The Singaporeans have certainly been laying the art on. Just two months on from Art Stage, we tramped down for the year’s second art blockbuster event, the slightly delayed Singapore Biennale, and a good seven or eight shows on the side.

By all accounts, SB2011 is less of a spectacle than its predecessors – no art statements running across City Hall in bright lights, no colourful containers brightening the urban shoreline. It shies well away from big beautiful themes like 2006’s Belief, and 2008’s Wonder. This year’s Biennale, themed “Open House”, is decidedly interior in its conceptual and physical architecture.

(Broadsheet’s 40th anniversary edition gives a good preview, including a lengthy interview with Artistic Director Matthew Ngui and Curators Russell Storer and Trevor Smith: http://www.cacsa.org.au.)

Less can be more, though, and, not expecting wow (there was simply not very much build-up to the event), I really enjoyed the Biennale as an experience. I found myself getting into works I didn’t expect to like, and that there was just about enough time to cover the 63 works over a day and a bit (ideally two though) without reeling over from too much information. The curatorial emphasis on process over subject, object and in a number of cases, presentation, I think worked on me, ranging through sometimes vastly different approaches from space to space, room to room, dark corner to dark corner (of the National Museum) – the question marks and surprises, as much as the resonances did force you to engage and explore. I particularly liked the Old Kallang Airport site – moving through the succession of rooms in the East and West blocks like changing levels of a video game, or the hide-and-seek of the main building. There was an Alice-in-Wonderland effect, you were tiny among the giant rolls of Michael Beutler’s Pipeline Field, or in Sheela Gowda’s magnified bathroom of horror, but god-like peering into the unrealised utopias of Michael Lee’s Office Architect. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Frequency and Volume: Relational Architecture 9 was a big hit with visitors as our bodies tuned into radio channels tracking the large shadows we cast on the wall.

Michael Beutler, Pipeline Field

Sheela Gowda

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Frequency and Volume: Relational Architecture 9

There was a definite sense of nakedness and exposure, sometimes as a challenge, sometimes as an act of trust or intimacy, sometimes conspiratorial. There were relatively few works that were all dressed up and ready to go for the ball. For Rumah Sulaiman Belakang Kedai Ah Guat, Shooshie Sulaiman relocated the structures of two sites of personal significance– in Titiwangsa KL and Malacca, to SAM’s 8Q building, and they contextualise a video of a conversation with Ah Guat, and drawings and collages from over the span of her practice, creating a layered reading of artistic process, space, and memory through an excavation of the personal.

Shooshie Sulaiman, Rumah Sulaiman Belakang Kedai Ah Guat

Confession, identity-construction and voyeurism seemed to play a big part in the curatorial conversation, from Ruang Rupa’s hilarious and touching fantasy lives of Singaporeans to Ise’s grocery-shopping adventures with local families to Jill Magid’s Evidence Locker to the poster-child of the Biennale, Candice Breitz’s Factum which compares interviews with identical twins and a set of triplets. I particularly enjoyed Tala Mandani’s tiny animated vignettes of clumsy men doing violence to themselves, and Simon Fujiwara’s extraordinary manifold reconstruction of Hotel Mumber using eroticism as an intriguing entry-point.

Ruang Rupa, Singapura Fiction

I was surprised by the amount of sex (as parody: Tracy Moffat, Ming Wong) and violence (to inanimate structures – Lisi Raskin’s muscled reconfiguration of the mezzanine floor of Kallang West Block, Mike Nelson tearing up walls and pedestals, Superflex drowning McDonalds). I found I quite liked the violence bit.

Mike Nelson

Other personal favourites which linger in my mind are Tiffany Chung’s poetic landscape installation Floating into the Future from a Distant Past, and earlier mappings of Vietnam, and Phil Collins’ wonderful music video The Meaning of Style, carving new spaces for imagining our third-world realities.

Tiffany Chung, Floating into the Future from a Distant Past

It’s worth catching the Biennale (to 15 May 2011) if you’re in this part of the world – not so much as a great new album of contemporary art, but certainly an inspiring and interesting playlist which can help to make us think more deeply about what some artists today are trying to get at.

For a “greatest hits” of Southeast Asian contemporary art, you can also catch Negotiating Home, History and Nation: Two Decades of Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia, 1991 – 2010 at SAM (to 26 June 2011). Do also make an effort to visit Camping and Tramping Through the Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya at NUS Museum, a wonderful exploration, both as an exhibition and a publication, or what curator Shabbir Hussain Mustafa describes as an “exhibitionary complex”, of the evolution of the museum in Malaya. Tap into some fantastic archival material including letters and recorded conversations on Malayan exhibitions in London in the 1920s, the genesis of the Raffles Museum, and the Asian Art Museum at University Malaya and their collections, Asian art objects from the NUS Museum and Asian Civilisations Museum collections, natural history artefacts from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (NUS) Collection, Dr Ivan Polunin’s remarkable Singapore film archive and the eclectic collection and paintings of artist and healer Mohammad din Mohammad, for new ways of seeing old ways of seeing.

Mella Jaarsma at SAM

Camping and Tramping Through the Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya

Bernando Pacquing, Untitled at ICA’s “Roberto Chabet : Complete & Unabridged”

It was a busy June for RogueArt. We’ve been meaning to put up these pictures from our Where Art Happens talks series but the three of us seem to be running relay in and out of KL.

Our series of three Saturday talks was all in all a great success thanks to our wonderful speakers from both Malaysia and abroad, our sponsor Yayasan Sime Darby, media partner Off The Edge, as well as to the fantastic audience, especially those who faithfully came for the full whack. We ourselves were impressed with the turnout, and salute all those who came for their dedication to the issues surrounding art in our community.

