Post on 20-Jan-2023
CONTENTS12
IN JAN/FEBEditorial
121 ART DIRECTORY
China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan
28 SINGAPORE’S POTPOURRI By Cristina Sanchez K.
26SINGAPORE ARTIST PROFILES
Benjamin Ziggy Lee, Jacquelyn Soo, Shah Rizzal, Mathew Teo, Mintio, Natasha Wei, Nur Azam Ismail40
STATE OF CONTEMPORARY By Bharti Lalwani.46
FLUX AS MEDIUM Charles Lim. By Cristina Sanchez K.52
I’M AN ARTIST, NOT THE ORACLE Heman Chong. By Cristina Sanchez K. 60
AMPLIFYING THE VAPOURS Ho Tzu Nyen. 70
SOME THOUGHTS ON A SINGAPOREAN SOUNDSCAPE By Song-Ming Ang.
REVIEWS76
FROM THE OUTSET, THE 2012 TAIPEI BIENNIAL IS STRONG: STRANGE YET TIMELY, UNWIELDY BUT STILL MEMORABLE 2012 Taipei Biennial at Taipei Fine Arts Museum. By Cesar Reyes
82SOME SAY TRANSCENDENCE AND SOME SAY EXPERIENCE Hong Kong Arts Center. By Caroline Ha Thuc.
86BUSY LIFE THROUGH CONSTANT BROADCAST ParaSite Art Space. By Caroline Ha Thuc.
90A LOCAL HERO WITH UNIVERSAL TALENT Santiago Bose. By Cristina Sanchez K.
14 ON THE SPINE
Missionary by Yuk King Tan
138 SMΛPe
Artist index
10CONTRIBUTORS
19IN & OUT
News
104 CALENDAR
China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan
143 BACK PAGE
MOVIES TO WATCH Suggested by Wee Li Lin.
8 PIPELINE� Jan/Feb 2013
40 PIPELINE� Jan/Feb 2013
Singapore, a geographically well placed island on the southern tip of the Malay peninsular,
serves as a meeting point between historical and contemporary trade routes. It’s an island that
has welcomed at its shores Arab, Indian, Chinese, Portugese and British merchant fleets. The
fertile confluence of rich heritage and complex intermixed cultures has therefore had natural
reflections in local art practice. Educational institutions such as School of the Arts, Lasalle and
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, performance theatres such as Esplanade, art-fair and gallery
structures along with several museums speak of a city where art and creativity are acknowl-
edged as integral. But this journey towards being a rennaissance city in the making has not
had a straightforward trajectory, nor would it have been possible without the efforts of the first
generation of conceptual artists who practised in the absence of infrastructure, patronage from
STATE OF CONTEMPORARYBy Bharti Lalwani
collectors or an art market. The late 1980s and 90s evoke a vivid period of performances out-
side museums – performances that sought pluralism and radical hope, and that warrant a quick
recollection in order to gain perspective on the way things stand today.
Artist Tang Da Wu (b.1943), a central figure in the development of alternative art practices in
Singapore, established The Artists Village (TAV) in 1988 in a small kampong (village) in Sem-
bawang. The initiative brought together seminal artists such as Lee Wen (b.1957), Amanda
Heng (b.1951), Vincent Leow (b.1961), Zai Kuning (b.1964) and Koh Nguang How (b.1963),
among others. A space that allowed for communal interaction and collaboration, TAV held
avant-garde performances, exhibitions and festivals, the most memorable of which were The
Happenings (1989) and The Time Show (1990), a 24-hour performance. By 1990, however,�
41PIPELINE� Jan/Feb 2013
the community’s experimental interventions were called to a halt when its land was repos-
sessed by the government for redevelopment. This momentary displacement did not slow the
group down. For instance, in 1992, Vincent Leow’s performed the socially engaged Money
Suit. Wearing a suit sewn entirely of fake dollar bills complete with a hat and a pair of shoes,
Leow hopped about as a toad picking up currency with his mouth and dropping it into his hat.
The enactment activated a superstition within Chinese culture that considered the toad with a
coin in its mouth a sign of fortune and good luck.
Leow recalls, “Money Suit was performed in a warehouse, outside commercial gallery space,
accompanied by an installation. Looking back at the work produced and presented, it was
an experiment with both the medium – art performance – that I worked with, and with the
unconventional space – an abandoned warehouse – exploring and presenting alternative art
practice with the rest of the artists in the event. In those days, it helped a lot when the artists
got together through shared opportunities; the process was stimulating and compelling.”
