Saturday, September 27th, 2008...10:06 pm

Singapore Biennale 2008 Part 2 - South Beach Development

Jump to Comments

There were debates in the papers recently on what qualifies as art.

Is the sculpture of David in his naked stance confronting Goliath art? Most will agree. But few will view the artist who exhibits his urine in a bottle as an act of defiance (in the spirit of the art movement- dadaism) ART.

Well, if i have to pay, it’d better be great art.

Singapore Biennale- South Beach Development

I rather enjoy south beach development, a cluster of quaint colonial buildings and the relationship with the art pieces it houses, adding colour and depth to the biennale.

P.S. It is better to go later in the day for there are a number of outdoor installations that can only be viewed in darkness.

Facade of the South Beach Development

Teh Tarik
The installation ‘Teh Tarik’ comes across as fluffy and frothy as the imagery it conjures with tea cups strung together as ‘pull’ tea (Malay tea). It is suggested that ‘the core notion is (that the) connections between art and non-art are maintained…harks back not only to a time when such poetry could exist in normal conversation… composed in the artist’s mind as referential- a nostalgic hint at a bygone era’ where ‘Singapore and Malaya were undergoing radical changes’ and where ‘people held ideals and felt committed to causes’.
This piece thus supposedly conjures nostalgia for the time in local history where art is more plausible, that new found wealth and stability  brings about complacency and stagnancy in ideals?
Drill Hall

 The artist ‘creates lines and shapes that are coherently visible from only one point of view…through this disjuncture the viewer is encouraged to recognise and explore the space in other ways’.

the corridor

Showcasing part of the worn building, still steep in colonial charms.

Impossibility of the superstring theory, aka
“How much space can a single line occupy?’

The entire drawing installation is composed of one continuous line that does not intersect with itself and must have no breaks. Interspected between the topography of lines, the artist wax lyrical on his state of mind with scribbles like ‘what’s the point? You’ll never get it of you dont stop drawing lines!’ Funny!

Impossibility of the superstring theory

 ’ “Society is part of the futility of art”, says Foucault. For impossibility of the Superstring theory, as the title suggests, futility is the main point’.

Address

In ‘Address’, 140 ‘cubes’ of personal belongings are used to construct a room, objects collected from Filipinos who had migrated to Australia presenting ‘an overwhelming sense of shared and varied lived human experience’, symbolising relocation and also abandonment.

Address

When and if you shall decide to uproot yourself, whether out of necessity or a need for changes, what would you bring along? Parcels of household and luxury goods are sent globally from those who have uprooted themselves. What can a person send to make up for the absence of their presence?

Hair Salon

This is an interesting piece. You cant see yourself in the mirror! And that is because the ‘reflection’of the room is actually an identical room created symmetrically behind the mirror, ‘making us wonder about reality..(and if we have the) ability to recognise the fake amongst the real’. Timely piece.

Stop for God’s sake
Stop for God’s sake

Shoman, a native from Palestine showed video stills of the conflict and violence in her country, reflecting the message of ‘ tolerance among the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which are contradicted by this tragic reality’.

Private Moon

This is a ‘visual poem about a moon that has descended from the sky and is living a peaceful existence with a man’; this collection of photos is both surreal and rich with imagination, ‘perhaps a phantasmagoria’.

Private Moon

The sculpture of the moon hanging on a tree would bring a sense of realism to the collective work when viewed as a whole, esp at night.

Swing

Constructed using neon tubes, this swing evokes a sense of wonderment and awe as you stare spellbounded by this apparatus of childhood. Like the years that has passed, the fragile, glowing swing is as unattainable.

September sweetness

 A Buddhist pagoda made of sugar symbolise the meltdown, the political conflict in Myanmar in 2007, and its key ingredient, sugar ’signal the slow loss of a systematic structure that has been in place for centuries’. The interest is thus not in the structure but its changes overtime, as it will be ravaged by the elements and ants, parallels to be drawn to the turmoil to the artist’s country. And the choice in using ’sugar as material …to percolate the bitterness’.

other memorable pieces:
1. Peace is a prerequisite for happiness my little people let’s live in peace! Oh my dears! (video)
2. The Breathing Room (installation)
3. Distorted Reality (video installation)

0 Comments

Filed under Theatre, arts, films and books, events and tagged , ,



Leave a Reply