Exhibit 101: Li Ran and Gary Ross Pastrana]]> Artistic Research]]> Regionalism]]> Geopolitics]]> Li Ran and Gary Ross Pastrana will develop projects for The Lab, NTU CCA Singapore’s space for experimentation, which are speculations on how an image is created and deconstructed.

Gary Ross Pastrana’s An ASEAN Exhibition 1 creates an artistic gesture around the idea of Southeast Asia as a reference with no visual referent. The artist engaged DSM Solutions, a young Singaporean creative collective, to stage a “Contemporary Southeast Asia Art Exhibition-Themed Event” and prototype props that could stand in for Southeast Asian artworks. In this manner, the artist has effectively outsourced the sometimes-problematic task of representing Southeast Asia, an implied obligation of artists invited to regionally themed group exhibitions within the region.

Li Ran presents a new project Waiting for the Fog to Drift Away, a collaboration with Singapore Management University (SMU), Assistant Professor Rowan Wang, a specialist in overall planning science. Li Ran will conduct interviews to gain planning advice from Wang in an attempt to define the most successful trajectory for the life of an artist as a business enterprise, estimating production levels and peaks and troughs in key life moments.]]>
Li Ran]]> Gary Ross Pastrana]]> Print]]> Installation]]> Video]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Interrogative Pattern – Text(ile) Weave by Regina (Maria) Möller]]> Materiality]]> Identity]]> Regina (Maria) Möller‘s research focus. Möller’s research in The Lab stems from her interest in the trademark headdress of Samsui women, and will elaborate with time through experimental, collaborative and participatory forms of research practice. During workshops, lectures or formats of story telling, new layers will be added to reflect upon each other and trigger next threads for an ever expanding weave.]]> Regina (Maria) Möller]]> Installation]]> Object]]> Southeast Asia]]> The Ring of Fire (2014 – ongoing) by Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina]]> Geopolitics]]> Migration]]> Politics]]> Activism]]> Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina, this geologically unstable territory demarcates a field of artist inquiry.

Since 2014, the Indonesian duo have embarked upon a journey that engages issues of social injustice, political struggles, colonial histories, and environmental crises encountered along erratic routes that stretch from Indonesia to New Zealand, from Taiwan and South Korea to Japan. The Ring of Fire (2014–ongoing) brings together for the first time the most significant works realised by the artists, either together or individually, since the inception of the project.]]>
Irwan Ahmett]]> Tita Salina]]> Video]]> Print]]> Object]]> Installation]]> Asia]]> Oceania]]>
<!DOCTYPE work> ]]> Ecosystems]]> Labour]]> Knowledge Production]]> Spaces of the Curatorial]]> Denise Yap, Apartment 2079, 2020
Moses Tan, Study for Dramatic Venus, 2020
Ruby Jayaseelan, STOP., 2020
passthejpeg, passthetime, 2020

<!DOCTYPE work> is a curatorial project that encourages people to rethink productivity in creative practices, influenced by forced remote work situations due to the global pandemic. Borrowing a programming language for the compliance of HTML standards, highlights the use of digital tools and formats for telecommuting. It also signifies the start of an experiment that is open-ended and process-based. Given the context of this current situation, it seeks to chart out the process of exhibition-making while reflecting on these questions: How are our creative practices responding to situational changes and remote working? What are the trajectories of discourse that can arise from the idea of “productivity” in the creative field? What does “productivity” mean to us?

This project, conceived by Leon Tan, Shireen Marican, and Tian Lim, is a pilot programme of the Platform Projects Curatorial Award overseen by NTU CCA Singapore. Currently in its inaugural year, this award supports a curatorial project exploring Spaces of the Curatorial by recent graduates of NTU CCA Singapore and NTU ADM’s MA programme in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices, as well as NTU ADM’s research-oriented MA and PhD programmes.]]>
Denise Yap]]> Moses Tan]]> Ruby Jayaseelan]]> passthejpeg]]> Leon Tan]]> Shireen Marican]]> Tian Lim]]> Installation]]> Multimedia Installation]]> Sculpture]]> Photography]]> Print]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Why are they so afraid of a lotus?]]> Feminism]]> Identity]]> Politics]]> Trinh T. Minh-ha. Films., this research presentation showcases the Wattis Institute’s year-long research season on Trinh’s multifaceted practice as a filmmaker, writer and theorist. What does the promise of “speaking nearby” rather than “speaking about” look like today? What are the politics of hospitality? What are the problematics of “post-feminism,” and how do we challenge the West as the authoritative subject of feminist knowledge? Expanding the discursive orbit of these questions, the presentation features projects by artists Hồng-Ân Trương (US) and Genevieve Quick (US), and is accompanied by the online convening Mother Always Has a Mother, a result of the ongoing research collaboration between NTU CCA Singapore, Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), and the Wattis Institute.

