The best of Singapore’s culinary and arts scene is coming to Chippendale, Sydney from 3 to 5 November showcasing the small island city-state’s best creative talents in a multi-disciplinary presentation with street performances and award-winning chefs.
‘Singapore: Inside Out’ (SG:IO) launched in 2015 as a travelling exhibition to Beijing, London and New York before returning to Singapore. This year the three-day event visits Tokyo and Sydney for a catered menu of cross-national collaborations – exhibitions and performances complete with art installations, video projections, food and mixology presentations, dance performances, electronic sounds from music collective Syndicate.
Kensington Street becomes an experiential showcase, curated to explore the key aspects of ‘movement’ and its relation to time. It reflects upon ‘movement’ within the creative process and Singapore’s multicultural identity which has inspired diverse practices that challenge long-held perceptions of what it means to be Singaporean.
Select artists include: media artist Ong Kian Peng and architecture studio Zarch who will present Movement, a work that captures the energy and pursuits of individuals. The collaborative create an urban living room within a heritage space, developing a dialogue between nature and urbanity. Movement is also a response to old remnants of a suspended staircase and an old brick window within the atrium space – a conversation between the old and new. The steel structure, made up of 11 different modules, represents a tree and a ladder, where one is inspired to scale to greater heights. Visitors are invited to interact with the installation by placing miniature magnetic figures on it.
Donna Ong is an installation artist from Singapore, best known for her evocative and thought-provoking environments made from furniture, found objects and original artwork. Inspired by the contrast between Singapore’s greenery and landscape of skyscrapers, Ong’s installation, The Forest Speaks Back III, re-imagines a tropical forest made of everyday objects such as steel poles, glasses and beer bottles.
Grace Tan’s hands-on approach and interest in material and construction led her wearable works to evolve into sculptural objects and site-specific installations. Influenced by geometry, her works are distinguished by an intrinsic tactile nuance that heightens the matter and form. Tan’s site-specific installation, At the Angle of Repose, assembles more than two million clothes tag pins to form visually-stunning plant-like proliferations. The seemingly formless structures depict the tension between stillness and movement, highlighting the element of instability and things in a state of constant flux.
Filmmaker Kirsten Tan’s works straddle a range of genres, but are consistent in their humanity and off-beat humour. Tan’s short film series contrasts two made-in-Singapore films with two films shot outside of Singapore, as she attempts to recount familiarity through the sights and sounds of different cities she has lived in.
Ezzam Rahman is a multi-disciplinary installation and performance artist known for his interest in the body and his use of common, easily accessible and unconventional materials to produce works. His visual installation, i won’t be me without you, is a literal interpretation of the idea that ‘beauty is only skin deep’ with the artist using the dead skin off the soles of his feet to mold a series of skin sculptures in the form of flowers of insects, thereby creating a diorama taken from nature. Rahman’s second work is a street performance with the usage of talcum powder as the main medium.
Urich Lau’s Video Car: VJ Co-op is a transformative element that represents a functioning transportation tool to a functionless art object and back again. Visitors are encouraged to take on the role of a Video Jockey under the guidance of the artist throughout the live interaction using equipment installed within a functional car, with the windscreen as the display for moving images and the boot being transformed into a VJ console. The live video installation includes audiovisual elements by Australian media artist, Stelarc. The work is a symbolic gesture in response to the boundaries of mobility; the displacement of people and places, which echoes issues of the current transmigration crisis.
