act of image making in the analogue camera and its relationship
to physical violence, highlighting the sensorial experience of image making that has been lost.
6
The notion of the uncanny is also featured in the exhibition, such as in the works of Ang Song Nian,
Mike Chang, Nah Yong En and Jasper Yu. These works highlight aspects of our society that seem strangely
familiar, but at the same time, foreign. This is evident in Nah Yong En’s and Jasper Yu’s works,
exploring spaces and situations, which are at once familiar and peculiar, giving rise to questions about
the authenticity of the photographed and painted images. Ang Song Nian’s photographs and installation also
allude to a familiar narrative which dominates our consumer societies, where the desire for consumption
and commodification becomes an overwhelming and overpowering desire, leading to hoarding and
its consequences. Mike Chang, meanwhile, uses the physical space of the door as a metaphorical space
and site of production to examine his practice in relation to issues of transition and becoming. The notion
of strangeness is also evident in the work of Zhao Renhui, which explores and challenges meaning making
through video and photographs, made during a trip to the Arctic, where the natural environment is
a stark contrast to the tropical urbanity of Singapore.
The exhibition examines the diverse but related ways in which artists in Singapore today engage with
the everyday through the structures and networks, both physical as well as invisible, that govern
our environment. It also explores the relationship of our increasingly urbanised environments to nature,
as well as the systems of meaning making through the creation of images and signs that exists in our
society. In particular, it demonstrates how these perspectives of the everyday constructed from the local
context of Singapore are, at the same time, engagements with global perspectives.
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Trappings and Dwellings:
Reflections on New Art from Singapore
Tan Guo-Liang
Eventually, a wolf will approach the knife and begin to cautiously sniff and lick the frozen blood.
After believing it is safe, the wolf will lick more aggressively. Soon, the blade of the knife becomes
exposed and it begins to nick the wolf’s tongue. Because its tongue has been numbed by the cold
of the frozen blood, the wolf is unaware that he is being cut, and the blood it now tastes is its own.
Excited at the prospect of fresh, warm blood, the wolf will hungrily lick the blade all the more. In a
short time, the wolf will grow dizzy and disoriented. In a matter of hours, it will die from blood loss,
Zhao Renhui, Eskimo Wolf Trap often quoted in Sermons (2013)
literally drinking itself to death. As horrible as this picture is, it illustrates an important truth.
A GOOD story seduces and traps us. We know of its artifice, yet we fall victim to its spell. At the centre of
Zhao Renhui’s The Glacier Study Group is a fable of the Arctic wolf that embodies both hunter and prey. Its
cannibalistic horror is tingled with a twisted sense of beauty. The narrative is accompanied by a curiously
absent image. We are aware of this absence precisely because the artist has announced it to us by the
presence of a frame.
As horrible as this picture is, it illustrates an important truth.
A good image finds host somewhere at the back of our mind and replays itself again and again, long
after our initial encounter with it. Zhao recalls having first heard a version of this story as a child in a
sermon where it was used as an allegory of sin. Uncertain of the story’s origins, he had always thought
this description of the Eskimo wolf trap to be true until a recent research trip to the Arctic. This sudden
revelation of the story’s authenticity became the basis of Zhao’s new work, which follows his interest in
the ways we perceive and construct reality through narratives and images. As we project the violent scene
repeatedly in our heads, the idea of entrapment finds resonance in the rest of the installation.
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Presented alongside are a series of photographs documenting fellow artists and scientists of the so-called
‘study group’ collecting data and sampling the glacier against the harsh icy landscapes as well as a realtime video in which the artist attempts to ascend a snowy hill only to abandon the climb half way. In both
the photographs and the video, the body of Zhao and of others are dwarfed, obscured and framed by a vast
stillness that threatens to engulf from without. We are made part of this unseen, almost sublime, menace
by virtue of our gaze, yet we hold fast to these seductive images ourselves like wolves to a bleeding blade.
We are suspicious of the artist’s pictorial and narrative conceit but the distant howling of the wind calls
back to us from somewhere between entrapment and escape.
Zhao Renhui, First Day (2012)
Zhao Renhui, Arctic Race, Day 94 (2013), installation view
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Zhao Renhui, Eskimo Wolf Trap often quoted in Sermons (2013), installation view (detail)
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Black Baroque Committee, The Photographer: An Executioner’s Assistant (2013), installation view
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Notion of the image as document finds its way into a number of the other works featured in Engaging
Perspectives: New Art from Singapore. Artist collective Black Baroque Committee’s The Photographer:
An Executioner’s Assistant draws parallel between photography and execution by associating the camera
shutter with the guillotine blade. Here, the implied violence in Zhao’s work is brought fully into the
foreground by turning the photographic lens onto itself—a picture making mechanism turns into a killing
machine. Indeed, there is nothing innocent about photography or the camera. Its relationship with violence
and death has been well explored from films like Peeping Tom (1960) to morbid Victorian death portraitures.
As Susan Sontag famously wrote, ‘Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is
a subliminal murder…’ 1 These mug shots of criminals awaiting execution suggests a double death—first
by the camera, then by the guillotine. The photographic image here is not a sentimental momento mori or a
‘soft murder’ as Sontag suggests but a brutal post-mortem of the dead.
Black Baroque Committee, The Photographer: An Executioner’s Assistant (2013), installation views
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Under the pseudo-archival entity Singapore Psychogeographical Society, Debbie Ding turns the photographic
image into ethnographic evidence. Rock fragments and urban markers are meticulously documented and
mapped out as a means to renegotiate dimensions of the physical and the psychological, of the public and the
personal. Reminiscent of artist-archaeologist-collector Mark Dion’s Tate Thames Dig (1999), Ding imbues her
own collection of the everyday and the overlooked with ephemeral histories and open associations.
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Singapore Psychogeographical Society, Ethnographic Fragments from Central Singapore (2012-Present)
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Singapore Psychogeographical Society, Spotspotting (2009-Present)
In Spotspotting, urban markers are photographed candidly from the artist’s perspective, looking down at
the ground. It is as mundane an archive of construction symbols across cities as it is of the artist’s array of
socks and shoes worn during her travels, which are prominently featured alongside. These are images of
the right angle where the verticality of the artist’s body meets the horizontality of the world beneath her feet.
