SINGAPORE – A slew of visual art exhibitions are opening over the next weeks themed on SG60.
Beyond just celebrating the nation’s 60th birthday, these shows dive deep, exploring themes of identity and nationhood, history and culture. They also present Singapore artists across all ages engaging with the country’s past, present and future.
The Culture Story founder Chong Huai Seng (right) and curator Kwok Kian Chow are behind Artist’s Proof: Singapore At 60, which will showcase 95 works.
ST PHOTO: JASON QUAH
It begins, like so many Singapore stories, with former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. In 2014, a phone call came from London for art space The Culture Story’s co-founder Chong Huai Seng.
The widow of British sculptor Sydney Harpley was housekeeping. Would he be interested in acquiring the artist’s proof – an artist prototype – of a rare bust of Mr Lee, made with his permission in 1982?
“It was like the Holy Grail of collecting,” says Mr Chong, 74, still visibly emotional from this stroke of luck. He compares it to discovering a missing van Gogh, at which point, his daughter Ning Chong goads him into repeating his moniker for the prized item: “The Mona Lisa of Singapore.”
The 70cm-tall melancholic likeness, the artist’s proof of the only bust Mr Lee was ever persuaded to pose for in his lifetime, is the fount of a mammoth new show at Artspace@Helutrans in Tanjong Pagar Distripark.
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Dr Chua Yang at the exhibition, The Art Of Lee Boon Ngan, which features works by her mother Lee Boon Ngan and father Chua Mia Tee.
ST PHOTO: BRIAN TEO
While artist Chua Mia Tee was making a name for himself as Singapore’s master of social realism – painting passionate anti-colonial tableaus, then portraits of post-independence leaders like Lee Kuan Yew – a woman sat beside him, painting her flowers quietly by the light at the window.
Chua’s wife Lee Boon Ngan is better known as the subject of her husband’s famous 1957 painting in the National Gallery Singapore’s collection – in which she wears a severe expression, loose braids and a flower-embroidered blouse.
But Mrs Chua, who died in 2017, was also an artist and a new exhibition places her at the centre.
The Art Of Lee Boon Ngan, which opens at The Private Museum (TPM) on July 10, is not the usual show around professional artists or cultural titans. Coinciding with SG60, the show talks as much about nation-building as it does art-making and home-making.
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Renowned Singaporean watercolourist Ong Kim Seng looks back at a pivotal newspaper commission from 1984 at his solo exhibition Miracles.
ST PHOTO: SHINTARO TAY
Watercolourist Ong Kim Seng counts former United Nations chief Kofi Annan among his collectors and his commissions can go for five figures today. But he recalls how his first big commission in 1984 came in at just $120 a piece.
“You paint, but nobody buys. So, you’ve got to depend on illustrations,” says the 80-year-old self-taught artist.
Back in 1983, he had just won an award from the American Watercolour Society. Staff writer Jackie Sam from erstwhile newspaper Singapore Monitor, on the referral of theatre doyen Kuo Pao Kun, was about to give Ong the commission that would change his life.
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Sculptor Han Sai Por uses paper pulp to capture the tactility of tropical flowers.
PHOTOS: STPI – CREATIVE WORKSHOP & GALLERY
Against pitch-black paper, the florid daubs of Singapore artist Goh Beng Kwan are practically luminescent.
He is still uncompromisingly abstract in his idiom, but it is the flux of colours that draws you in: the bright orange flickering like a flaming bush and the cooler blue only occasionally successful in dousing their heat.
Goh’s works in the upcoming group show at print and paper gallery STPI are proof that an artist need not mellow with age. At 88, he has only become more brazen in his palette.
His works from his recent 2024 residency at STPI are set in dialogue with fellow Cultural Medallion recipients Han Sai Por and Ong Kim Seng – both also in their 80s and striding into new territory – and the late Chua Ek Kay. Material Moves opens in time for Singapore’s 60th birthday on Aug 16.
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Akai Chew’s Dream Of Postmodern Ruins is on show at LOY Contemporary Art Gallery.
PHOTO: LOY CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY
In addition to exhibitions by The Culture Story, The Private Museum, STPI and Confluence Art Space, here are four other SG60-themed visual arts exhibitions to check out.
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