Ongoing
When it comes to nostalgia, food definitely plays a role, often being at the centre of our memories with family, friends, milestones, celebrations, and experiences that are dear and personal to us. Artist Yam Shalev’s second solo show in Singapore, Familiar Smells, showcases just that. Through still-life paintings of plants, flowers, and food, he tells the story of his life as an observer rather than a participant. Being fascinated with objects and how they are organically arranged in our everyday lives, he developed a sense of curiosity about how environments play a part in the emotions and atmosphere in both small and big life events, documenting them on the canvases that you’ll be able to see at the exhibition.
Reorientation | The Space In-Between
Reorientation speaks about third culture in the form of paintings, sculptures, and photography by artists that draw inspiration from their daily lives as citizens living between cultures. When borders are blurred and traditions are fused with one another, meaning and memory coincide to create a new language or identity transcending socio-geographical norms. The morphing of their identities are then expressed through artistic expressions. Expect to see works by Miya Ando, Tayeba Begum Lipi, Hiroshi Senju, Lalla Essaydi, Zheng Lu, Karen Knorr, and more.
The Uncommon by Sue Gray
Humans come in all shapes and sizes – and so do bottles. Growing up in South Africa in the 1970s, artist Sue Gray witnessed firsthand the inequality and oppression in the country. It has forged her belief that every human has the right to love and be loved, and to thrive irregardless of their race, colour, age, religion or sexual orientation.
Living Pictures: Photography In Southeast Asia
Photography was first introduced to the world in 1839 and has since changed the way we view and document things. The exhibition Living Pictures zooms in on the impact photography has had on Southeast Asia. Follow the journey from when it first made its entrance into our region via the European colonists and used as a tool for archival, to the role it played in capturing portraits in the early 20th century. Then, fast forward to now, as it slowly advances into a medium for art and conceptualisation and eventually evolving to adapt to our current smartphone era into the kinds of photography we know today.
Familiar Others: Emiria Sunassa, Eduardo Masferré And Yeh Chi Wei, 1940s–1970s
For the most part, modern artists living in this day and age look to “Others” for inspiration, emphasising differences and referencing exotic stereotypes from prehistoric cultures that we have no access to. Familiar Others explores this by questioning just who “the Other” is, and what it means to represent people who are different from us. The exhibition also acts as a platform to discuss the contemporary implications of these works by featuring the responses of eight commissioned creatives – artists, writers, musicians, scholars – and using them as the artwork descriptions instead, in turn challenging the museum’s conventional ways of labelling.
Liu Kuo-sung: Experimentation as Method
You don’t want to miss the largest exhibition by a Singaporean public museum yet, dedicated to ink master Liu Kuo-sung’s 70 year old artistic career spanning from the 1950s to the 2020s. Painter Liu spent his career discovering and advocating the modernisation of traditional Chinese ink painting through his art practice and writings. Showcasing 60 selected works that trace his journey and evolution as an artist, the exhibition highlights his innovations in modern Chinese ink painting and how he went beyond the brush to explore the physicality of ink and paper.