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Ang Song Nian, 10/04/2012, from the series Towards a New Interior (2013), installation view
Much like Ding’s situationist documentation, Ang Song Nian’s Towards a New Interior consists of
photographs of make-do shelters in parts of London, accompanied by a fictional narrative of their inhabitant
(omitted here in the Singapore version of the same series). We are unsure at first if Ang had indeed chanced
upon these temporary dwellings or had in fact built these structures himself, just as he has written the
imaginary encounter.
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Ang Song Nian, Towards a New Interior (2013)
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Ang Song Nian, Towards a New Interior (2013)
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Ang Song Nian, Towards a New Interior (2013) (detail)
On their own, Ang’s photographs illustrate well beyond the prescribed story, reflecting an interest not only in
picture making but also in sculpture. Perhaps more evidently in his presentation here, Ang installs an actual
makeshift shelter into the lush forest of Gillman Barracks itself, offering us the experience of chancing
upon the work. These provisional structures demarcate a no man’s land where interiors are always already
part of the exterior.
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Mike Chang, Arrival Reception (2013)
What confronts me? The door confronts me. It is parallel to my upright body. Both the door and the
body are wall plane oriented (except my shoulder that is). The stranger on the other side of the door
is also wall planed. The feeling is familiar and tingling. I can feel it in my spine (grand vertical line).
Just a thought: I rarely encounter strangers perpendicularly.
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If much of the works in the exhibition seem rooted in the outside world, Taiwan born American artist Mike
Chang brings us firmly back into the domestic. Arrival Reception is an extension of ideas first explored by
the artist during his Pulau Ubin residency organised by The Artist Village. Through his short time living and
working on the offshore island, Chang felt acutely the dual role of both guest and host as curious strangers
and close friends visited him at his temporary home. For the artist, the door becomes a motif for the
unknown and a metaphoric space through which our bodies transverse from the outside in. This moment of
anticipation in encountering the other is stretched out and extended into a physical (non) space where the
identities of host and guest dissolve—in Chang’s world, we are all visitors.
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
Mike Chang, Arrival Reception (2013)
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Mike Chang, Arrival Reception (2013)
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
On the interiors of the installation are sketches, photo collages and text, mostly drawn from the artist’s
own daily observations living in Singapore for the past few years. As a performance artist, Chang measures
the world around him through his body. Whether it is a bench or a corner of the room, the corporeal, the
architectural, and the pictorial are in constant negotiation. Language too plays an important role here in
teasing out the performative. Puns and wordplays shift meaning and intent. These are mental workings of
an outsider finding his way in and looking for a way out.
Photography almost always begins with a fragment of the external world. Drawing, painting and writing
begins with an empty space. As we first step into Chang’s installation, we are confronted by a blinding
light box, pure white in a rectangular frame. Photography devoid of its imagery is like a document without
content. As with the missing picture of the Arctic wolf, we stand before a threshold. We are anxious, having
arrived and ready to receive. An image is a door.
Mike Chang, Arrival Reception (2013)
1
Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997)
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�TRAPPINGS AND DWELLINGS Tan Guo-Liang
POSTSCRIPT
Any survey of ‘new’ art always carries with it a level of anxious expectation about trends and directions.
In considering the works in Engaging Perspectives, one could ask a number of questions about art ‘now’:
Why so much emphasis on photography? Why the interest in narratives and storytelling? Why the preference
for fictional societies and collectives? (Incidentally, Zhao, the most established of the lot here, began
exhibiting his works under the moniker Institute of Critical Zoologists and Black Baroque Committee
works in close association with members of Vertical Submarine.) When asked about his observations on
the works by his peers in the exhibition, Chang remarked a certain distance and detachment in strategy
and presentation. The inclusion of Chang in this predominantly Singaporean mix throws up interesting
questions about current artistic approaches and confluences. If the 1980s saw the rise of performance art
in Singapore, one ponders its influence on these post-80s young artists. Koh Nguang How’s archival practice
and Chua Chye Teck’s conceptual photography are others that come to mind. Young artists today are as
likely to be influenced by global contemporary art, as they would be by critical theory and popular culture.
It would be presumptuous to attribute influences and genealogy solely within a local art context and yet,
in considering the present without the full acknowledgement of what has gone before, we may miss out on
the subtle nuances and shifts over time. Ultimately, the exhibition itself is merely a snapshot and only in
opening up the works beyond its framing can we discover deeper motivations and connections.
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
In This Time, of These Particularities
Joleen Loh
Contemporary art can be thought of as precarious and premature since it is in a perpetual state of
transformation, endlessly shaped by the jostle of social and cultural multiplicities. The difference with
art today is that it is more profoundly shaped by the saturations of the present—in terms of its memories,
dislocations, everydayness and expectations—than historical modes and universal generalisations.1
The various economies of thinking about contemporary life as well as the emergences and fissures
between different ways of making art in Engaging Perspectives: New Art from Singapore make it a
compelling example. The exhibition offers a snapshot of how a new generation of young Singaporean
artists understands and confronts what it is to live in the conditions of the contemporary. The artists in this
exhibition have grown up in the era where their experience of art has been quite distinct from the artists
of previous generations who have lived through the nascent to unmistakable transitions from modern to
contemporary art. The open-ended curatorial framework employed by the curator within such a context is
one that reveals an engagement with various overlapping if not common issues. This includes concerns
with mapping forms of relationships between object, memory and place, urban excess and the nature of
image-making.
Information Sheet, Ethnographic Fragments from Central Singapore by Singapore Psychogeographical Society
36
Several works in the exhibition revealed an impulse to chart or innovate relationships between object,
memory and place. Ethnographic Fragments from Central Singapore by the Singapore Psychogeographical
Society, facilitated by Debbie Ding, is a collection of rock-fragments gathered from excavation sites
in Singapore. Many of these fragments were first collected near Sungei Road which is under major
construction due to the building of a train station. Members of the public were then invited to bring in
similar fragments for exchange. Ding created the work after realising much information of our
fast-changing city is not available at the National Archives and has gone unrecorded. Labelled and
presented in an archaeological manner, the fragments were displayed alongside notes of people’s
memories of their exchanged fragments.