42 PIPELINE� Jan/Feb 2013
In 1993, TAV collaborated with 5th Passage, an artist-run space, to host a performance that
became extensively controversial. Performance artist Josef Ng snipping his pubic hair with
his back towards an audience composed mainly of the supportive art community has become
a well-documented and publicly discussed incident that marked a pivotal point when public
funding was cut for performance arts. In order to address this issue, Tang Da Wu found a public
moment with president Ong Teng Cheong in 1995. Handing the president a card that read “I
am an artist. I am important” and giving him a blazer to wear that stated “Dont give money to
the arts”, Da Wu secured the participation of the head of state in his performance, which made
him complicit in an act then deemed more or less illegal, as it was neither scripted nor vetted
by the authoroties. Just eight days later, an official statement said that more funds would be
allotted to the arts.
Also further extending the boundaries of contemporary art and performance at the time was
artist Lee Wen. Performing in public spaces while appropriating the colour yellow to solicit an
understanding of ethnicity, culture and identity, Lee took on multi-disciplinary approach to art-
making that invited public participation. For instance, his response to the ban on chewing gum
in 1992 was the series Chewing Gum Paintings (2005, shortly after the ban was lifted to allow
medical gum), a set of paintings completed by the audience using the gum provided.
All these instances demonstrate an irreverence to the art market; these artists were looking for
critical encounters in the absence of private or public funding or commercial spaces, and in the
presence of a strengthening artist community that was open to taking a risk. It was a decade
that called for a different sensibility, according to Iola Lenzi, a critic and curator who moved to
Singapore from London in the early 90s and curated the first comprehensive Southeast Asian
show at Singapore Art Museum, Negotiating Home, History, Nation, in 2011.
“In the early 90s, the Singapore scene felt quite different. Being a young curator was
pioneering in the sense that the profession barely existed. Contemporary art was experimental
and dominated by performance. No one talked about the market and due to the collaborative
nature of performance, Singapore artists were always trawling round Southeast Asia. I’d run�
43PIPELINE� Jan/Feb 2013
into them in Yogyakarta, Chiang Mai and Hanoi. Amanda Heng ran some performance work-
shops for young artists in Hanoi years ago and left a lasting impression there. And by then Lee
Wen was already a well-known figure around the region. Vincent Leow, too, was another whom
one bumped into here and there. There was probably more esprit de corps between artists and
curators, simply because there were fewer of us, and art was not the glamorous commodity it
has become. I remember hanging my own shows, hand-carrying all the work around Southeast
Asia and putting up big shows for less than $5,000.”
Koh Nguang How, an artist and researcher who collected newspaper clippings related to art
happenings from 1987 to 2000, points out the lack of resources for local and regional art. His
archive was almost acquired by The National Art Gallery, but missed out for lack of budget. He
is now meticulously uploading scans on a Facebook page titled Singapore Art Archive Project,
which currently holds 191 albums and 6,856 photos.
44 PIPELINE� Jan/Feb 2013
Page 41Journey of a Yellow Man No.11: Multi-culturalism by Lee Wen, 1997. Inkjet print on archival paper, 89 x 63 cm. Artist collection.
Page 42Another Woman (detail) by Amanda Heng, 1996. C-print, 101.6 x 127 cm. Courtesy Singapore Art Museum collection.
LeftMoney Suit by Vincent Leow, 1996. Mixed media, from the Imaging Selves exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum. Courtesy Singapore Art Museum collection.
Tang Da Wu, Vincent Leow, Lee Wen and Amanda Heng have all shown in major exhibitions
at public museums; grants are available for younger artists to help their fledgling solo ca-
reers; and Gillman Barracks, a new art destination, hopes to attract audiences after securing
a dozen galleries and planning an art centre. One of the tenants, gallerist Michael Janssen,
says: “Opening a gallery in Singapore is a special opportunity for me to deepen my interest
in contemporary art from Southeast Asia – Indonesia especially but not only – and develop a
bridge between my programmes in Berlin and here, exchanging exhibitions between Eastern
and Western artists in an attempt to connect the different cultures.” But it’s not all good
news: the state has set up support structures for the arts, but only so long as the bound-
aries of censorship are not encroached; artists are less likely to be experimental in case
their grants are revoked and galleries are likely to make safe commercial wagers instead of
encouraging artists to take a risk with their creativity.
Censorship still occurs; during Art Stage Singapore 2011, Gallery Maskara was asked to dis-
continue a performance by artist T Venkanna, while Simon Fujiwara’s installation Welcome to
Hotel Munbar was altered by museum authorities without the artist’s consent and remained
closed through the Singapore Biennale in 2011. The government has also taken a few steps
back by announcing that Singapore will not have a pavillion at the 2013 Venice Biennale.
On the other hand, gallery Valentine Willie’s 2010 Singapore Survey exhibition: Beyond LKY,
referring to Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kwan Yew, went off without a hitch, as did
the Thai artist Vasan Sitthiket’s exhibition at Yavuz Fine Art, which displayed multiple life-size
statues of the artist in the nude sporting a full erection. Even a re-enactment of Josef Ng’s
1993 performance by Loo Zihan was permitted to go ahead in February 2012.
45PIPELINE� Jan/Feb 2013