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11 June 2005:
Artistic Director Fumio Nanjo
Helms Singapore Biennale 2006
4 September to 12 November 2006
(Vernissage: 1 to 3 September 2006)
Singapore's first visual arts biennale, Singapore Biennale 2006 (SB2006), will be
curated by the highly accomplished Fumio Nanjo. Nanjo is internationally reputed for
having headed the programming and adjudication of major art events throughout the world.
Commissioner for the Taipei Biennale in 1998 and Japan Pavilion at the 1997 Venice
Biennale, he co-founded the Yokohama Triennale in 2001. Nanjo was also a jury member for
the Turner Prize by Tate Gallery (1998) and Artes Mundi Prize in Wales (2004), and the
prestigious Leon d'Or Prize at the Venice Biennale this year. Nanjo is the Deputy Director
of Tokyo's Mori Art Museum and lectures at the Keio University in Japan. As Artistic
Director of SB2006, Nanjo will chart the direction and programming for the iconic event
that will boost Singapore's position as a global visual arts hub.
"The Singapore Biennale marks another milestone in the rich history of Singapore's visual
arts development. Since the era of our pioneering artists, our artists have captured the
imagination of the international arts community, receiving invitations to participate in
prestigious visual art biennales and events. Today, over 500 exhibitions are held in
Singapore every year. Visuals arts activity and appreciation here have reached a level of
sophistication that will be further enhanced with the Biennale," says Lee Suan Hiang,
Chairman of the Singapore Biennale 2006 Steering Committee, who is also the Chief
Executive Officer of the National Arts Council. He adds, "Fumio-san has extensive
experience in curating, commissioning, as well as critiquing several key arts projects in
Asia and other parts of the world. He also has excellent understanding and knowledge of
Southeast Asian culture and will be able to relate the role and importance of contemporary
art practices in the region to the global world, thus creating an impactful and unique
Biennale."
SB2006 is also the first such major international contemporary art event of its kind in
Southeast Asia. Organised by the National Arts Council and National Heritage Board, SB2006
provides the platform for the presentation of international art in dialogue with Singapore
and Asia. The Biennale will encompass a conglomeration of multi-venue visual arts
exhibitions, performances, symposiums, lectures and workshops programmed such that the
event will be accessible to multiple levels of audience. It aims to draw interest from top
local, regional and international artists, art historians, critics, and practitioners,
arts and cultural organisations, museums, corporations and governments, as well as build
new audiences and participation across ages and demographics.
Together with his team of curators, Nanjo will locate exhibitions and projects in multiple
sites within the city and beyond and create a comprehensive educational, public, outreach
and children's program with artists in residence.
SB2006 will place Singapore's contemporary visual arts development on the world map,
creating new opportunities for Singapore artists, curators and visual arts businesses, and
new content for our arts scene as well as for the international art world. It will
stimulate broader demand for visual arts in Singaporeans, further cultivating and
elevating their appreciation for contemporary art and enhancing Singapore's cultural image
as a progressive and attractive cosmopolitan city to live, work and play in.
SB2006 will coincide with Singapore 2006 - Global City: World of Opportunities, an
Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group. The
Annual Meetings is an important forum for international cooperation where
representatives of the 184 member countries unite to discuss the course of global economic
development and challenges facing the world today.
Please refer to the following annexes for more information:
Annex 1 - Statement from the Artistic Director Fumio Nanjo
Annex 2 - Profile of Artistic Director
Annex 3 - Profiles of Curators: Roger Christopher McDonald PhD (Japan), Eugene
Tan (Singapore), Sharmini Pereira (Sri Lanka/UK) and Ahmad Mashadi (Singapore).
For media enquiries, please contact:
Mr Low Kee Hong
General Manager, Singapore Biennale
Singapore Biennale Secretariat
The Adelphi
1 Coleman Street,
#05-06,
Singapore 179803
Tel: +65 6837 9270
Fax: +65 6837 3654
info@singaporebiennale.org
Annex 1
Singapore Biennale 2006
Statement from the Artistic Director: Fumio NANJO
Mission
- This exhibition should serve as a new occasion to mediate international contemporary art to the people of Singapore and to show the ways that it can be encountered in daily life and for everybody.
- This exhibition should engage an international audience - from the immediate region and beyond.
- This exhibition aims to explore the unique and specific cultural and environmental conditions of viewing contemporary art in Singapore.
