TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 44

24th November 2015

Dear friends and colleagues

I was in Jogja (Jogjakarta or Yogyakarta) last weekend to see some artists and go to the Jogja Biennale.

Before I went to the...

The new National Gallery in Singapore opens this week and last Friday I attended a pre-opening opening. I want to talk about that, but first I want to say something about what my old friend Brian Allen – who used to run the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art in London – has been saying. (see ...

Dear friends and colleagues

I have just got back from Taipei in Taiwan. We normally think of it as Chinese – the PRC certainly does! – but in a way it is also South-East Asian.

It is the “urheimat” from whence came all the Austronesian people (called...

Dear friends and colleagues

Do you hedge your bets? I often do.

I was reminded of this the other day when I left the HDB in Hougang where I stay when in Singapore, to go to work in the National Library. There was a banging and a crashing of drums and gongs. I looked around and there was a void deck funeral going on. That familiar...

Dear friends and colleagues

Last Friday I went to Mo Space in Manila. I wanted to see the show by Nilo Ilarde and, of course, chat to my friend Mawen Ong who runs the space.

Ten or fifteen years ago there were quite a few alternative spaces in Manila. The market was very conservative and the commercial galleries were unadventurous. So, the...

Dear friends and colleagues

Many apologies for the delay in writing this week

After a long period of writing in the hills I came up to Manila and am busying myself doing gallery and studio visits. Yesterday I went to the retrospective of the most famous, or certainly the most popular, artist in the Philippines Bencab at the Metropolitan...

Dear friends and colleagues

I’ve been in bed with a fever the last week so I haven’t been out much.

Of course, I have been thinking and remembering things, but as is normal when one is ill, in a rather discontinuous and inconclusive way.

One thing I was thinking of was an exhibition...

Dear friends and colleagues

I have been taking a lot of my books out of storage, unpacking them and shelving them in my new library. Amongst them was the catalogue for the first Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art held in Brisbane in 1993.

Many participants, especially the critics and curators from South-East Asia, have talked of...

Dear friends and colleagues

Apropos last week’s letter in which I talked about the lack of an extended audience for culture, and specifically contemporary art in Singapore an old friend the New York artist Stephen Ellis responded, ‘That’s quite interesting, Tony. The Asian percentage of students at SVA [Studio of Visual Arts, New York] these days is about 40%, some classes are entirely...

Dear friends and colleagues

I want to talk about a paucity of literary culture.

Bangsa membaca adalah Bangsa berjaya.

When I was in London last month and travelling on the tube I noticed how many people were reading either books, magazines or newspapers. If you look at the snap I took...