Art(cademic) Review Of A Social Phenomena

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Art(cademic) Review of a Social Phenomena … The Singapore Art Show 2009 SCYA’s arts/culture correspondent, Patricia Ho reports at the opening; mucha-do about something, she says … The recent twin/co-joined openings of the exhibitions Curating Lab: 100 Objects (Remixed) and Air-Conditioned Recession hosted at converted warehouse spaces of Tanjong Pajar Distripark opened with a novel bang; kicking off this year’s Singapore Art show with much aplomb … Brought to you (the discerning audience) by the curatorial vision of Heman Chong, Ahmad Mashadi and Lim Oinyi, 100 Objects (Remixed) features an amalgam of eclectic works/productions of an inter-disciplinary nature. This is in tandem with the curatorial intention of not demarcating any visible boundaries that would categorize the mythic or exhibitionary nature of the art-work (or the artist), the focus instead (as Heman insists) is on collecting … There is certainly a desire to do away with the fixedness of things, of the documentation of a certain social flux in Alicia Pan’s Void-deck series of 8

whereby the artist takes on an anthological stance by capturing/photologging the going-ons within the individual flats/spaces of a HDB estate; not of the mundane (as were the concerns of modernity’s ‘realism’) but of a certain ‘anarchitecture’; of exposing the negative architectural space of everpresent fixtures. The same documentational (sans ethnographic/scientific) approach lends itself to Lee Siow Wei’s Petri dish of 16 which features minisucule drawings ‘captured’ within glass encasings by which magnifying instruments are needed to indeed clarify them as drawings, not insects! Very apt indeed Siow Wei! On a deeper note (my discerning audience), Alan Oei’s Open Fields featuring a video series of 3 is commentary on the impact that politics/policies governing (public) spaces have on the integral human environment/consciousness — where impromptu proletariat-driven activities (like soccer/cricket at ‘the field outside Kembangan MRT’) (cannot be left to blossom into an underground AC Milan!) but often have to make way for bourgeois agendas promoting economic virtuosity; with such bureaucratic red-tap

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denying the release of pent-up social tension; what-a-to-do .. ? Depressing but true … From here we move on to another curatorially resonant work titled Let’s Chat by local veteran artist Amanda Heng where plucking tow gays becomes a situational production or re-production (reproduced over the years in various contexts) yet never losing its succinct relevance because the re-collecting so to speak is not of tow gays but our individual/collective social bond. I had the most interaction with this work (with Amanda serving me her specialty tea!). Woot! Overall, the impact of this co-joined exhibition is deep and (surely) lasting for the observer willing to be (or at least act!) engaged because of its multifarious and inter-disciplinary nature that facilitates/exposes layers of understanding and avenues that one might not obtain on a smaller scale venture; bolstered of course, by an openended curatorial direction encouraging this dialogic effect or as Heman best puts it, “ .. dialogues upon dialogues. Interactions upon interactions”. Wonderful.

Fig. 1. Tow Gay chat.

Fig. 2**. More works.

Fig. 3. “Dude! Where’s my dinner?!” *Photographs courtesy of Rachel Chan. **Photograph from source, http://blogs.todayonline.com/forartssake/tag/singapore-artshow/