- This exhibition aims to stimulate communication and exchanges between the local and the international to develop new networks and platforms for creativity and reflection.
- This exhibition endeavors to convey amusing and thought provoking experiences through the dynamism, excitement and relevance of art within contemporary culture.
Conceptual Outline
- Singapore is situated near the equator, one degree north from it. Looking at the belt between the tropic of Cancer and tropic of Capricorn, this equatorial belt reflects unique geo-political and cultural aspects - a hot and humid temperature, a richness in nature and resources as well as torrid dry zones, characteristic modes of occupying time and space and a multitude of diverse cultures and human movements.
- The location of this exhibition within this belt inspires us to re-think certain important issues. While being something that divides and marks, does the equator also make possible other ways of understanding global relations, economic inequalities, tempos of modernity and ways of producing knowledge, from what we can call an 'in-between' perspectives.
- Singapore is an island. Streams and the sea surround it and one consequence of this is that much arrives on its beaches. This represents people, cultures, civilization and its mixtures. It thus also represents the position of Singapore - a possibility for Asia which maintains ideas of fragmentation and coexistence, flux and tradition, colors and emotion. In this multi-cultural and trans-cultural discourse, the dichotomy of modernist value systems lose their meanings and new possibilities can emerge.
Annex 2
Singapore Biennale 2006
Artistic Director: Fumio NANJO
Fumio Nanjo (b.1949) is currently the Deputy Director of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.
He is also an art critic and a lecturer at Keio University, Tokyo.
Nanjo has organized numerous exhibitions as an officer of the Japan Foundation
(1978-1986), as the director of ICA Nagoya (1986-1990), and as the founder and
representative director of Nanjo and Associates (1990-2002). Since 2002, he joined Mori
Art Museum as deputy director. Main achievements include: commissioner of the Japan
Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1997); commissioner of the Taipei Biennale (1998); member
of the jury committee of the Turner Prize by the Tate Gallery (1998); co-curator of the
3rd Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (1999); member of the selection committee
of the Sydney Biennale (2000); director for the Japan Pavilion at EXPO 2000 in Hanover;
artistic co-director of the Yokohama Triennale (2001); a selector of Artes Mundi Prize in
Wales, UK in 2004. Also served as an artistic director on several public art and corporate
art projects including Shinjuku I-LAND" Public Art Projects (Tokyo/1995), Hakata Riverain
Art Project (Fukuoka/1999), Art Project for Obayashi Corporation Head Office (Tokyo/1999).
Advisory positions include: vice president of Association International des Critiques d'
Art (AICA); board member of Comité International des Musées d'Art Moderne et Contemporain
(CIMAM). Also involved in selection committees of several art awards and
artist-in-residence programmes, including the coming 51st Venice Biennale (jury member of
the Leon d'Or Prize).
Published From Art to the City, a record of 15 years as an independent curator in 1997.
Annex 3
Singapore Biennale 2006
Curatorial Team: Roger MCDONALD (Japan)
Roger Christopher McDonald PhD.
Born in Tokyo, Japan (1971). Roger McDonald was educated in the United Kingdom, studying
International Politics (BA, Wales), Mysticism and Religious Experience (MA, Kent) and
received a PhD in History and Theory of Art from the University of Kent in 2000. He has
been based in Tokyo, Japan since 2000.
His curatorial work has included exhibitions in a number of non-gallery sites including a
forest in Kiyosato, Japan, his home in London, a kindergarten in Tokyo, a disused
restaurant and working vegetable market in Naha city Okinawa, a night club in Tokyo and an
ongoing touring exhibition from a suitcase in the 'Moving Collection' project (Tokyo,
Okinawa, Fukui, New Zealand). He was assistant curator to Fumio Nanjo for The Yokohama
Triennale 2001. He was a co-curator for the major Japanese contemporary art exhibition
'Mediarena', held at The Govett Brewster Art gallery, New Zealand in 2004. He is a
co-curator for 'Green Times' (opening autumn 2005), the inaugural exhibition for a new
park culture centre in Tachikawa, Tokyo, which looks into the role of green spaces and
parks in cities with a focus on the way people use such spaces. He maintains a weblog
called The Tactical Museum where he publishes news about autonomous activities in Japan as
well as his research interests into different forms of curatorial practice:
http://rogermc.blogs.com/tactical/
He is Deputy Director of the Tokyo non profit arts collective AIT (Arts Initiative Tokyo)
and co-organises its independent study school programme called MAD (Making Art Different),
which amongst other courses, offers the first contemporary curating course in Japan. AIT
emphasises a collective curatorial and working approach, and within this framework he has
co-organised the ongoing 'AIT Hour Museum' series of exhibition/ events as well as the
irregular lounge club night 'Minglius'. In 2004 he travelled to Weimar, Germany to
represent AIT in the exhibition 'Even the Moon is Not Autonomous', an archive and
exhibition of socially engaged practices from Japan. AIT has recently been initiating a
series of research and exhibition platforms exploring notions of the Public now in Tokyo
and beyond.
