Working with Singapore crochet artist Kelly Lim, Gucci brought Singapore into its world through a stunning feature wall in its newly reopened flagship store
Walking into the newly refurbished Gucci flagship store at The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands from the first floor, you’d be hard pressed to miss the visually arresting artwork placed right in the centre of the wall. Spanning five metres, the artwork is a riot of textures, colour and elements—a multitude of fabric crocheted higgledy-piggledy, holding together fragmented pieces of pink tile, and an intriguing centrepiece consisting of a lightbox framed by a Balinese carving with horse head curtain rods holding up a delicate lace curtain.
The brains behind this hodgepodge of visual elements is Singapore crochet artist Kelly Lim, who is known for her brilliant handmade works of art that have been featured in countless magazines, and even an Apple billboard on Orchard Road. Describing the artwork as “completely freestyle”, the creative iconoclast revealed to us that the entire process took three weeks to complete, with the help of three assistants and bucketloads of patience.
Here, the artist delves into her latest artwork in detail with us and explains the meaning behind the molto magnifico masterpiece that needs to be seen in person to be truly appreciated.
Let’s start again—five-metre wall...
Kelly Lim (KL): Yeah, so for this five-metre wall right, at the back, all of this was done with the help of three assistants. It took a total of three weeks and it’s completely freestyle. I almost like, didn’t plan for it, and we just went with the flow—and then all these fabric bits that you see is actually textile surplus from Gucci. I actually requested that because, in my works I like to reuse leftover material and of course, Gucci is also big on that. Yeah, so we just tried, you know, to incorporate all this textile surplus that they have. They actually sent it over from Italy. Yeah, and then like, I just stripped it up and included it to be part of the work. So you can see very obvious ones like the shiny one, and then they also had some silk satin, which is amazing, and I included that into the wall.
So I wanted to play the contrast of all these colours representing something very man made, and then all the crochet textures actually represent nature. This entire thing was inspired by the Gucci Aria video, which I’m sure you watched.
Yup, yup.
KL: So at the end when the doors open and there’s this like...
A new world and everything.
KL: A new world, yeah! So I wanted this window to be like an exit into the natural world, and all these tiles represent the urban city that we live in, and nature is actually coming through, like coming through the wall, embracing the man-made and calling out to us to just like, take a breath of fresh air, like, go into the other world. So the contrast is on the man-made and nature; and then for the crochet, the contrast is between the big and freestyle, against the curtain, which is very small, very intricate. Like, it needs to be very precise, and it adds like, you know, elegance and a kind of mystery around the exit to the other world.