Exhibitions

The Chinese character 界 (jiè), the theme of this year’s Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), is multi-layered in its meanings, referring to both the world and the universe at large, and physical and non-physical boundaries. It also alludes to the endless worlds of imagination, where such boundaries are more porous and even erasable. (L-R) Festival Director Yeow Kai Chai, Guest-of-Honour Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, and Transport Mr Baey Yam Keng, and Chairman of SWF steering committee, Professor Kwok Kian Woon Its opening ceremony song under the same name already set the stage, with homegrown musician Kelvin…

What comes to mind when “satirical cartoon” is mentioned? The common tendency is to associate them with The New Yorker or other famous western comics of similar genres. The latest special exhibition, Between the Lines – The Chinese Cartoon Revolution, aims to highlight this lesser-known history by taking us on a time travel back to the golden age of Chinese political cartoons that emerged at the end of the Qing Dynasty. The exhibition space of Between the Lines – The Chinese Cartoon Revolution. You may be as surprised as I am to find out that witty commentary-styled cartoons in Singapore…

The sustainable light festival will be returning with its bicentennial edition from 28 January to 24 February 2019. With artists from 36 countries – including Singapore – presenting their artwork proposals based on the theme ‘Bridges of Time’ at next year’s festival, this edition will also mark the largest response ever to the call for artwork submissions. An artist impression of City Gazing Singapore by VOUW (Mingus Vogel and Justus Bruns) from The Netherlands for i Light Singapore 2019 Organiser of i Light Singapore and chief executive officer of Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Mr Lim Eng Hwee, said: “This special…

Indeed, no words in the vernacular can describe this great event… the Singapore Night Festival 2018 has returned. Our previous article covered some of the Singapore Night Festival’s Night Lights; this time, we bring to you the lowdown on the Festival Village, and what really stood out in this extravaganza. While the Singapore Night Festival has ended on 25 August, we reminiscence on some of the highlights that skirted the heart of Singapore’s town area. Late Night Texting brought some of our city’s brightest sparks in the theatre sphere at Centre 42, with a collection of over 30 plays by…

“X represents infinity, and my dream is to showcase most of these extraordinary artworks that embody this ‘X-factor’ so that the audience learns more than they think they see,” said Billy Mork, the founder and chief curator of X EDITION. Realising both his dreams and those of photography enthusiasts here in Singapore, the inaugural X EDITION art fair will showcase sculptures, installations, media art, and allow the general public to have an open dialogue with famed photographers such as Hokkaido-based contemporary artist and photographer Season Lao, New York-based fine-art photographer Stephen Schaub, and many more. An exposure from Billy Mork…

Having travelled across multiple American states and covering a distance of more than 6,000 kilometres along the China-North Korean border, the first Singaporean Nobel Peace Prize photographer, Sim Chi Yin, tells her compelling story through a series of photos of our time today on nuclear weapons. Titled “Most People Were Silent”, her solo exhibition juxtaposes nuclear sites in North Korea – the only country to test nuclear weapons in the 21st century – with the United States, the first country to have ever tested and used them. The front of the exhibition. Working with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear…

The Singapore Night Festival (SNF) 2018 returns with Bring On The Night, a nine-day long festival celebrating Singapore’s arts and heritage scene. The eleventh edition of this spectacular light festival sees the best of Singapore’s artists, with a range of exhibits that promise to dazzle and delight. Running from 17 to 25 August, this fiesta includes a melange of performances and programmes, as well as the much-anticipated Night Lights, one of the highlights of the festival. An extravaganza that encapsulates the pulse and vibrancy of the city’s arts scene, the famed Night Lights comprise a variety of interactive light installations…

Conventional ways of thinking about art, science and engineering would typically lead us to conceive of them as separate, mutually exclusive realms. Dutch artist Theo Jansen, however, seamlessly straddles their boundaries with his world-famous sculptures and inorganic life – the Strandbeests. Conceptualised initially as a solution to global warming, the Strandbeests are synonymous with the iconic PVC pipes that they’re made of. The unique form of artificial life is birthed from an artistic application of engineering principles. The Strandbeests posses a looming grace especially when they’re seen in movement, walking in unique gaits reminiscent of real-life animal behaviour. Aided by…

Private art collection and commercial art galleries are definitely not the first things that come to mind when we consider art culture in Singapore, mainly due to the prohibitive costs of pursuing art ownership. Often associated with snobbery and ostentatious bourgeoisie tendencies – no thanks to popular culture – private art collection and commercial art galleries are thus often given neither attention nor understanding in the public domain. The question remains however: just what kind of place do they have Singapore’s art culture? Mazel Galerie Singapore’s director, Kevin Troyano Cuturi, demystifies this and more in an exclusive tour of the…

Serious photography in Singapore remains relatively nascent in the public consciousness and still suffers from a lack of mainstream recognition as art. This isn’t surprising given that the average Singaporean either associates it with high-brow culture consumption, or doesn’t deem photography to hold enough intrinsic value to be recognised as art. Anyone with a camera can take a photo – so why should it be art? Such obtuse views are repudiated with X EDITION, Asia’s largest hotel photography art fair, through its specially curated exhibition: Marang: The 1950s in Colour and Monochrome. Co-presented in collaboration with Canvas Gallery, the exhibition…