Arts

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…

What happens when two people find each other again after years apart, only to be torn by the impossibility of being together? The gripping premise sets the stage for local theatre collective Bound Theatre’s sixth original production, The Taste of Water. Founded in 2011, Bound Theatre aims to explore the contradictory tensions of the human condition through their works, and The Taste of Water will be the company’s first step in fleshing out the inner states of characters. Written by Teng Zi Ying, the play follows two long-time friends who fell for each other after being years apart. In this…

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…

Having first brought the Pride Lands to the Lion City in 2011 to roaring success, The Lion King comes full circle as the Circle of Life takes centre stage once again at Marina Bay Sands. As a worldwide phenomenon, The Lion King is a cultural cornerstone and is a generation-defining symbol of childhood for many. Those who remember the animated film with fondness are sure to be captivated again by life that the theatrical production breathes into its characters. The world-building of The Lion King is impeccable in the thought and care that went into adapting the locales of the…

“Four or five moments, that’s all it takes,” Colossus declares towards the end of Deadpool (2016). He goes on to dictate, in his booming and richly accented voice, how it is just a few instances in life that make or break a hero. The choices made at those points are what will define someone; everything that happened before or after is irrelevant. As a film, Deadpool 2 has its share of those moments – four or five of them, in fact. These moments sure made their landings in triumphant superhero fashion, and in doing so, saved the day – just…

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…

Spoiler Alert: If you have not watched Avengers: Infinity War, get out of here and read our “Before You Watch” guide here. The Avengers: Infinity War ending title card slowly faded away, taking a part of me with it. Although it was the second time that I am witnessing it, its effect was equally as profound as the first time. It is almost unheard of that a movie with such a huge global impact could leave such a strong impression on a personal level. Although most of us have been mere spectators in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), we became…

The theme of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was thoroughly explored with two ingenious exhibitions – A-DROYX and Human Version – which were exhibited for the Voilah! French Festival Singapore 2018. A-DROYX by Mathieu Briand was an exhibit that showcased his assembly of androids in his laboratory studio. It is a testament to the fact that the story behind creation can be more interesting than the final product itself. To call the space in A-DROYX messy would be an understatement – the circuits, tools, and makeshift limbs strewn all over were an immediate indication to viewers of the nature of the undertaking.…

The human mind continuously seeks self-expression: this is an enduring desire that has only strengthened in tandem with the evolution of technology as new forms of self-expression are invented. Visual mediums, in particular, catch on especially fast and the invention of photography has seen its meteoric rise towards occupying an integral part of everyday life in the 21st century. Most of us would likely assume that fawning over celebrity Instagram Stories and be making duck faces in our selfies are relatively modern phenomena, gaining recognition as cultural cornerstones with the prevalence of youth culture in the modern global society. The…