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
The archival impulse is something that has been occurring both locally and globally. Over the past fifteen
years, artists, especially those under authoritarian regimes, have challenged the rationale and legitimacy of
institutional archives.2 These authorities have mobilised archives to erase or fabricate memory which they
then administer to the public sphere.3 This has impelled artists to challenge authorities of truth to recover
lost information ’either by examining micro-histories or excavating other histories not deemed worthy of
the archival record of a nation or, by a third way, the fabricating of an archive’.4
Likewise, tacit in Ding’s work is the question of the assumed authority of archives. Created using
‘public’ materials, her work explores physical traces within urbanity and cultural memory with a sense
of everydayness that are overlooked as no longer pertinent to today’s pragmatic ambitions. They are an
attempt to construct an archive that tells of a history that is indistinct from collective memory. Her work
relies, in the exchange and discussion of source materials, on constructing ‘possible scenarios of alternate
kinds of social relations’, a phenomena that Hal Foster asserts is an increasing ‘desire to turn belatedness
to becomingness’.5 It is not one created by institutions or compiled out of mechanic recording, but rather
one that is open to human subjectivity. Ding’s work is a form of repository that has the potential of
challenging the forms and organising principles of ‘public’ record-keeping by administrative regimes.
Ang Song Nian, Towards a New Interior (2013), installation view
With a different approach, Ang Song Nian examines the relationship between people, the objects they
possess and their surrounding environment. Despite the photographs of mass-produced objects and
reinvented cocoons in Towards A New Interior being devoid of people, they manage to speak of people’s
relationship to them.6 The absence of people equally works to articulate the impersonality of urban living
today and the attachment people have to objects. For Ang, objects ‘carry the burden or responsibilities that
include acquisition, use, care, storage, and disposal. The magnitude of these responsibilities for each of us
has exploded with the expanding number of items in our homes over the past few decades’. Through this
detritus of objects, the artist at the same time attends to urban excess through exposing our attachment to
inanimate objects—a reflex of a culture devoted to overproduction.
The issue of urban excess is also evident in works by Bruce Quek, and Nah Yong En. Together these works
cast an eye over the speed of our proliferations and the strangeness of our times as a result of an increasing
rise in a consuming class.
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
Ang Song Nian, (from left) 15/12/2012 – 03/01/2013 and 11/01/2013 – 19/01/2013, from the series Towards a New Interior (2013), installation view
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
Bruce Quek’s Consider (Singapore): Cadastre per Aspera is a single-channel video of a mobile order of lights
that resemble star maps.7 They are derived from artificial lights of Singapore’s urban environments. As Quek
notes, ‘stars are objects of persistent fascination, onto which we have projected meaning for thousands of
years’. However, the light pollution from the unprecedented growth and mutation of cities in size and density
has dramatically reduced the visibility of stars. In its absence, the artist has turned to the superabundance
of artificial city lights to configure an alternative constellation.
Bruce Quek, Consider (Singapore): Cadastre per Aspera (2013)
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Marco Polo describes a carpet that corresponds to the true form of the city
of Eudoxia. For some time, Eudoxia’s inhabitants were sure that the carpet was of divine origin and their city a
mere reflection of its image. Yet, the same can be said of the opposite: that the map of the skies can be found
in the city.8 Quek’s work may be seen as an extension of this, or a break from past forms of reading these
starlights. It points to the potential to refashion the constellations of a Singapore skyline in which the lights
from our cities become a representational reflection of the orbits in which our worlds revolve (such that our
transformation will involve some novelty in these new ‘constellations’). It is one that can be representational of
our psychological states, desires, obsession with control, and describe a possible future of ours.
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Bruce Quek, Consider (Singapore): Cadastre per Aspera (2013), installation view
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
A more direct confrontation of urban excess can be seen in Nah Yong En’s The Overseas Moon is Rounder
#2. In this series of paintings, Nah takes the pools and deck chairs often used in travel advertisements and
situates them in barren anonymous landscapes as a comment on the obsession with luxury travelling and
lifestyle. His work reflects upon an obsession today to have seen, as an ontological need to ‘consume’ place
and culture. Photography, often used to evidence what ‘has been seen’, is here subverted and replaced by
painting, intentionally rendered in a ‘half-finished’ manner as if to suggest failure.
Nah Yong En, The Overseas Moon is Rounder #2 (2011-2012), installation view
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
Nah Yong En, (from left) The Overseas Moon is Rounder #2 (2011-2012) and Trees and Buildings (2012-2013), installation view
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
Jasper Yu, Jasper’s Travelogue (2012), installation views
Where the imageries employed in Ang’s and Nah’s works were used to comment on our current social
conditions, the nature of image-making was directly explored in the works by Jasper Yu, and Zhao Renhui.
Jasper Yu’s Jasper’s Travelogue combines both static and moving images to form a hybrid series of
photographs, each exploring the relationship between people and public spaces. His work is an example of
new directions in thinking about photographic images, from what the lens observes to what a screen is able
to display. This series is equally about the crowded encounters in urban settings so commonly experienced
in Singapore and abroad as it is about the status of the photograph as a digital object, and how they are
experienced.
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
Jasper Yu, Flurry scurry. I’ve heard that train stations crowd with people during the rush hour. But there is no hurry. (2012)
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
Through the fictional institution, the Institute of Critical Zoologists (ICZ), Zhao Renhui’s practice often
explores and tests the way in which information is disseminated and received. For this exhibition, he
presented as part of The Glacier Study Group, a series of photographs created during his residency with
The Arctic Circle. These photographs, seemingly documenting their experiences in the arctic landscape,
are almost believable until we notice certain unlikely details—an ungloved hand or a man jumping into
the icy arctic waters. Photography has been key to documentation, often adding authenticity to an event.
However, in our post-photographic era of digital retouching, Zhao’s photographs destabilise the way we read
photographic documents, forcing us out of our complacency and naivety with reading images, and question
the assumptions we make in the reception of them.
Zhao Renhui, Expedition #9 (2012)
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�In this time, of these particularities Joleen Loh
Zhao Renhui, Expedition #43 (2012)
This exhibition provided a snapshot of some of today’s concerns that reinforce each other, overlap, and
mingle. Wary of what may seem like the ever-accelerating speed and saturation of the contemporary,
it is premature to look for the arrival of an all-encompassing contemporary style or the setting apace
of vanguards. At best, they hint at the complexities in mapping the development of contemporary art in
Singapore, and are best scrutinised for an ontology of the present—as occasions and offerings for this
specific time, in these particularities and circumstances.
56
‘Today we can hardly think of modernity and its derivatives as adequate descriptions of current artistic practices not least
because of current antinomies and cultural specificities that resist universality.’ Terry Smith, Thinking Contemporary
Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2012), p. 144.
2
Charles Merewether, The Land Archive, vol. 6 (2011), p.3. See also Charles Merewether, ‘Memory: documentary and the
archival’, in After the Event: New Perspectives on Art History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), p. 129.
