| Dec 05 |
Singapore Art Awards 2005Philip Morris Singapore will present the Jurors' Choice awards to 5 artists at an awards ceremony at the NAFA Art Galleries at Bencoolen Street on December 9th, 2005 and open an exhibition of 26 outstanding entries to the 2005 Singapore Art Awards competition. The exhibition, which runs from the 9th through the 18th of December, is free and open to the public. The Singapore Art Awards presented by Philip Morris Singapore is now in its 11th year. It is supported by the National Heritage Board, NAFA, and LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts. The competition is open to all Singapore citizens and permanent residents, 18 years of age and above. An artist may submit a painting, photograph or any two-dimensional artwork. All subjects and themes can be explored. Artists will also be able to submit recent works that have been previously exhibited but have not been entered in any competition. Submission of entries closed on October 19th, 2005. Over the years, the Singapore Art Awards has established itself as a prestigious event showcasing the work of emerging local talents. Notable recent winners are young artists such as, Francis Ng who has gone on to represent Singapore in the Venice Biennale 2003, Tang Ling Nah who received the National Arts Council Young Artist Award in 2004, and Terence Lin who, while serving full-time in the National Service, won one of the five Jurors' Choices at the regional 2004 ASEAN Art Awards. Philip Morris has been a patron of the arts in the United States and many parts of the world for more than 40 years. Philip Morris Singapore launched the Singapore Art Awards with the objective of contributing to the community through promotion of the visual arts. We hope these awards will also add to the vibrancy of Singapore's art scene by providing a platform to recognize, reward and showcase good artworks. We are happy the 2005 entries continue to reflect the dynamic developments in the visual arts here. The Singapore Art Awards are held every two years.The next competition will be in 2007.
Abstract Art by P. Gnana by Vidhya Gnana Gouresan (Art Curator) On a rainy Sunday afternoon, with a hot cup of coffee in my hand, I pryingly watched P.Gnana render forceful brushstrokes on his large canvas, placed on the floor of his studio. His eyes were shining with an almost frantic enthusiasm and a distinct haste to capture his overflowing inspiration, from mind to canvas. Then, with a sudden change of mood, he began to take the time to carefully observe and study his own spontaneous creation, while continuing to add even more textures, tones and colours. And at the end of the entire creative process, I could not help but feel the immense 'weight' of his painting; a certain co-existence between all visual elements in the artwork. "My lines, textures and colours are my symbols," he uttered, "they are there because they mean something from within me. Nothing exists for no reason."
Born in Neyveli (South India), Gnana satisfied his parents' desire by becoming a mechanical engineer. But of course, he continued to paint, adhering to fervent self-training. Due to the social obligation for a formal education in the arts, he graduated from LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts in Singapore. Today, Gnana is a Singapore-based international artist, with 6 solo art exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions to his credit. He fondly recalls the moment that truly triggered his life-long affair with art. Many years ago, his father had cycled, with a six-year-old Gnana at his back, to be in time for an art competition for children in his hometown. Little Gnana made his father very proud by winning a prize for his vibrant flower on paper! For the past 11 years of his life, Gnana has been on a stubborn search towards his very own symbology of expression. From the use of figurative language in the early years of his career, Gnana has now reached a sublime state where he does not seem to find the daunting need for figures to truly express himself. For him, it has become a state whereby the figurative is not avoided, but it naturally avoids itself. On his current abstract paintings (oil/acrylic on canvas), Gnana opines, "It is only now that I have entered the process of real 'creation'." Every painting in his recent 'Mind Echo' series is a flow of emotive energy and vibration. His works are indeed very personal. However, he explains, "I paint. And that's the way I communicate. There will be no purpose in me creating, if there is no one to truly communicate with my paintings."
