Pipeline Issue 39: The Young and the Restless
Transcript of Pipeline Issue 39: The Young and the Restless
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The young and
the restless Paul Khoo
Right
Raw/War 1by Jeremy Hiah, 2013.
Inkjet print, hologram, 90 x 130 cm.
Courtesy the artist and Sundaram Tagore gallery.
Pages 74/75
Never Mind the Planned Obsolescence, I Love You
by Indieguerillas, 2013.
Acrylic on canvas, 300 x 190 cm.
Pages 78, 79
From the series Sugar Lord Java
by Abednego Trianto Kurniawan, 2013.
Imported raw sugar in warehouse at
Cepiring Sugar Factory, Kendal, Indonesia.
Limited edition of 5+2 A.P.
Courtesy the artist.
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The spectre of community
art haunts the Singapore art
scene. Much of this is the
indirect consequence of the
theory of creative industries
beloved by Singapore pub-
lic policy makers. The state
has spent more than S$1
billion over the past decade
on the creative industries,
mainly in infrastructure and
its administration. While this
should have resulted in a
prosperous new economy
or Web 2.0-type giants,
spawned by the fusion of
creativity and technology,
the actual outcomes have
been modest. Even the
much-vaunted Gillman Bar-
racks art clusters first an-
niversary was marked by
ennui, limited enthusiasm
and jaded crowds, resulting
in artist Ian Woos desper-
ate letter on September 14
to national newspaper TheStraits Times, which fore-
cast doom for Singapore
artists if the project were to
fail.
There has already been a
predictable type of adverse
reaction from the govern-
ment, in the form of subtle
communication around
community art. In 2012,
the bodies of art and heri-
tage administration, the Na-
tional Arts Council and the
National Heritage Board,
were transferred to Minis-
try of Culture, Community
and Youth. These days the
mega-investments in art
need to be justified by pub-
lic engagement.
Not surprisingly, in this at-
mosphere, even the elite
private galleries are jump-
ing onto the community-art
bandwagon. This takes mul-
tiple forms, given that the
results of these endeavours
make problematic art prod-
ucts. The ubiquitous young
artist show is one solution,
a typical example being
Anthropos: Navigating Hu-
man Depth in Thai and Sin-
gapore Contemporary Art,
presented by the Sundaram
Tagore Gallery at Gillman
from September 13 to Oc-
tober 13. As a motif to ad-
dress social issues, curator
Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani
shows younger Thai and
Singaporean artists rumi-
nating about the human
body in multiple media.
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The show is fairly ambi-
tious in its transnational
and cross-media scope,
and serves the historical
gallery function of mentor-
ing and promoting younger
artists. Some of the Thai
work shows tactile delica-
cy and nuance. Kamolpan
Chotvichai (b.1986) takes
digital prints of body parts
and then dissolves them via
layered cuts in Brest(2013),
blending Thai artisan tra-
dition with modern media
to comment on Buddhist
concepts of the fragility of
the self. Prasert Yordkaew
(b.1986) also crosses the
traditional vernacular with
a modern medium: in this
case, installations. In Kin-
naree(2012), he seamlessly
blends the traditional repre-
sentation of a goddess with
a bicycle, creating a fantas-
tical hybrid creature.
But the need for commu-
nity art makes the show
uneven. One of the lows is a
site-specific piece, Parkour,
by Sufian Hamri (b.1980),
aka TR853-1 (pronounced
TraseOne). Climbing
the wall of the tony Tagore
space, TraseOne spray-
paints a silhouette of his
body to commemorate the
event. While Pazzini-Parac-
ciani sees it as a physical
affinity to ones own space,
the piece also plays on the
context of community art in
Singapore, where the state
wants the public to do art,
but in very regulated spac-
es, with court cases against
numerous street and graffiti
artists, notably SKLO, the
Sticker Lady. This contin-
ued valorisation of sanitised
transgression is also ob-
served in Raw/War 1(2013),
a photograph by Singaporeartist Jeremy Hiah (b.1972).