3
Merewether, The Land Archive, vol. 6, p. 3.
4
Merewether, The Land Archive, vol. 6, p. 3.
5
Hal Foster, ‘The Archival Impulse’, October, vol. 110 (Autumn, 2004), 3-22 (p. 22).
6
In its original format first presented at the artist’s London College of Communication graduation show in 2012, the work
was accompanied by text of accounts of his encounter and meetings with Abraham Cammers, a man he initially mistook
for being a homeless vagrant. Later on he discovered that Cammers actually owns a flat which he uses to store scavenged
finds, while he lives in his various formats of cocoons.
7
The work’s title, Consider (Singapore): Cadastre per Aspera is based on a proposed etymology for the word ‘consider’ as
com sideris, meaning ‘to regard the stars’.
8
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (London: Pan Books, 1973), p. 77.
1
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
Frayn Yong, Installation view
58
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
Frayn Yong, Drawer Unit No. 2 - Now What (2013), installation view
60
Frayn Yong, (front) Untitled (2013), and (back) Structures (2009), installation view
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
Artist Infrastructures:
Zhao Renhui and Debbie Ding
Sam I-Shan
The burgeoning field of contemporary art in Singapore might be described as penetrated by
bureaucratic structures yet governed by a corporatist institutional logic. This is because of the
comprehensive reach of government policy and funding measures that affect multiple entities within
the system, including museums, academic institutions and art market infrastructure, even touching
discursive realms such as notions about the role of art, or conceptions of audiences and the public
sphere. This creates a highly institutionalised environment that obscures distinctions between what is
considered establishment or alternative, or who is deemed inside or outside. Different players undergo
constant mutual assimilation: the system is tested and expanded by experiments in meaning-making by
artists, curators and critics, even as they negotiate the parameters of institutional frameworks and shape
their identities in relation to their conditions. Some artists more than others foreground in their work an
awareness of the systems they practice in. Among them, the most interesting responses are the ones that
do not perceive their relation to their context as a simple dichotomy between hegemony and independence,
or cooption and resistance, but rather, demonstrate a facility with the terms and tools of engagement
available for their disposal.
Two artists in the exhibition Engaging Perspectives: New Art from Singapore might be discussed in light of
this rubric. They share several commonalities: firstly, they have at different times, adopted pseudonyms
of collective identities in lieu of their individual artistic identities. Secondly, they create discursive
apparatuses around their work, or adopt practices associated with institutions or organisations. All this
affects how their work is accessed, experienced and interpreted. For many years, Zhao Renhui has worked
in the context of an organisation that he calls the Institute of Critical Zoologists, while Debbie Ding uses
the moniker of the Singapore Pyschogeographical Society for some of her public archive projects. This
essay will examine different ways to read their respective adoptions of institutional conventions and the
structures of organisations in their work. Why do they engage the forms and substances of the regimes
they exist within? How does this in turn shape the frameworks they exhibit in? And finally, what does the
‘institutional’ do for their practice?
Frayn Yong, The Castle, Another (2013), installation view
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
Zhao Renhui’s body of work consists of photographs or installations of animals, landscapes and objects
relating to the natural sciences, often juxtaposed with research shown as textual elements within the
work or as accompanying printed ephemera. Scientific discovery and academic investigation are recurring
themes, and his presentation often evokes the aesthetics of specimen exhibits. However, Zhao’s images
are frequently manipulated, or consist of staged scenes, while the research is made up of publications
that he reshapes to serve his purposes. While Zhao makes and shows work under his own name, he
almost always chooses to present it in the context of the Institute of Critical Zoologists (ICZ), where he is
sometimes identified as a ‘collaborator’ on a given project, or as the Institute’s ‘artist-in-residence’. Even
on occasions when his designation is not specified, the ICZ will appear as part of the explanatory text
or as an overlying framework presented for the viewer to take into account in order to accept the whole.
On first glance, it might seem that this would subsume the artist’s persona under the mantle of the ICZ;
however, the Institute becomes instead a highly elaborated collective pseudonym, a repository for and
representation of Zhao’s fictions.
The combination of fabricated scenarios with tropes of empirical observation and the medium of
photography often means that readings of Zhao’s work focus on how it questions the nature of truth in
representation. However, when placed in the context of the ICZ, the work might be described as being just
as much about relationality and the nature of discourse. This is stated as much in the ICZ’s mission, which
is ‘to develop a critical approach to the zoological gaze, or how humans view animals’. In other words,
any depiction of animals would always be in the context of how humans interact with them. As such, the
works are framed by formal systems of organism study and display, with relational apparatuses such as
traps, blinds and similar ruses making frequent appearances, such as in The Glacier Study Group, The
Quieting and the Alarming (2013), The Blind (2007-2010), and I Have Reasons to Believe That God Exists
(2009). Traps in particular are interesting for Zhao on several levels: in the most elemental sense, they
are devices that make concrete the relationship between man and beast. Citing a review on the work of
Andreas Slominski which describes the trap as the crystallisation of a human’s intent toward an animal,
Zhao further notes that before anyone can build a trap, they would have to fully imagine all the ways that
their subject might think, move or behave.1 The trap thus encapsulates the self in relation to an other:
with it, an agent might perceive reality, anticipate effect and construct a system of action through which a
response can be sensibly realised.
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Zhao Renhui, Eskimo Wolf Trap often quoted in Sermons (2013), installation view
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
In this sense traps are little self-referential universes and it is appealing to cast them as metaphors
for how Zhao positions his work in relation to its context. The sense of affective disorientation at being
plunged into a plausibly constructed world may be akin to being drawn into a trap, and the oeuvre that
is the ICZ may be compared to that. Over the years, Zhao has become less reserved about the myth of
its reality, in part because the Institute has been able to develop a life of its own as it is increasingly
corroborated by the variety of work he makes in association with it. On its website is documentation
for more than twenty projects, consisting of suites of images and texts, including contributions from
collaborating scientists and researchers, selections from various museum and personal collections, and
information about the ICZ’s own archives, journal, physical location, and its mailing address. This miasma
of information and disinformation hints at the parameters of the ICZ’s scope even as it legitimises its
position as participant in the broad universe of discourse. And it is this latter function that perhaps most
intrigues Zhao, who describes the ICZ as a ‘reliable context’ for his practice and one way that he can
‘control the situations in which his work is experienced’.
