December 30th

Recommendations for SB 2010 (ignore at your own peril!)

Posted by Ng Yi-Sheng | No Comments

As an auld-lang-syne post, I’m just gonna jot down some advice for the curators/administrators for the third Singapore Biennale, if (inshi’allah) it actually takes place in our financially troubled times.
1. Move it up to the summer so that it’s actually somewhere around the Youth Olympics.  Also ensure that hotels do not overcharge for the Youth [...]

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Category: General

December 18th

Re: Re: Noteworthy - what the media say about Singapore Biennale 2008

Posted by Ng Yi-Sheng | No Comments

I feel I oughta mitigate some of what Ranger Mills said by mentioning some other comments from Singapore Art Gallery Guide.  Post-Museum did an interview with eight local artists to get their insights, and they were mostly pretty approving.
Some excerpts:

ARTHUR WONG: It was well curated, better than the first one. Individual works were very strong. [...]

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Category: General

December 14th

Re: Noteworthy - what the media say about Singapore Biennale 2008

Posted by Ng Yi-Sheng | 1 Comment

To balance my esteemed co-blogger Ephraim Loy’s tub-thumpery, here’s a few quotes from the December issue of the SINGAPORE ART GALLERY GUIDE. Executive editor Usha Nathan’s been critiquing the setup mercilessly. In this issue, she quizzes American artist-who-never-exhibits Ranger Mills on his opinions, and boy, he’s vicious.
For the full interview (and lots of important [...]

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Category: General

December 12th

Deinstallation of the Singapore Biennale

Posted by Ephraim Loy | No Comments

The next stage after the official closing of Singapore Biennale 2008 is deinstallation. While the buzz remains outside, what is left is quiet on the inside. It’s the end of the hundred years of solitude and the start of some attitude.

Photo credit: Apryl Tan
The boxes from Address are sent back home to where they belong [...]

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Category: General

December 9th

Noteworthy - what the media say about Singapore Biennale 2008

Posted by Ephraim Loy | No Comments

“The second Singapore Biennale is drawing crowds, with visitors praising its unique artworks which they say are easy to relate to. Even school children are finding it easy to connect to the works.”
- The Straits Times
“Curators of the Singapore Biennale 2008… have brought together an interesting group of emerging artists and should be credited with [...]

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Category: General

December 6th

The Arts POWER List vs. the Arts Powerless

Posted by Ng Yi-Sheng | 2 Comments

Did you read the Straits Times yesterday? (Correction: Thursday Dec 4th.) Life! had this big article ranking ten persons/organisations as the most powerful “movers and shakers” in the Singapore arts scene. All the usual suspects were there: No.1 was Lee Chor Lin, Head Curator at the National Museum, followed by folks from the [...]

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Category: General

December 1st

Closing Party Pix!

Posted by Ng Yi-Sheng | No Comments

Whoo!  One last bash at the Containart Pavilion!
I’d gone over there the day of closing:
It’s such a change from the very last day of the exhibition - I trekked over, and there was actually a queue outside Hans Op de Beeck’s “Location (6)”:

Just to feel the sauna-like atmosphere inside.

But enough of the past; let’s get [...]

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Category: General

November 29th

“the singapore biennale, 2008- in absence” by Kirpal Singh

Posted by Ng Yi-Sheng | No Comments

Collator’s note: SMU professor and early performance poetry experimenter Dr Kirpal Singh just sent me this poem:
the singapore biennale, 2008- in absence
what impressed me most was the address
along with all the belongings from big to small
from necessary to luxury, from broken to whole
whether filipino or singaporean or european-
art has no real boundaries, no stated lines
no [...]

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Category: General

November 28th

That dress

Posted by Ng Yi-Sheng | No Comments

This is the costume that Ephraim’s been talking about:

“One Hundred Years of Attitude”, 2008.
Wearable art installation at Singapore Biennale Closing Party, 24 November 2008.
Rough cloth, marker pen and glue.
Why the glue?
Well, I wanted to use white paint, but I brought the wrong tube and didn’t realise until it was daubed all over my face and [...]

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Category: General

November 27th

Feeling withdrawal symptoms? Go to SAM.

Posted by Ng Yi-Sheng | No Comments

Singapore Art Museum, that is. They’ve got more works by Biennale artist Lee Yong Deok there in their Korean Art exhibit. Remember him? He’s the guy who does those weird concave sculptures.

This shot is from “Sitting 082083″. There are eight artists in that exhibition - not so keen on the abstracts, [...]

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Category: General