Art Stage Singapore seems to have established itself as that annual January event to kickstart the region’s art engine. If Art Stage itself met with mixed reviews, this year Singapore had a lot to offer outside the fair as well. Right now, there’s the APB Foundation Signature Art Prize Finalists, ‘Still Moving’, and ‘Medium At Large’ exhibitions at Singapore Art Museum, a solo exhibition of Suzann Victor’s work from her residency at STPI, La Salle College of the Arts’ 30th Anniversary exhibition ‘Modern Love’, and a good collection of exhibitions at Artspace@Helutrans (Arndt, Galerie Steph, Ikkan, RK Fine Art). Goodman Arts Centre opened its studio doors for an open house; and of course, there was the very successful crowd-pulling ‘Art After Dark’ event at Gillman Barracks, which must have seen a record number of visitors this year – collectors were not pleased having to jostle with the masses, but the not-your-usual-art crowd queueing up to see Gilbert and George, Ding Yi and Rina Banerjee among other excitements, was pretty impressed! Bravo to the organisers – hopefully some of the traffic will keep trickling through to support the galleries at Gillman Barracks.

Two strong photography-based exhibitions we managed to catch were Nguan‘s ‘How Loneliness Goes’ at ION Art Gallery, and ‘A Tree With Too Many Branches’ by Ang Song Nian at DECK managed by 2902.

For Singapore, this is only the beginning, and doubtless we’ll find ourselves down there again this year. We’re looking forward to the opening of The National Gallery of Singapore slated for September/November this year as well as the next edition of Singapore Biennale.

 

ART STAGE SINGAPORE 2015

 

‘STILL MOVING’ AT 8Q, SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM

 

APB FINALISTS EXHIBITION AT SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM

 

EXHIBITIONS OPENINGS AT ARTSPACE@HELUTRANS

 

 

‘IMPRINT’ BY SUZANN VICTOR AT STPI

 

LA SALLE COLLEGE OF THE ARTS’ 30TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION ‘MODERN LOVE’

 

‘A TREE WITH TOO MANY BRANCHES’ BY ANG SONG NIAN AT DECK

 

NGUAN’S ‘HOW LONELINESS GOES’ AT ION ART GALLERY

 

‘ART AFTER DARK’ AT GILLMAN BARRACKS

 

 

OPEN HOUSE AT GOODMAN ARTS CENTRE

 

 

Art Basel in Hong Kong was held last week from 15-18 May 2014 at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) with numerous parallel events. We kicked off our art week in Hong Kong on Tuesday (13 May) with a quick visit to Hong Kong Art Centre’s Second Contemporary Collectors exhibition Passion/Possession featuring works from 10 Indonesian collectors curated by Agung Hujatnikajennong and ended our evening with Art Gallery Night (in the Central and Sheung Wan area). After the Art Basel Vernissage it was followed up by a post party event at Absolut Art Bar with Ming Wong’s performance inside Nadim Hassan’s Apocalypse Postponed installation on Wednesday. Thursday night was Wong Chuk Hung Art Night (gallery hopping in the Aberdeen area), and the artists and designers who live and work in Chai Wan opened their doors to the public for Chai Wan Mei Open Studios on Friday and the weekend. While there were many day events at the fair – with talks and workshops organised by Art Basel, but we attended Asia Art Archive Brunch & Talk by Wong Hoy Cheong on ‘Rage, Hope and Love: Working with Communities & Housing’, followed by a visit to Para/Site‘s exhibition ‘Ten Millions Rooms of Yearning. Sex in Hong Kong’, and finally Xu Bing’s ‘It Begins with Metamorphosis‘ exhibition at The Asia Society Museum.

 

 

The 4th Singapore Biennale: If The World Changed. 27 curators, 82 artists and collectives from 13, predominantly from Southeast Asia, at Singapore Art Museum, 8Q, the National Museum and the Peranakan Museum. Go to the Biennale website.

We caught the Biennale in parts during opening week… apologies for the limited pics…

 

 

 

There was an awful lot going on that week.

At Gilman Barracks:

Arin Rungjang at Future Perfect

 

 

At NUS Museum:

 

 

At ICAS:

 

 

At Sculpture Square:

High season in Jogja the weekend of 6th July, with a slew of visitors from Jakarta, Singapore, KL and beyond. artJOG this year is curated by Bambang Toko, with “Marine Culture” as its theme. FX Harsono is showing a major body of new installations at Jogja National Museum. Adeline and Mella Jaarsma co-curated Dobrak! as part of Cemeti Art House’s Turning Targets 25th Anniversary programme, working with 5 pairings of artists and specialist academics and researches exploring collaborative approaches. Ark Galerie has moved to Jogja from Jakarta, just down the road from Langgeng Art Foundation. And I finally visited Sarang – a stunning residency setting and project site for “Office of Contemporary Art”. (BY)

 

 

 

Some of the highlights from our trip to Art Basel | Hong Kong last week and other fringe events during the same period.