Zhao Renhui, The Glacier Study Group (2013), installation views
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
It is not too far-fetched to draw a parallel between Zhao’s acts of building in interpretation at the very
moment of a work’s conception to developments in the field of contemporary art production today. As
players and organisations have become dispersed, centres of authority have shifted, and the construction
of critical discourse has long escaped the domain of art critics and academies to become a crucial part
of exhibition-making, participated in and contested by all, including artists, curators, and institutions.2
The flattening of the symbolic distance between these players may result in complicity that leads to
an erosion of criticality, yet at the same time, it allows for spaces to open up where agency can be
negotiated. Zhao’s act of annexing this discursive framework and making it integral to his practice is
a multivalent gesture that sends up formalised systems of knowledge even while acknowledging its
attachment to them. Through this balancing act, he is able to privilege institutional regimes of meaning
while avoiding the proscription of his critique as an artist outsider. His work is thus equal parts complicity
and collusion, with a good measure of mischief thrown in.
Zhao Renhui, Eskimo Wolf Trap often quoted in Sermons (2013), installation view (detail)
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
Meanwhile, Debbie Ding makes works under the moniker of the Singapore Psychogeographical Society,
specifically her archival installations Spotspotting and Ethnographic Fragments from Central Singapore.
These consist respectively of a set of more than 600 images of informal survey and civil engineering
marks found in various cities, and an annotated collection of rocks and debris from construction sites
in the Sungei Road area in Singapore. The framework of the Society is important enough for her to
consider post-dating under its name her earlier works that share similar concerns, such as The Singapore
River as a Psychogeographical Faultline II (2011) or Here the River Lies (2010). Ding’s adoption of the
psychogeographic agenda is flexible, and may be seen as more of a descriptive structure for her work
rather than a governing one. As outlined by Guy Debord, psychogeography refers to the study of the effects
a given environment has on the emotions and affective behaviour of individuals. Rooted in revolution,
it was part of his and the Situationists’ call for a radical overhaul of sterility and bureaucracy in urban
planning. This could be achieved through the dérive, or the act of drifting through a given space guided by
instinct, giving in to the play of feelings that might be aroused by the character of different parts of the
city.3 Contemporary usage extends the term to describe the range of personal experiences people have
living in urban surroundings, a capacious definition which allows Ding to group under its framework her
retrievals and photographic documentation of urban detritus, without having to overtly refer to the politics
of the movement.
Singapore Psychogeographical Society, Ethnographic Fragments from Central Singapore (2012-Present), installation view
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
Singapore Psychogeographical Society, Ethnographic Fragments from Central Singapore (2012-Present), installation view (detail)
Ding is particular that she not be called the owner or creator of these archives, but identified instead as
their ‘facilitator’. This throws light on one of the primary functions served by the society rubric, which is
to structure the elements of social practice in her work. Before Ethnographic Fragments was shown, for
instance, Ding conducted a ‘public exchange’, inviting people to swap their personal shards with the rocks
and cement pieces she had collected, and fill in forms with descriptions or narratives about their own
specimens, which she later exhibited. Such gestures are, on one hand, a way for her to include more voices
and stories into her work, but they also allow her to escape the authority of the individual artist’s ego and
suggest instead ‘a public archive that is independent’. The framework of the Society thus allows Ding to
move away from the isomorphic model of ‘one artist, one art object’ and provide instead an experience of
the world that is indeterminate and spontaneous. The content of the archives complements this: those
anonymous objects and markings she documents are part of an urban milieu that belongs to everyone
because they belong to no one.
72
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
Singapore Psychogeographical Society, Spotspotting (2009-Present), installation view
In contrast to Zhao’s more implicit use of the institution, the role of the organisation is more dispersed in
Ding’s work, as the individual, public and institutional constantly bump up against each other. One reason
for this is that the act of personal accumulation, archiving and taxonomising exist simultaneously in her
practice. Ding collects compulsively and must group and structure her material simply as a way to deal with
its ontological mass. This act of taxonomising is where the personal starts to shade into the institutional
and vice versa.
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
Singapore Psychogeographical Society, Spotspotting (2009-Present), installation view
On one hand, the work is overlaid with an array of classifying techniques: objects are displayed in vitrines
or specimen cases with binomial naming and visual description labels, documentation is framed and hung
to suggest museological approaches, and comprehensive websites often complement the exhibited work.
However, upon closer look the various classification methodologies that Ding uses seem to be governed
by the entirely individual and idiosyncratic. The gnomic circles, arrows and numerals of Spotspotting, for
instance, reveal little about their respective origins or meaning beyond their shared aesthetic. Hence what
remains for the viewer is the fact that Ding—as the Singapore Psychogeographical Society—located and
recorded them, thereby defining her drift through nine or ten cities across the world. Accordingly, her feet
appear in every frame.
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�Artist Infrastructures Sam I-Shan
Singapore Psychogeographical Society, Spotspotting (2009-Present), installation view (detail)
Institutional frameworks may be said to work more as form rather than substance for Ding. While Zhao
constructs his own brand of mystery by building institutional discourse into the work at the point of
production, Ding uses its conventions to tie fortuitous discoveries together.4 In the end, however, they each
in their own way operate with the understanding that as artists they do not exist in dualistic opposition
with any establishment. Their respective processes befit the context they work and show in, which might
be described as a hot-housed art and cultural scene that is developing in a prodigious fashion. In such a
setting, neither institutions nor constitutive individuals necessarily precede one another, but are rather
continually in ‘relational processes of becoming’.5 In this kind of contemporary space, art, capital and
administration are inextricably enmeshed. Any attempt to seek space for agency or authenticity—even if
conditional or mediated—would need to acknowledge the seamlessness of this empire.
78
1
Interview with Zhao Renhui, 13 March 2013. Zhao cited Adam Jasper, ‘Caught in a Trap’,
Art Review, Issue 14: (April 2007), 74-79.
2
‘Curators have emerged as a key driving force behind the establishment of a global art discourse [. . .] for instance
through the staging and framing of debates in scenarios developed by artists or curators in the spirit of relational
aesthetics.’ Alex Ferguson, ‘Is the Pen Still Mightier?’, Frieze, No. 92 (2005), 118-119.
3
Guy Debord, ’Theory of the Derive’, in Situationist International Anthology, ed. by Ken Krabb
(Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), pp. 62-66.
