VINCENT LEONG: Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah

17 October – 23 November 2014, Silverlens, Singapore
In collaboration with RogueArt

For his second solo exhibition in Singapore, the artist presented a new body of works encompassing painting, printed objects, digital media and performance.

Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah (This Day in History) addressed some of the contradictions and difficulties inherent in framing a national consciousness, and the ways in which it is represented – a familiar theme both in the artist’s personal experience, and for communities either side of the Causeway.

Vincent Leong’s practice engages with structures and systems of representation to get audiences to think about where and how we locate meaning. His works can be seen as subtle and often darkly humorous acts of sabotage, challenging our experience of popular, iconic or everyday material.

The works in the exhibition refer to familiar forms of expressing national identity and agenda – landscape paintings, school murals, a national monument, the newspaper, and a patriotic song – but fail to articulate any clear messages. How do we read a stack of broadsheets that bear no text? What does it feel like to look at a national monument from behind? Would young Malaysians and Singaporeans today recognize, or sing along to, the words of “Divided Land” as performed by rock-n-roll band The Pinholes?

The exhibition title is borrowed from an educational television and radio programme, Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah, aired on a daily basis on Malaysian national television and radio since 1980, which creates a bridge between the trials and achievements of a nation’s past to a present day. The exhibition itself as a whole posed questions about nationalism and patriotism, news and propaganda, history and progress. It asked, how will we see this day in history, tomorrow?

 See also our blog posting, and Art Deliberated review.

Read the e-catalogue, and more on the works shown on Vincent Leong’s blog.