Roger McDonald also teaches on the arts management course of Musashino Art University,
Tokyo, as well as being a visiting tutor at Zokei Art University. He has also lectured at
the California College of Arts, San Francisco, Tate Britain, UK, The Japan Foundation,
Tokyo, amongst other places.
Singapore Biennale 2006
Curatorial Team: Eugene TAN (Singapore)
Dr. Eugene Tan is an art historian, critic and curator. Born in Singapore in 1972, he
received a BSc in Economics and Politics from Queen Mary College, London and a MA
(Distinction) in Post-War and Contemporary Art from the Sotheby's Institute, London. He
also holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Manchester.
Among exhibitions he has curated include Video Invitational at f a Projects,
London in 2003, The Last Laugh: Humour and Contemporary Video Art, Painting as
Process: Re-evaluating Painting and Jason Salavon: Brainstem Still Life at the Earl
Lu Gallery, LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore in 2004. He is also the
curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the forthcoming 51st Venice Biennale.
He has written extensively for many exhibition catalogues as well as publications such as
Art Review, Contemporary, Contemporary Visual Arts and Modern Painters. He has been a
member of AICA (Association International des Critiques d' Art) since 1999.
He has also been invited to lecture and participate in panel discussions, on various
aspects of contemporary art, in Singapore, Spain, Taiwan and United Kingdom.
He is currently the director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLESIA
College of the Arts.
Singapore Biennale 2006
Curatorial Team: Sharmini PEREIRA (Sri Lanka/UK)
Sharmini Pereira was born in 1970 in the UK. After graduating from Edinburgh
University in 1992 with an MA (Hons) in Art History she curated her first exhibition in
1994 called New Approaches in Contemporary Sri Lankan Art which was held at the National
Art Gallery of Colombo. Between 1996-98, she completed an MA in Visual Arts
Administration: Curating and Commissioning Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art
in London. Since then, she has worked internationally as an independent curator, editor
and curatorial consultant across the public and private sector, working with
institutions and organisations such as the Queensland Art Gallery, the Imperial
War Museum, eyestorm.com, The Royal Academy, The Japan Foundation, Albion, the Hayward
Gallery, and the British Council. In 2004-2005 she was the first ACAPA (Australia Centre
for Asia Pacific Art) scholar in residence at the Queensland Art Gallery. In 2005 she
established the independent publishing organisation Raking Leaves. She is a Trustee for
Bookworks, London and an academic advisor for the Asia Art Archive (AAA), Hong Kong.
Selected curatorial projects include:
• Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky by Cai Guo-Qiang, Siwa, Egypt, 2003-04
• Crafty Thoughts, Liverpool University Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK, 2001-02
• Third Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1999
Singapore Biennale 2006
Curatorial Team: Ahmad MASHADI (Singapore)
Ahmad Mashadi is currently Senior Curator at Singapore Art Museum. He was
coordinating curator for Home Fronts, a component within the recent 'SENI Singapore
2004', an international contemporary visual arts festival of Southeast Asian and Asian
art, featuring over 90 artists from 14 countries and regions. He was also vice-chairman
of the curatorial committee for Nokia Singapore Art 2001, a biennial exhibition
series developed since 1999, aimed at displaying the latest contemporary art
developments in Singapore. He has curated many exhibitions, including 'Landscapes in
Southeast Asian Art', 'Visions and Enchantment', and 'Trimurti'. He also curated
Singapore's first participation in the '49th Venice Biennale' in 2001 as well as the
Singapore representation in the recent '26th Sao Paolo Biennial' in 2004 and '10th
Indian Triennale' in 2000.
Disclaimer: Information contained in this news release is current as of the date of the press announcement, but may be subject to change without prior notice.
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