4
Ding maintains a wiki, a type of website that is usually created by multiple collaborators to serve knowledge management
or note-taking functions. One of the most well-known public websites that uses this framework is Wikipedia. Ding’s own
‘Wikicliki’ is populated and managed by herself and she uses it as an overarching hyperlinked way to list and relate every
project or interest she has had or is presently engaged in. http://wwgou.org/wikicliki
5
Institutions by Artists Volume One, ed. by Jeff Khonsary and Kristina Lee Podesva
(Vancouver: Filip Editions and the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres, 2012), p.17.
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�about the aRTISTS
ANG SONG NIAN (b. 1983, Singapore)
Ang Song Nian’s works questions the relationship of human interventions and invasions on landscapes.
Intrigued by the narration of thoughts and ideologies through visuals, he has always favoured a microscopic
approach to concepts and narration, a style which he employs to open up details in photography. His images
confront what we usually do not notice, places and spaces half-remembered, half forgotten; influenced
and shaped by human presence, through framing particular and individual elements it contains and the
connections between them.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ang graduated with a BA (Hons) in Photography and an MA in Photography from University of the Arts
London, UK in 2011 and 2012 respectively. His recent exhibitions include Rote Learning, CUSP Gallery,
Leicester, UK (2012); NOMAD: Singapore International Photography Festival Traveling Showcase 2011,
Bangkok University Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand (2011); Singapore Survey 2011: Imagine Malaysia,
Valentine Willie Fine Art, Singapore (2011); Traces 2, Art Incubator Exhibition, Institute of Contemporary
Arts Singapore, LASALLE (2010); eCREA 2010 Emergent Lleida Festival, Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs, Lleida,
Spain (2010); Singapore International Photography Festival, 2902 Gallery, Singapore (2010); and Singapore
Art Exhibition 2009, Singapore Art Museum (2009). Ang was also the finalist of the 2011 Sovereign Asian
Art Prize.
BLACK BAROQUE COMMITTEE (Singapore)
Black Baroque Committee (BBC) is neither an organised movement, nor a collective. Their approach is
neither serious nor frivolous. They despise all hypocritical declarations of good and evil. The textbook
dichotomy of optimism and pessimism, or beauty and ugliness, is absurd to all BBC members who had
amputated their sentiments. Their experiments are not to be understood as science, their gestures not to be
taken as art, their activities are never political, and their words have hardly anything to do with the notion
named ‘love’. To them, the necessity of such differentiation is as useless as the petit-bourgeois distinction
between tiring labour and boring leisure.
Their projects have been included in many exhibitions including Project Glocal: DezipCoding, SAM@8Q,
Singapore (2012); Project Glocal: Cityzening, Jorge Vargas Museum University of the Philippines Diliman,
Quezon City, Philippines (2012); We Don’t Care About the Starving, Loughborough University, Loughborough,
UK (2011); Postcards from Earth, Objectifs Gallery, Singapore (2011); Abusement Park, The Night Festival
2010, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore.
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�about the aRTISTS
MIKE CHANG (b. 1982, Taipei, Taiwan)
BRUCE QUEK (b. 1986, Singapore)
Currently based in Singapore, Mike Chang’s recent works examine the concept of dwelling and home,
being (and looking at) a stranger, and the overlapping of public and private spaces. Through working with
architectural elements (doors, staircases, furniture), texts (speeches, monologues, letter writings), and
the body (tattoos, performances), he creates narratives that explore the ambiguous relationships that exist
in the everyday, resulting in works that are at times humorous, pathetic, or self-righteous.
Bruce Quek’s recent projects take the distribution and dissemination of information as starting points for
various conceptual investigations, critiques of artistic infrastructure, and other wanderings. He takes an interest
in many things, but maintains an unhealthy fascination with emergent behaviour, the metaphorical transfer of
pathologies from one type of body to another, bad puns and annoying alliterations. All of his endeavours are
frequently threatened by the seductive allure of reading random things online, out of a vague belief in
the singular importance of consuming as much information as possible.
Chang received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts (2008), and a BA from University of California, Los
Angeles, USA (2006). In 2007, he was awarded The California Institute of the Arts Interdisciplinary Grant.
Chang was a resident artist at Redgate Gallery in Beijing in 2006 and the artist-in-resident at The Artist
Village’s Pulau Ubin Artist Residency Programme in Singapore in 2012. He is currently the resident artist
at Nanyang Girls High School, Singapore. Chang’s works has been shown in many cities including Track
16 Gallery in Los Angeles, USA; Austin Museum of Art, USA; Arthouse in Texas, USA; Dobaebacsa in Seoul,
Korea; Yokobo Art Space in Tokyo, Japan; with Hayama Projects Collective at The Warehouse Project in
Yokohama, Japan; and Post-Museum and Port Tumasik in Singapore.
NAH YONG EN (b.1986, Singapore)
Nah Yong En’s works are from things of our everyday life, on the thought that seeing more of the world
does not mean seeing more, nor being able to see more. He is also interested in learning how the intrinsic
properties of artworks work through our sensorial perceptions and our minds.
Nah received his BA (Hons) in Painting and MA in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore
in 2010 and 2012 respectively. In 2011, he won the Platinum Award in the 30th UOB Painting of the Year
competition, Singapore and was given the opportunity to participate in an artist residency programme at
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan.
82
Quek graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art (Sculpture) from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore in 2006.
In 2011, he was selected for the Substation’s Visual Arts Open Call and held his first solo exhibition
The Hall of Mirrors. His recent exhibitions include Future Proof, SAM@8Q, Singapore (2012), and Dream:
Borderlands & Other Territories, Goodman Arts Centre, Singapore (2011).
SINGAPORE PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY (Singapore)
Since 2010, the Singapore Psychogeographical Society has been devoted to promoting a better understanding
of the world through ludic adventures, independent research, digital documentation, and data/archival activism.
Visual artist Debbie Ding (b.1984) facilitates the Singapore Psychogeographical Society.
In his ‘Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography’ (1955), Guy Debord defined psychogeography as the study
of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on
the emotions and behaviour of individuals. Psychogeoforensics is an extension of that concept—to combine
a heightened awareness and appreciation for the various ‘ambiances’ in an urban city with the domain of
forensics. Because of the peculiar fragmented nature of history and culture in Singapore, we could also view
Singapore as the scene of the mystery, or even as the missing artefact, or a curiously blank signifier.
Through psychogeoforensics, the Singapore Psychogeographical Society encourages people to construct/
reconstruct their own narratives around the various physical traces, histories, and archives that may be
overlooked or neglected in fast-developing urban cities such as Singapore.