As for Singapore's visual arts scene, Gnana shares, "Very frankly, two years ago, it was truly difficult for me to market my paintings in Singapore, as my collectors were largely from other countries such as Britain and Germany. But this is not the case today, as people here have started to develop a taste for pure abstract art." Vidhya Gnana Gouresan curates contemporary art exhibitions and has been researching for museums in Singapore since 2000.
Esplanade presents: "Pop Puri Singapura"and "Jalan Asia"by Susie Wong (Art Writer)
POP PURI SINGAPURA is a play on the word pot-pourri, a mixture of scents. Pop also refers to Popular Culture, and PURI which means PALACE in Malay. The title means literally - Popular Palaces of Singapore, an allusion to Singapore as a Home. While consciously steering away from a production of popular stereotype meanings and identity of an eastern culture, the artists grapple to understand a new culture that emerge as the fallout from globalisation and the new modern\urban. The artists cast recent emergent ideas over old traditions, culture, outlook and relationships, and by their works, either overturn conventional notions or reveal the tensions underlying the fusion of old and new. It is a Singapore that is a new mix of a pristinely sterile global culture, built of image screens and camera-eyes, and the existing organic hybrid and commingling of traditional cultures. Who better to provide an insight than Ketna Patel, an award winning artist of Indian descent and a Singaporean resident for many years. Having lived and travelled in many countries, her works consistently revolve around the subject of third world street cultures. Her candid portrayal of the lives of everyday Asians compresses this region's illustrious past with its rapidly unfolding future, making the compositions strangely familiar, and yet impersonal. This installation is a journey down Jalan Asia (jalan means road in Malay) as collective observations take on many layers of readability. Ketna's current series cheekily juxtaposes High Art with contemporary Popular culture as Asian stereotypes are resurrected and weaved together through a collage of photographic images, street signs, advertising, patterns and colours. The viewer is encouraged to make an appraisal of "received" ideas filtered down to us through our media saturated conditioning. Strong chromatic hues such as bandung pink, day glow orange, vermillion, aqua and lime usually found in Bollywood film posters and Karaoke Lounges are deliberately chosen to mimick our very non-minamalistic Asian palette. They also give the work a novel vibrancy which cleverly acknowledges our rampant consumer culture and the omnipotent presence of advertising. POP PURI SINGAPURA by Ketna Patel, Mark Kaufmann and Lisa A.Cunico JALAN ASIA by Ketna Patel
Fashioning Modernity: 7 Indonesian MastersAffandi · S. Sudjojono · Hendra Gunawan · Basoeki Abdullah · Lee Man Fong · Widayat · Ahmad Sadali Fashioning Modernity, a new exhibition at Art Retreat, features seven Indonesian masters and is on until the end of March 2006. Since the show opened in early October, it has been drawing many admirers of Indonesian art from Singapore and the region. Many who have seen it have marvelled at the quality of the works displayed and felt the exhibition rivalled any they had seen at a public museum. Curated by Joanna Lee, the exhibition examines the constituencies of modernity in the formative decades of modern Indonesian art through the practices of seven contemporary artists. Amongst the colonized people of Southeast Asia, the Indonesians were the first to awaken to national consciousness. By the second decade of the 20th century, the idea of 'Indonesia' as a coalition of the colonial territories of the Dutch East Indies had taken form, with the momentum of the nationalist movement culminating in political agitations for indepen-dence. After the Japanese occupation ended on August 17th 1945, the Republic of Indonesia was declared. The Dutch returned to an Indonesian revolution, the vigour of which saw the transference of sovereignty to the Indonesian Republic in December 1949. Sukarno was made President of the new nation and the process of nation building was underway. Modern Indonesian art emerged in response to the Indonesian nationalist movement. Questions that a new generation of modern artists asked themselves were what kind of art best expressed the nationalistic struggle and the Indonesian identity. The discourse of modern Indonesian art saw clashes between ideas of social relevance and notions of subjectivity and universalism.
10 Ubi Crescent, # 01-45/47, Lobby C, Ubi Techpark |
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