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The Exhibition:

The exhibition involves six unique and highly innovative installation works incorporating new media, video, photography and architectural installations.

i) TGV

Artists:                         the2ndrule

Curator:                       Michelle Lim

TGV is an interactive digital media work focused on the idea of movement. It taps on the pulse of our urbanscape through an installation combining sound-reactive video and video-reactive sound. Movement and sound produced by the audience and performers generates constantly changing projections on a large screen, while movement triggers off audio loops from installed speakers.  A true collaboration between artist and audience, TGV combines art and technology in a stimulating performance that reflects the organic nature of human activity in an urban space.

ii) Inhabitations: Entrapment of a Culture

Artists:                         sciSKEW Collaborative

Curator:                       Michelle Lim

In this architectural installation, visitors are taken through a looped journey of radical experimentation and discovery through St James Power Station. Making their way through conceptual mind traps, visitors are compelled to challenge their own consumption of art against the context of broader urban culture processes. Real time documentation of visitors and their interactions with the five mobile installations will be looped to the virtual spaces of the project website. sciSKEW draws from issues of construction and reconstruction that weave through three metropolises: New York after 9/11, Shanghai before Expo 2010 and Singapore as a comprehensive hub. With a combination of physical and online manifestations, the project will confront Singaporeans with the very real implications of a global city under reconstruction.

iii) A Room for Hurt and Happiness

Artists:                         Gary Lim and Terence Chan

Curators:                     Low Kee Hong and Michelle Lim

How does one find balance in modern-day relationships where anything goes and nothing lasts?  Eroticized spaces are created in this evocative architectural installation, which explores the inherent instabilities in human relationships and puts to test the fragile ties that bind people together.

iv) The Lost Garden

Artists:                         Henderson Secondary School Aesthetics Club, Visions & Illusions collaborators and members of the public

Curators:                     Heng Swee Kiang and Michelle Lim

The toughest obstacles are the limits we draw for ourselves. Young artists and gardeners from a local school begin by turning the concrete floor into a giant canvas, weaving chalk patterns into an imaginative display. The youths, together with the Visions & Illusion project collaborators, plant the seeds for a unique urban garden by placing potted plants in the vast gallery.  The idea being that the more plants there are, the more lines will be covered. Members of the public are invited to participate in this public art activity by bringing their own potted plant or by helping to water the plants.  Only with the support of our community can a flourishing garden appear at the end of the process, thus creating a dynamic living artwork about overcoming the invisible boundaries in our lives.  

v) Art in all Nooks ‘n’ Crannies: Rethinking Space

Artists:                         Various artists

Curators:                     Putri Trisulo and Tan Shir Ee

Art is everywhere.  Artists and creators from various disciplines including the graphic arts, fashion and music have installed their works in unexpected places all over the site, transforming the former power station into a true home for art.  In a site once devoted to consuming natural resources in order to produce energy for the city’s development, the artists share fresh perspectives on recycling and conservation issues. 

vi) Super Art-Mart

Artists:                         Various artists & collaborators

Curator:                       Josef Ng, Michelle Lim and Putri Trisulo

Collaborators:                         Zouk and Asia Fashion Week

In the dead of the night, the lighted convenience store is the only beacon of life in the sprawling metropolis. Located in the depths of an anonymous Asian city, a reconstructed convenience store designed by artist-architects becomes the stage for an urban theatre performance that will challenge our definition of art. Excavating memories of former World Trade Centre trade fairs, Super Art-Mart re-contextualises and distills the scene into the context for the opening club party by Zouk. Unique and aesthetically original "products" by invited architects, musicians, artists and fashion designers will be displayed for sale at vintage prices. A cultural project that challenges the boundaries between pure art and commercial incentive, Super Art-Mart is also an interactive performance art show where all visitors will have something to bring home. And they will walk out and say, well, is this ART?

The Team -  Curators, Artists, Writers, and Project Managers:

Reconstruction of a City is a true Singapore effort.  The team consists of individuals who are all Singaporean.  Although they may be residing in other parts of the world from New York, Bangkok, Nice, Shanghai to Xi’an, they share a common cause – to articulate their vision for the arts in Singapore to an international audience.

Curators:

A team of independent curators has conceptualized a series of curatorial projects to frame the debate of key issues of art-making and writing in Singapore against a larger international context.  Curators include Michelle Lim, who is also a critical writer and artist, Josef Ng, a Bangkok-based arts writer and art consultant, and Low Kee Hong, a sociologist and Associate Artistic Director of TheatreWorks (Singapore).

Artists:

The artists have been chosen for their varied interests and vastly different modes of expression. They each possess a strong proven track record for committed initiatives in art-making and experimental innovations in terms of concept and technique.  Artists include New York-based architect-artist Eunice Seng, graphic designer-cum-artist Gary Lim, and the2ndrule team consisting of Shannon Low, Koh Beng Liang, Russell Chan and Jason Tong.

Writers:

Various critical writers, including photographers, will participate in a large-scale documentation which will be next phase of the Visions & Illusions project, following the exhibition.  It will serve to capture a “snapshot” of these salient issues that have surfaced in art-making and critical writing for this generation of 20-35 year olds at this point in time.  Participants include award-winning poet, playwright and writer Alfian bin Sa’at, poet-writer Toh Hsien Min, and New York-based photographer John Clang.

Project Managers:

For the first time, issues in the larger context of the Singapore creative industry such as sponsorship, arts branding, and project management will be explored by a team of branding, advertising, finance, engineering, IT and architecture professionals. They will build a new support infrastructure which will enable independent art activities to flourish with the institutional structure of government and private corporations.

The scale of this cross-disciplinary collaboration is unprecedented in Singapore’s contemporary art history.  This new generation of creative guerrillas will take Singapore art scene to the next plane and prove that with enough faith, visions can become reality and not mere illusions – even in a pragmatic place like Singapore!

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