83
�about the aRTISTS
FRAYN YONG (b.1984, Singapore)
ZHAO RENHUI (b.1983, Singapore)
Frayn Yong studied and practiced interior design and illustration prior to his training as a fine artist at
LASALLE College of the Arts where he graduated with a BA in Fine Arts in 2011. He is interested in exploring
the transience and uncertainty of existence through reflections of the human condition and its environment.
Zhao Renhui ‘s works are based on the concept of doubt and uncertainty and in his creation, The Institute
of Critical Zoologists and The Land Archive, he tests to the limit the principles behind the dissemination of
knowledge and acceptance of truths. A large part of his practice tries to resists the false naturalisation of
beliefs and circumstances.
Yong was awarded the Winston Oh Travel Award, Singapore in 2010 and has participated in several group
exhibitions including Still Building, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2012); Nasi Campur,
TAKSU Singapore (2012); and Singapore Survey 2010: Beyond LKY, Valentine Willie Fine Art, Singapore (2010).
Zhao received his BA (Photography) from Camberwell College of Arts in 2008 and his MA (Photography) from
the University of the Arts London in 2010. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Singapore and
internationally, in cities such as New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Japan, Seoul,
Indonesia, and Thailand.
JASPER YU (b. 1986, Singapore)
Jasper Yu is interested in documenting people and spaces and often includes a personal social commentary
between the layers of aesthetics. In recent years, he started to explore the play between still and moving
images, using both photography and video to convey his message.
Yu completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in Photography & Digital Imaging from School of Art,
Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2012. His recent exhibitions in Singapore
include Young Talent Program at the Affordable Art Fair, Unnecessarily Well Made at Vue Privee Gallery, and
A Reflective Dialogue at 2902 Gallery (all 2012).
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�Notes on the CONTRIBUTORS
JOLEEN LOH
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
Joleen Loh is a curator and writer. She currently works at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore,
LASALLE College of the Arts and is also the visual arts curator for Lit Up Festival 2013, Singapore. In 2012,
she was the curatorial assistant at the Singapore Art Museum for Lucid Dreams in the Reverie of the Real,
a solo exhibition by Lee Wen. Her curatorial work includes Looking at the Overlooked (2011) and
From Wonder to Ruins (2011) in Melbourne, Australia. Loh also contributes regularly to the arts column of
TODAY newspaper.
SAM I-SHAN
Sam I-shan is part of the programmes team at the Singapore Art Museum where she curates film
programmes and manages the Moving Image Gallery. Apart from this, she was co-curator of
the Artist-in-Residence Programme 2012/13, which was supported by both the Singapore International
Foundation and the British Council, and an award recipient of the JENESYS Programme for
Creators residency in Japan (2012). She is also actively involved in writing and teaching on literature, film,
critical writing and art.
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�Notes on the CONTRIBUTORS
EUGENE TAN
Eugene Tan is the Director of the National Art Gallery, Singapore. His previous appointments include
Programme Director (Special Projects), Singapore Economic Development Board, Director of Exhibitions,
Osage Gallery (Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai) and Director of the Institute of Contemporary
Arts Singapore, LASALLE College of the Arts. He was also co-curator of the Singapore Biennale in 2006 and
curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Other thematic exhibitions he has curated
include The Burden of Representation: Abstraction in Asia Today, Osage Gallery, Hong Kong (2010), Coffee,
Cigarettes and Pad Thai: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia, Eslite Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2008) and
Always Here but Not Always Present: Art in a Senseless World, Singapore Management University (2008),
as well as solo exhibitions by Lee Mingwei (2010), Jompet (2010), Charwei Tsai (2009), Nipan Oranniwesna
(2009), and Jane Lee (2009).
TAN GUO-LIANG
Tan Guo-Liang studied fine art at Goldsmiths College, London. His practice primarily revolves around notions
of representation in painting and is informed by the tension that exists between imagery, history and our
cognitive states of ambiguity and fragmentation. A selection of his paintings was shown at the Singapore
Platform for the inaugural Art Stage Singapore in 2011 and he was featured in Surface magazine as one
of the most promising visual artists practicing in Asia today. He had his first solo presentation at Space
Cottonseed in 2012. In addition to his studio practice, Tan is also known for his curatorial projects, including
his artist publication on drawing Aversions (2009), Found & Lost (2009) for Osage Gallery in Singapore and
We who saw signs (2011) for Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE College of the Arts.
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�INDEX OF ARTISTS AND WORKS
Ang Song Nian
Towards a New Interior, 2013, Site-specific installation, Dimensions variable
pp. 24, 25, 26-27, 39, 40-41
From the series, Towards a New Interior, 2013:
10/04/2012, 2012, Forex on plywood, 160cm x 200cm
p. 22-23
15/12/2012 – 03/01/2013, 2013, Forex on plywood, 240cm x 192cm
p. 40
11/01/2013 – 19/01/2013, 2013, Forex on plywood, 240cm x 192cm
p. 41
INDEX OF ARTISTS AND WORKS
Black Baroque Committee
The Photographer: An Executioner’s Assistant, 2013, Installation, Dimensions variable
p. 16-17, 18-19
Mike Chang
Arrival Reception, 2013, Mixed media installation (wood panels, light, TV screen, drawings and prints,
floor mat), Sound design by Zai Tang, Dimensions variable
pp. 28-29, 30, 31, 33
Nah Yong En
The Overseas Moon is Rounder #2, 2011-2012, Acrylic on canvas (with deckchairs, pool, building),
each 20.32cm x 40.64cm
pp. 46-47, 48
Trees and Buildings, 2012-2013, Photographic print, each 100cm x 75cm
p. 49
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�INDEX OF ARTISTS AND WORKS
Bruce Quek
Jasper Yu
Consider (Singapore): Cadastre per Aspera, 2013, Single channel animated video projection,
Dimensions variable
pp. 42-43, 44-45
Jasper’s Travelogue, 2012, Mixed media
pp. 50, 51
Singapore Psychogeographical Society
Ethnographic Fragments from Central Singapore, 2012-Present, Collection of rocks, Dimensions variable
pp. 18-19, 36, 70, 72-73
Spotspotting, 2009-Present, Photographs and maps, Dimensions variable
pp. 20-21, 74-75, 76-77, 78-79
Frayn Yong
Installation view
p. 58-59
Drawer Unit No. 2 - Now What, 2013, Kappa gray board and glue, Dimensions variable
p. 60
The Castle, Another, 2013, Graphite mechanical pencil lead and glue, Dimensions variable
p. 62
Structures, 2009, Graphite & correction fluid on paper, 70cm x 100cm
p. 61
Untitled, 2013, Branches picked from surroundings, Dimensions variable
p. 61
92
From the series, Jasper’s Travelogue, 2012:
Flurry scurry. I’ve heard that train stations crowd with people during the rush hour. But there is no hurry.,
2012, Mixed media, 63.5cm x 88.9cm
p. 52-53
Zhao Renhui
The Glacier Study Group, 2013, Installation with Diasec print and single channel video, Dimensions variable
p. 66
From the series, The Glacier Study Group:
Eskimo Wolf Trap often quoted in Sermons, 2013, Installation with Diasec print, Eskimo knife, polyurethane,
ammonium bicarbonate, wood, Dimensions variable
pp. 8, 12-13, 65, 68-69
Arctic Race, Day 94, 2013, Single channel video, 10mins loop, Cast: Zhao Renhui, Ian Page
p. 11
Expedition #9, 2012, Diasec print, 74cm x 111cm
p. 54-55
Expedition #43, 2012, Diasec print, 74cm x 111cm
p. 56-57
First Day, 2012, Diasec print, 74cm x 111cm
p. 11
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�INDEX OF ARTISTS AND WORKS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Centre for Contemporary Art would like to thank the following organisations and
individuals who have contributed in various ways to the project:
JTC Corporation for their generous support in providing the venue for the exhibition;
Curator, Eugene Tan;
The artists: Ang Song Nian, Black Baroque Committee, Mike Chang, Nah Yong En, Bruce Quek, Singapore
Psychogeographical Society (Debbie Ding), Frayn Yong, Jasper Yu, and Zhao Renhui, for their participation;
The University’s College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and School of Art, Design and Media; and
Art Stage Singapore for their support in publicising the exhibition to their fair audience.