 

(RN)

It’s been such a manic end of year, we’ve barely had a moment to blog. So before we step into 2013, a few highlights and events from the past couple of months:

 

1-29 December Euphoria at Numthong Gallery at Aree – breathtaking landscape paintings by Niti Wattuya, some stretching to six metres.

 

8 December-14 April (2013) The 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT7) at GOMA and QAG Brisbane – we finally made it to APT, now 20 years old, and were glad we did. Many happy reunions with old friends at the opening, and a generally laid-back experience with interesting sights and sounds. We especially enjoyed Kids APT!

1 December VWFA closing party – we bid a sad final farewell to Valentine Willie Fine Art and the Bangsar gallery.

 

26 October-6 January Thai Transience at Singapore Art Museum – last chance to catch this wonderful exhibition of contemporary and traditional art works and objects from Thailand, curated by Apinan Poshyananda, organised as part of Thai CulturalFest.

 

2 November-5 December  Milenko Prvacki: A Survey, 1979 – 2012 at Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (ICAS) – Charles Merewether in his notes to the exhibition describes Milenko Prvacki as “one of the most important painters today” and indeed, this exhibition truly showed there to be a giant among us.

 

7-28 November at VWFA KL Painted Words and Written Paintings: For the Refined and For the Masses – a fitting last solo exhibition at VWFA’s flagship Bangsar gallery. Malaysian painter Liew Kwai Fei has gone in a surprising, interesting new direction, pulling off a show bursting with colourful exuberance, brimming with angry social criticism.

 

1-20 November at TAKSU KL No Talking Points – it was refreshing, in this time of quick fixes, to come across this quietly, carefully thought-out exhibition of challenging paintings and objects by a generation of Pinoy artists of true mettle, including Bernardo Pacquing, Cris Villanueva Jr, Elaine Navas, Hubert San Juan, Juan Alacazaren, Nilo Ilarde, Pete Jimenez, and the younger Lyle Buencamino.

(BY)

A very big congratulations to MARS (Malaysian Art Archive and Research Support), which was launched  at HOM over the weekend. Initiated by Bayu Utomo Radjikin and Nur Hanim Khairuddin, MARS is planned as a “nonprofit research support center that compiles, preserves, and archives mainly printed materials related to Malaysian visual and fine arts intended for the consumption of researchers, students, and interested parties” (HOM website). The fundraising exhibition Transit A4 at HOM brought together 77 Malaysian artists and this made for a raucous launch crowd. It’s the beginning of something beautiful!

 

Meanwhile, back at the RogueArt ranch, our more modest SEARCH Library is slowly taking shape – made up of our own collection of SEA publications and the loan of regional titles from the VK Collection, we hope to have it open by appointment by December. It’s very exciting to be part of a wider push for better research, documentation and access, and we look forward to linking up with MARS and other regional resource sites in the near future.

(BY)

 

 

 

 

 

It was with a huge sigh of relief that we launched the first volumes of Narratives in Malaysian Art and Naratif Seni Rupa Malaysia. We’d spent the evening before wringing hands and biting nails… (read the full posting here)

Yay!

We are launching Narratives in Malaysian Art, Volume I: Imagining Identities this Saturday, 7th July 2012 at the National Visual Arts Gallery at 10am. Please join us at the event and support this publication! Buy Volume I : Imagining Identities at the launch and you will receive a free copy of An A-Z Guide to Malaysian Art.

For those of you who won’t be able to join us at the launch but would like to purchase a copy of the book, please note that NMA Vol. I will be sold at RM 35 per copy and can be found at selected bookstores in the coming weeks. Please contact us here if you would like to order a copy of NMA Vol. 1 or need further information about the publication project.

The launch will be held at:

at Level 1, National Visuals Art Gallery
2, Jalan Temerloh
Off Jalan Tun Razak
53200 Kuala Lumpur

See you Saturday!

Apologies for yet another belated post. Still trying to clear a backlog of posts from our trips during the first quarter of 2012.

Below are pictures from our day at Alserkal Avenue during our (first ever) visit to Dubai for Art Dubai which was held at Madinat Jumeirah in March. Located in Al Quoz, an area of warehouse spaces, Alserkal Avenue is Dubai’s art hub which plays home to 10 art galleries and a private museum, offices for graphic designers, fashion design and photography.

We were very impressed by the way in which each gallery has transformed the warehouse space and made it their own. A number of exhibitions were organised by galleries at Alserkal Avenue to coincide with Art Dubai. We particularly enjoyed the humour and irreverence of “I Put It There, You Name It” by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hasem Rahmanian at Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde’s. For this exhibition, the Haerizadeh brothers and their childhood friend Hasem Rahmanian decided to do away with the typical white cube setting of exhibition spaces and transformed the gallery into replica’s of their Dubai house, studio and garden. Here artworks mingle with astro turf,  ordinary functional objects, food, overflowing ashtrays as well as artworks (by other artists) and paraphernalia from the trio’s personal collection, blurring the boundaries between production and authorship, art and its interplay with its surroundings.