Conceived by Kim Nguyen (Canada/United States), Curator and Head of Programs, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (Wattis), San Francisco.]]>
Hồng-Ân Trương]]> Genevieve Quick]]> Kim Nguyen]]> Rockbund Art Museum]]> CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts]]> Video]]> Installation]]> Print]]> North America]]>
Campur, Tolak, Kali, Bahagi, Sama Dengan (Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Equals) Solo Project by Roslisham Ismail aka Ise]]> Politics]]> Identity]]> Artistic Research]]> Campur, Tolak, Kali, Bahagi, Sama Dengan (Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Equals) is a solo project by late and cherished artist Roslisham Ismail aka Ise. In 2016 during a short trip in Germany, Ise jotted down in his notebook the title of a much-contemplated solo project: Campur, Tolak, Kali, Bahagi, Sama Dengan (Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Equals), to which he returned two years later when eventually, such an exhibition became possible in Kuala Lumpur. Ise saw in basic arithmetic operations and their specific properties, a reflection of his artistic process Actions are performed differently; the results could be the same. “Painters 100 years ago—” explains Ise in an interview “—also went to the market to buy vegetables and put them in a still life painting. For me it was the same. I went to the market and put the food on display. It’s just another way of working.”

An exhibition that takes place a little more than one year since the artist’s passing rightfully carries deeper significance and responsibility. While this exhibition was not conceived as a survey of Ise’s broad practice, it is defined, as the title suggests, by a reflexive scope. Although produced four years apart, the two bodies of work that shape this project intimately interconnect. Seamlessly they capture Ise’s art-making process, his distinctive ways of navigating the world and embedding the serendipity of life and social encounters in artistic practice.

Aimed to foster connections between artists and a new context, to provide much-needed time and space for reflection and encounters, artist-in-residence programmes represented an important catalyst in the development of Ise’s artistic practice. Their nature suit Ise’s method of working, social flair, endless curiosity and conceivably offered a means to take distance from a familiar environment and reflect on it from afar. A ramification of his residency project at Bangkok University Gallery, Operation Bangkok (2014) maps Ise’s encounters with the city and its inhabitants. From the abandoned New World Mall, Thieves’ Market, Crocodile Temple (Wat Chakrawat) to anti-government protests in Lumpini Park, to name a few, Ise guides us to places and events meaningful to those for whom Bangkok is home. We discover through Ise’s eyes and interactions, Bangkok as a living city rather than a tourist destination on the global market.

Fictional characters have been recurrent in Ise’s drawings informed by the visual vernacular of comics. In 2018, he started a collaboration with the comic book artist Ibrahim Hamid (Pak Him), whose work Ise knew since primary school. In the vicissitudes of life, they first met at the hospital in Kota Bharu, where both were undergoing dialysis treatment. Ise commissioned Pak Him to execute, following his instructions and study drawings, a series of graphic novel illustrations. These comics, displayed in mobile lightboxes, employ strategies of self-narration situating Ise inside the story as protagonist. Checked for hours at Christchurch’s customs under the odd suspicion of being a “drug designer”; mugged in Barcelona at knifepoint; stopped by the police in Jakarta after Malaysia won a regional cup in a football match against Indonesia but backed by his peers, and so on, Ise revived his micro-narratives through a fictionalised persona and Pak Him’s craftsmanship. Portraying himself within a world with many others, friends and strangers alike, Ise affirmed his continuous interest in the virtues and intricacies of the social.

The publication of this exhibition takes the format of a special issue of SentAp!, the magazine founded by curator Nur Hanim Khairuddin and Ise in 2005. Dedicated to Ise, this issue is designed by Yan; and it includes a welcome note by Ute Meta Bauer, a series of interviews by writer Tan Zi Hao with the curators Ark Fongsmut, Nur Hanim Khairuddin, and Russell Storer; an essay and a conversation with ruangrupa by curator Anca Rujoiu.

