Arts

The beauty of nature is inspiring for both artists and chefs alike. In this collaboration, Singaporean botanical artist Lucinda Law creates a series of piquant artworks to bring out the colours, shapes, and forms of edible plants. The paintings are co-curated by Executive Chef Vijayakant Shanmugam of Hilton Singapore, and feature some of Lucinda’s favourite botanical subjects such as pineapples, torch ginger flowers, bananas, and avocados. Dubbed Edible Beauty, the exhibition is a meaningful collaboration between three parties – Lucinda Law, Hilton Singapore’s Verde Kitchen, and non-profit charity organisation Food from the Heart – and will run for two months,…

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.” – C.S. Lewis There’s this famous French song by Édith Piaf titled “La Vie en Rose”, which translates to “life through rose-tinted glasses”. The singer croons about how falling in love has made everything around her seem beautiful. Singapore-based French artist Claire Deniau’s new exhibited work, Senses and Lenses, is poetically entwined with the plight of the modern painter. She has incorporated flawless mineral glass pieces that act as lenses in her paintings: looking…

Heads up! Hotel G’s latest art installations are enclosed just beneath, or rather, above your noses! When we first visited Hotel G, we were initially unable to find the gallery. After some clueless wandering, we were amazed – and mollified –to find the exhibition right before our eyes the entire time – up on the walls, hidden in plain sight. Perhaps it was the heat of a Saturday afternoon, or the fact that the gallery seemed to fit in with the hotel’s aesthetic so well that caused us to miss it. Either way, it was difficult for us to stop…

I could feel this production right before I watch it – from the entrance of Fort Canning Green, we were invited to enter the picnic spaces through “The Capitol” stage and have a sense of how it feels to navigate through the multi-dimensional set like the actors would. It was at this moment that I admired how the team’s Production Designer, Richard Kent, managed to utilise the stage not just to add more layers to the storytelling, but to make the play’s audiences feel a tad more special, as if telling us that we are not mere spectators of the…

2017 was a year Shakespeare aficionados could never forget: it was the only year Shakespeare in the Park could not be hosted due to the lack of funding. Instead, the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) sated the nation with its critically-acclaimed banner production Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress.  First held in 1997 with Hamlet, Shakespeare in the Park has been a recurring production theatre-goers look forward to. Since then, the production has staged notable Shakespeare works such as Much Ado About Nothing (2009), Romeo and Juliet (2016), The Tempest (2015), and The Merchant of Venice (2014). Explaining that the arts…

Brought to global attention through the efforts of the French explorer and artist, Louis Delaporte, Angkor Wat stands as one of the most spectacular architectural marvels achieved by any civilisation of antiquity in the world. The culture and art of the ancient Khmer held within its ruins are one of the riches heritage legacies that can be found in the Southeast Asian region. Despite capturing the western imagination for centuries, there has never been a major exhibition of Angkor Wat in Southeast Asia — that is, until now. Singapore’s very own Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) has collaborated with the Parisian…

One of the greatest ways to impart moral values on to the younger generation is through theatre, and what better way to do so by watching one of the most renowned fairytales come alive right in front of their eyes? Back for its second run since its debut in 2014, The Nightingale is an adaptation of the literary fairytale written by Danish author Hans Christian Anderson: when the Emperor of China (Leslie Tay) finds out that the song of the Nightingale (Kimberly Chan) is one of the most enchanting things in the world, he implored his Kitchen Maid (Natalie Yeap)…

Personal and endearing, IN FLUX is an artistic endeavour by New York-based Singaporean artist, Dr Wee Hong Ling. A parallel to her constant position of flux, the collection echoes her experiences of uncertainty as she navigates the physical, metaphysical, and humanistic worlds. The project is done in commemoration of International Women’s Day – where Dr Wee expresses her sentiments of the immense gender gap in the field of ceramic production. Less than 10% of the world’s collected works are from women, and Dr Wee saw this as an opportunity to challenge the stereotype. “Perhaps because I am a product of an…

Faces Places (French: Visages Villages) is the ultimate vlog, blown up onto the big screen and spanning 89 meaningful minutes. It’s the first film premiere taking place during the Francophone Festival in Singapore this year. Vlogs have exploded over the past few years – anyone can attest to that. Like all forms of entertainment, vlogs are based upon a story, though told in a personal format. Someone’s virgin expedition to the Everest base camp; a flight in an airline many can only dream of; or a couple smearing makeup on one another. No matter how simple or trite, the intimate…

What happens when electricity ceases in the city of Tokyo? Directed by veteran Japanese director Shinobu Yaguchi, who specialises in “feel-good, zero-to-hero” films, the plot of Survival Family revolves around a mysterious power outage that wipes out every modern service imaginable: from water and electrical supply to mobile phones and laptops, and even cars. Set in a dystopian Tokyo, the film explores the Suzuki family’s time of tribulation – sole breadwinner of the family, Yoshiyuki (Fumiyo Kohinata), has to play the patriarch role for his wife (Eri Fukatsu) and tech-addict children (Yuki Izumisawa and Wakana Aoi). Complacent and spoilt in…