Session 1 – Art Spaces: Policies, Agendas and Ways Forward got off the ground with a most venerable panel of speakers – Dr Najib Dawa, Director-General of our National Art Gallery, Ahmad Mashadi, Head of Singapore’s NUS Museum, Hasnul J Saidon, Director of Muzium & Galeri Tuanku Fauziah at USM in Penang, and Iqbal Abdul Rahim, Creative Producer for Bank Negara Malaysia Museum and Art Gallery. It was a lesson in the challenges facing institutions dealing with art today, but it would seem that there is a general recognition of changing contexts and a sense of investment, particularly for the university museum-galleries, in developing future generations of audiences. It was particularly exciting to get a peek at the plans for the new Bank Negara museum and gallery which looks extremely impressive, and while it is very much a multi-faceted institution dedicated to more than just art, we’re sure it will make a big impact on our corner of local civilisation.

L-R : Dr Najib Dawa, Hasnul Saidon, Ahmad Mashadi, Iqbal Abdul Rahim & Beverly during a floor discussion

In the afternoon Rifky Effendy an indendent curator from Indonesia who took us on a quick tour of the Indonesian art scene which has changed dramatically since the regional market began to boom a few years ago. Pang Khee Teik, Programme Director of the Annexe Gallery waxed political and philosophical on the dangers of art policy, and the advantages of organic development (complete with arm movements). Simon Soon, a local independent curator, made a sweep of independent and alternative spaces in the region, showing us the breadth and depth of bold and exciting artists’ intitiatives from Malaysia to Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. Syed Nabil represented the largest sector of non-institutional spaces in Malaysia – private galleries, telling the story of his own space NN Gallery.

Surprisingly there weren’t many challenges from the floor, although one attendee did comment that it was all a lot to take in….

L-R: Syed Nabil, Simon Soon, Pang Khee Teik, Rifky Effendy & Beverly

Session 2 – Getting Out There: Art in the Community attracted the biggest crowd. It was a pretty international event, with artists Amanda Heng from Singapore and Tran Luong from Hanoi, Reza Asung Afisina & Ardi Yunanto from ruangrupa Jakarta, and Defne Ayas of ArtHub and Performa from Shanghai. From our home corner Hari Azizan talked about various Five Arts projects in the community such as Asian Youths ArtsMall, Lim Kok Yoong talked about the Let Arts Move You project on KTM trains and at KL Sentral Station in 2007, and Yap Sau Bin showed off the brilliant just released DVD of the Contemporary Art in Schools Project at Stella Maris school last year, managing to sell a few copies that day. This session was moderated by Eva McGovern. It was all very inspiring, and we had lots of audience feedback (with some pondering on the age-old question of the role and identity of art), and we hope to see more beautiful art-in-public/public art initiatives in our back yard soon.

L-R: Hari Azizan, Amanda Heng, Eva McGovern & Tran Luong

The crowd catching up with friends during lunch break

L-R: Eva McGovern, Yap Sau Bin, Lim Kok Yoong, Defne Ayas, Reza Asung Afisina & Ardi Yunanto

Session 3 – Feeding Creativity: Art Residencies and Grants had givers (in the morning) and takers (in the afternoon) give their viewpoints on the worthy practice of funding fine art.  Rahel Joseph talked about the two residency programmes she had initiated, for the Australian High Commission (Sydney) and for Galeri Petronas (Beijing), while Angela Hijjas described the RImbun Dahan residency programme(s) updated us on its latest developments, hinting at possible new programmes in Penang and Yogyakarta. Stephanie Yeap talked about the RBS-Malihom AIR programme in Balik Pulau while HOM (House of Matahati) was represented by Bayu Utomo Radjikin who told off many great initiatives by HOM including their residency programme, art competition, artists’ fund and fundraising events. Mella Jaarsma, co-founder of Cemeti Art House came to share her experiences from their Landing Soon residency programme and how Cemeti will expand on this to be a residency-based project space from next year onwards. Marion d’Cruz talked of the good work of the Krsihen Jit-ASTRO fund, and her experience with Artists’ Network Asia (ANA), and noted how there was a positive increasing trend of artists giving to artists.

Marion d’Cruz speaking about 5 Arts Centre

L-R : Angela Hijjas, Mella Jaarsma, Marion d’Cruz, Rahel Joseph, Bayu Utomo Radjikin, Sharon Lai & Stephanie Yeap

By the afternoon, things had got pretty relaxed. The last panel of the series included residency/grant veterans Malaysian artists Ahmad Fuad Osman, Chang Yoong Chia, Ise and Vincent Leong, a handsome young crew who gave eloquent presentations on the ups and downs of residency experiences (80% ups) – not being able to speak Korean, bureaucratic issues in the land under JB, the efficiency of the Taiwanese, the luxury of time and of Rimbun Dahan,freezing in Vermont, partying in Oz. We saw some of the work they did out there, too.

L-R: Roslisham Hashim (Ise), Vincent Leong, Ahmad Fuad Osman & Chang Yoong Chia

We’d just like to say thank you once again to our speakers, our sponsor Yayasan Sime Darby, media partner Off The Edge, and everyone who came and made the talks a worthwhile initiative. We hope to make this a yearly event, addressing different pressing issues for the art community.

We are preparing a fuller report on the talks which we will publish on our Projects page in the near future, so please do post here any comments or feedback on the talks series you feel may be of interest.

Meanwhile, check out our Where Art Happens art map, published in the June edition of Off The Edge, reproduced here.