Roslisham Ismail aka Ise’s solo project is realised in collaboration with Ise parkingproject Foundation with the support of A+ Works of Art and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. The exhibition is presented in The Lab at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore between 16 January – 28 February 2021.]]>
Roslisham Ismail aka Ise]]> Ibrahim Hamid]]> Anca Rujoiu]]> Ise parkingproject Foundation]]> A+ Works of Art]]> Drawing]]> Installation]]> Southeast Asia]]> Oceania]]>
The Migrant Ecologies Project by Lucy Davis]]> Biodiversity]]> Nature]]> Materiality]]> Railtrack Songmaps, a project exploring competing claims to nature and culture that resound along the former Malaysian railway tracks at Tanglin Halt. For at least five decades, birds, nature lovers, songbird clubs, tree shrines, kampung gardeners and foragers have roosted and seeded themselves along the tracks, nurturing a tangled patch of urban wild that is currently undergoing redevelopment. The particular constellation of elements on display – photographs, Malay pantuns, embroidery on paper, and delicate airborne assemblages of images, cut-outs and coconut sticks – weave in and out of memories of Lim Kim Seng, who together with his brother Lim Kim Chua, joined the Nature Society of Singapore (NSS) as teenager. Both are now senior members of the NSS Bird Group. Kim Seng assisted The Migrant Ecologies Project in the identification of 105 bird species around Tanglin Halt. In an accompanying soundtrack he recalls how an early encounter with a kingfisher first drew him into a bird zone.

The Migrant Ecologies Project was founded in 2010 by artist, art writer, and educator Lucy Davis. Investigating movements and migrations of nature and culture in Southeast Asia and beyond, the project unfolds through collaborations with sound artists, photographers, scientists, and designers.

Lucy Davis has been an Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore from April to June 2017.]]>
Lucy Davis]]> Lim Kim Seng]]> Lim Kim Chua]]> Installation]]> Mixed Media]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Speed Reading by Sonya Lacey]]> Artistic Research]]> Politics]]> Sonya Lacey addresses the politics of communication by tampering with the concrete textures of language. Specifically conceived for The Vitrine, Speed Reading combines two bodies of work that put the sheer physicality of language to a test. Headlines from The Straits Times and Solar Print Tests (both 2017) result from a series of experiments, undertaken by the artist during her residency at NTU CCA Singapore, where she exposed newsprint paper to both sunlight and artificial light, while Dilutions, an earlier work from 2016, is a sculptural piece involving a movable metal typeface and the process of corrosion determined by lead oxide. Slowly warping over time, the material components entailed in the production and circulation of the written word, Speed Reading alters the boundaries of legibility and shakes the physical foundations of the transmission of knowledge.]]> Sonya Lacey ]]> Installation]]> Mixed Media]]> Southeast Asia]]> Creatif Compleks by Michael Lee]]> Spaces of the Curatorial]]> Labour]]> Fiction]]> Creatif Compleks (2018) is the culmination of Michael Lee’s reflection on the function of the artist’s studio within the arts ecology of a city. The work takes the form of a diagram about a hypothetical property development consisting of various configurations of the artist’s home/studio. The use of LED light strips, a popular fixture in advertising and interior design, alludes to latent apprehensions about the development and promotion of the arts in Singapore which today are, arguably, at a feverish pitch. Informed by myths and fantasies of artists in their studios, the work takes a speculative leap into the utopian and the absurd.]]> Michael Lee ]]> Installation]]> Mixed Media]]> Southeast Asia]]> impasse to verbal by Luca Lum]]> Urbanism]]> Public Sphere]]> Identity]]> impasse to verbal comes out from her continued engagement with the neighbourhood and from her speculations on the slippage between what things are, how they look, and what they do—which the artist defines as the play between description and disposition.

The work is a visual assemblage that merges wall notices, official zoning maps, personal routes, and various extracts sampled from the urban landscape. Through an intricate interplay of stratifications and transparencies, it creates an imploded visual environment where information is simultaneously displayed and withdrawn, revealed and cloaked. Steeped in a pervasive blue glow reminiscent of the light of electronic devices, the signs are left to float and clash into leaky configurations that shatter conventional patterns of readability.]]>
Luca Lum]]> Installation]]> Mixed Media]]> Southeast Asia]]>