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�About the Centre for Contemporary Art
The Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), a national research institute of Nanyang Technological
University (NTU), in collaboration with the Economic Development Board (EDB), Singapore,
is devoted to advancing knowledge in contemporary art through its wide-ranging education,
research, exhibition and artist-in-residence programmes. The CCA aims to bolster Asia’s visual arts
landscape by fostering cultural exchange and creation, showcasing the best and most innovative
art of our time, as well as generating discourse and research. Located at Gillman Barracks, the
up-and-coming destination for contemporary art in Asia, the CCA will further establish Singapore
as a vibrant centre in Asia for the creation, exhibition and discussion of contemporary art.
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Resources
Exhibition Resource
Collateral and other print or digital materials pertaining to exhibitions held at the Centre. Examples include exhibition guides, banners, postcards, digital tour videos, etc.
Short Description
Engaging Perspectives: New Art from Singapore Exhibition Catalogue
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<i>Engaging Perspectives: New Art from Singapore</i> Exhibition Catalogue
Description
An account of the resource
<i>Engaging Perspectives: New Art from Singapore</i> Exhibition Catalogue
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-01-26
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ang Song Nian
Black Baroque Committee
Mike Chang
Nah Yong En
Bruce Quek
Singapore Psychogeographical Society
Frayn Yong
Jasper Yu
Zhao Renhui
Eugene Tan
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Guide
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Southeast Asia
Subject
The topic of the resource
Spaces of the Curatorial
Urbanism
History
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Engaging Perspectives: New Art From Singapore, 26 January – 31 March 2013, Installation view: Ang Song Nian, Towards A New Interior (2013).
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Engaging Perspectives: New Art From Singapore, 26 January – 31 March 2013, Installation view: Ang Song Nian, Towards A New Interior (2013).
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Engaging Perspectives: New Art From Singapore, 26 January – 31 March 2013, Installation view: Mike Chang, Arrival Reception (2013).
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Engaging Perspectives: New Art From Singapore, 26 January – 31 March 2013, Installation view: Robert Zhao Renhui, The Glacier Study Project (2013).
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Engaging Perspectives: New Art From Singapore, 26 January – 31 March 2013, Installation view: Black Baroque Committee, The Photographer An Executioner's Assistant (2013).
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Engaging Perspectives: New Art From Singapore, 26 January – 31 March 2013, Installation view: Jasper Yu, Jasper's Travelogue (2012).
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Engaging Perspectives: New Art From Singapore, 26 January – 31 March 2013, Installation view: Singapore Psychogeographical Society (Debbie Ding), Spotspotting (2009-Present).
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Exhibitions
Description
An account of the resource
NTU CCA Singapore’s exhibitions focus on contemporary artistic production that provides a critical platform for reflection and discussion.
Exhibition
Curated group or solo shows that happen over a period of time, usually a few months, supported by auxiliary programmes. Examples include exhibition hall presentations, lab presentations, vitrine presentations, curated film programmes, and festivals.
Exhibition Mode
Exhibition
Show Type
Individual Artist (solo show)
Thematic Presentation (group show)
Thematic Presentation
Exhibition Space
Exhibition Hall
Location
Onsite (CCA)
Offsite
Online
Onsite (CCA)
Exhibition Start Date
2013-01-26
Exhibition End Date
2013-03-31
Collaboration
Yes
Commissioned Work
No
Related Countries
Singapore
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<i>Engaging Perspectives: New Art from Singapore</i>
Description
An account of the resource
Curated by Eugene Tan, <i>Engaging Perspectives: New Art From Singapore</i> present works that engage with multifaceted perspectives about Singapore by a generation of artists born in the 1980s and currently working in Singapore. The nine artists and collectives, who are at differing stages of their careers from emerging artists to those who have exhibited internationally will examine the diverse but related ways in which they engage with the everyday. Their works explore the physical structures as as the invisible structures and networks that govern our everyday lives, the relationship of our increasingly urbanised environments to nature, as well as the systems of meaning making through the creation of images and signs that exists in our society. The exhibition aims to provide new perspectives about the everyday within the context of Singapore, and how this engagement with the everyday is also invariably an engagement with global perspectives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ang Song Nian
Black Baroque Committee
Mike Chang
Nah Yong En
Bruce Quek
Singapore Psychogeographical Society
Frayn Yong
Jasper Yu
Zhao Renhui
Eugene Tan
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Southeast Asia
Medium
The material or physical carrier of the resource.
Installation
Multimedia Installation
Photography
Sculpture
Subject
The topic of the resource
Spaces of the Curatorial
History
Urbanism