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.

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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,�

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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.”

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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�

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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.

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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.

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