Besides the menacing title,
totally incongruous in no-
toriously safe Singapore,
the work consists of two
portraits of a thug in a bala-
clava mask, undercut by a
pastiche of flowers or stick-
ers pasted on it. Typical of
most conceptual photo-
graphic pieces, its effect is
rather transitory: it is practi-
cally a one-liner. Presumably
the show is using the piece
to establish a type of street
credibility that also signifies
community. As in the name
of the ministry in charge of
the arts, community gets
equated with youth, inevi-
tably resulting in a sanitised
street vibe.
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In contrast to the awkward
interactions between the
street and art in Anthropos,
the Sip! Indonesian Art To-
dayshow at the Arndt Sin-
gapore gallery manages to
balance these dynamics.
Sip!is an ambitious project
covering the artistic practic-
es of several generations of
Indonesian artists. Curated
by art historian Enin Supri-
yanto, it has an encyclope-
dic scope and is sensitive
to the idiosyncratic spirit of
Yogyakartas environment,
where artist development
has always been intricately
tied to community initia-
tives. While Yogya art has
its problems, there is a less
self-conscious need there
to invoke community for its
own sake. As such, even the
street-oriented work comes
off as much more elegant
and natural, less contrivedthan its Singapore equiva-
lents. While small compared
to the earlier rendition of
the show at Arndt Berlin,
the Singapore version is an-
chored by a painting by In-
donesian artist Indiegueril-
las, Never Mind the Planned
Obsolescence, I Love You
(2012). In the style of comic
books, the piece captures
five very flat figures be-
decked in a plethora of con-
sumer images referencing
Nike, Campbells Soup and
Marvel Comics. Besides its
easy playfulness, the piece
is also beautiful in terms of
classical symmetry, almosthieroglyphic, invoking tradi-
tional Sanskrit text, and with
a colour palate that is loud
but not garish.
But to call Sip!a young art-
ist show would be a bit of
a stretch. Despite its inclu-
sion of street and comic-
style practitioners, these
are mainly artists in their
30s who emerged in the
early 2000s. Outside Gill-
man, in September the in-
novative 2902 Gallery put on
young artist show Re:union,
comprising of works from
photography graduates of
the School of Art, Design
and Media. ADM was the
centrepiece of the states
creative industries strategy
of 2002, built to churn out
creative professionals for
clusters like design, anima-
tion, film and the visual arts.
Despite the lack of bombas-
tic themes, Re:union works,
with a very strong personal,
local grounding that doesnt
rely on forced narrative. The
pieces feel organic, absent
of what curator Jane Koh
calls presupposed theoreti-
cal narrative or discourse of
Singapores contemporary
art scene the usual tropes
of community or nostalgia.
Abednego Triantos photo
series Sugar Lord Javacap-
tures the legacy of Dutch
colonialism on the sugar
economy of Indonesia via
a juxtaposition of ghostly
images and modern digital
prints. The piece is distin-
guished by an ambitious his-
torical scope, with detailednarratives about the past,
as opposed to the usual
conceptual one-liner tactics
or nostalgia-themed pho-
tography pieces. The New
Nativeseries by Willis Turner
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Henry (b.1989) is among the
most politically direct works,
combining portraits of new
immigrants with consumer
product packaging. She
talks about the ambiguity of
identities and stereotypes in
hyper-globalised Singapore,
where new migrants form a
substantial percentage of
the population, causing a
backlash from the locals.
Reading the fine print of
the packaging, one realises
that such dichotomies are
fairly empty, as many of
these individuals have been
educated in the country and
are not the stereotypical ex-
patriate carpetbaggers. The
dynamics of globalisation
are terrifyingly ambiguous,
calling for deeper insight
and critical analysis rather
than kneejerk recourses to
populism, be it in the form
of community, the street ornostalgia.
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