Dear friends and colleagues
My friends in Indonesia and the Philippines tend to be dismissive of Singaporean artists, believing them to lack passion and to be unduly molly coddled with residencies and Arts Council grants. That isn’t fair: there are several interesting and serious artists in Singapore. Singapore is a very strange place, and as a supposed model of the technocratic future it offers its artists real problems to kick against.
Adeline Kueh whose work in the Singapore Eye exhibition I mentioned last week
is like many Singaporeans Malaysian in origin. When the old railway station, an art deco building opened in 1932 and which is arguably the finest building in Singapore, was about to be closed in 2011 she put on her mother’s old clothes and posed on the platform to evoke that other time when the train linked Singapore to Malaysia. Lost memories and identities are a troubled issue in Singapore where modernisation has been ruthlessly imposed, whilst old buildings, old cemeteries and local languages are erased.
Adeline Kueh, En Passant, 2011-ongoing, photographs.
The work by Donna Ong that the image for the Singapore Eye tote bag and mugs were purloined from was Garden of Waiting Virgins. Images of the Virgin Mary and Archangel Gabriel snipped from Renaissance art books were placed in a “garden” of paper plants similarly snipped delicately from botanical books. Hortus Conclusus (enclosed garden) we may remember was always a metaphor for the Virgin. The work is both decorative in a miniaturist manner and an evocation of private spiritual devotion. Alas, you wouldn’t know this from the catalogue to Singapore Eye where the images are presented without any informational or interpretative text. A short artist’s statement tells us little. Without its original context most installation art needs some explanation or preamble.
Donna Ong, Garden of Waiting Virgins, 2012
Pages 80-81, Singapore Eye
(Nor is her work on the cover, The Meeting, explained in any way. It derives, for the record, from a project she did on the friendship dolls exchanged between Japanese and US children before the outbreak of World War II, later expanded by her with the addition of rather gloomy videos of dolls lurking, waiting in unfurnished rooms.)
Well, what, you may be asking, is this Singapore Eye? It is the sixth in a series of exhibitions that are accompanied by lavishly illustrated catalogues: Korean (twice) Indonesian, Hong Kong, Malaysian, Singapore. Or perhaps we should rather say that the exhibitions are the excuse for big, glossy books.
I recall in 2002 when Phaidon published Vitamin P, a book of 100 painters, chosen from nominations sent in by 69 critics and curators, each represented by 4 pages of colour plates, a friend working at one art school refused to let it to enter the library. To him it was disgusting: more like an up-market mail order catalogue than a serious book. It seems to be the model for these Eye books. But at least, one notes, each artist in Vitamin P was given a text by a serious writer whereas here the 61 artists get nothing but a short artist’s statement.
These “Eye” books haven’t met with universal approval despite being launched as part of a charity (Global Eye sponsored by Prudential) to promote Asian art. Quite apart from some bizarre omissions – a book on Indonesian art without Masriadi, the only painter with an international reputation – “Can you be serious?” – they have lacked critical and contextual material. The 2014 Malaysian Eye attracted particular opprobrium and as a result some artists declined to be nominated for the Prudential Eye Awards which have evolved in parallel.
Such faults in previous “Eyes” seem to become more pronounced with this Singapore version. Firstly, in a smallish and compact country the consensus of who is important is reasonably clear. Any reasonable selection would include Amanda Heng, Tang Da Wu, Cheo Chai-Hiang, Ming Wong, Matthew Ngui, Alan Oie and Heman Chong. These are important artists who have shown at Venice, Dokumenta, etc and had a major impact on other artists. (The absence of Heman’s Chong is however not surprising given the blog he ran deriding what he saw as the inadequacy of the Singapore Art Museum when Tan Boon Hui, co–editor of this book, was director.) What unites all these seven rejected artists is their intelligence, apparently not needed here.
For a nation with such high educational standards it is strange that whereas previous “Eyes” had five essays, some of which were good, here there are only two, one by Tan Boon Hui and a short essay on the decline of artist run spaces by Jason Wee, himself curator at the excellent Grey Projects. These essays are preceded by some cheesy touristic photos of Singapore, some featuring the Art Science Museum where the Singapore Eye exhibition was held. (It is the clunky building like a white glove on bottom right of the image I have attached. It may be “iconic” but, as you probably expect, the exhibition spaces inside are awful.)
Page 12, Singapore Eye
Most disturbingly, the images are shoveled into the pages with little respect for their meaning or context. There are many good art works here (and some weak ones) and they deserve to be treated with more respect than bargain-basement eye-candy.
Another weird aspect of this project is that only seventeen of the seventy-two artists are shown in the exhibition. It is as if they have been designated first and second division (or should I say premier and championship?) Those in the second division were not even invited to the private view – which seems unduly mean and churlish.
Canapés for the First Division No canapés for the Second Division
When there is so little published on Art from South-East Asia this book is a great disappointment and a missed opportunity. In 2007 the ICA at Lasalle College published a book edited by Eugene Tan, Russell Storer and Gunalan Nadarajan, Contemporary Art in Singapore. Even though it is eight years old and only discussed 37 artists it still gives a better introduction to art in Singapore – apart from some substantial essays each artist was introduced by a thoughtful short essay referring to their work.
It’s frustrating and its annoying. Next week I’ll tell you about three especially interesting artist’s projects.
See you then. Have a good week!
Tony