Singapore Biennale 2006
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Thursday, February 03, 2005
The Art Gallery
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University
1 Nanyang Walk Singapore
Open
Mon - Thur 10am - 5pm
Fridays 10am - 4:30pm
Closed
Sat, Sun & Public Holidays
Enquiries
vpa and followed by @nie.edu.sg
6790 3557
http://www.vpa.nie.edu.sg/visual/
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FEBRUARY PROGRAM
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opening tonight!!!
Thursday 3 February 2005 at 6 pm
3 February - 22 February 2005
Life Breathes Paper
in search of the first one, 2004, ink on Chinese paper, 186x448cm words of mind, 2004, ink on lenox paper, 127x96.5cm
Viviane Rombaldi-Seppey
Solo exhibition in the Main Gallery
... life as a continual flux.
This exhibition shows the works of Viviane Rombaldi-Seppey completed last year in Singapore as part of the graduating requirements of the Master in Fine Arts program, RMIT, offered at the SIA-LaSalle College of the Arts.
Using paper as the medium, the artist’s observations reveal an awareness of the relationship between the material and the immaterial, the inner and the outer, the seen and the unseen.
The artist emphasizes the passage of time by employing repetitive mark-making such as lines, dots and other markings. The works are a visual response by the artist in her interpretation of life as a continual flux. There is also the use of knitting as a medium to reinforce the repetitive process.
Viviane Rombaldi-Seppey is from Switzerland, and received her education in her native country, as well as in Italy, Australia and Singapore. She has exhibited widely in Australia. This is her second solo show in Singapore. She may be contacted at: vivianerombaldiseppey@hotmail.com.
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MARCH PROGRAM
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opening in 4 weeks time!!
Saturday 5th March 2:30 - 6pm
5 March - 30 March 2005
...so long and so distant...
cotton drawing series 3: toile, 2004, cotton thread & starch, 138 x 60cm
Karee Dahl
Solo exhibition in the Main Gallery
&
Pouch
pouch, skin series (detail), 2004, shaved kangaroo skin, 115cm x75 cm
Cassandra Schultz
Solo exhibition in the Upstairs Gallery
...a 747 jumbo jet modelled from felted kangaroo fur
During the month of March, “The Art Gallery” National Institute of Education [NIE] will utilize both the main and upstairs gallery spaces to showcase two exciting solo exhibitions by Australian artists Karee Dahl and Cassandra Schultz.
These exhibitions will be part of “Celebrate Australia 2005” a rich and vital programme of arts and cultural events organized by the Australian High Commission, Tourism Australia and AUSTRADE
“Celebrate Australia” an annual event, highlights aspects of Australian contemporary life being an opportunity for Australia and its Asian Pacific Ocean neighbors in and around Singapore to share in the many exciting events of which these exhibitions are a part.
“so long and so distant”: An installation work by Karee Dahl is a ‘site-specific’ work made for the main gallery at NIE. It formally plays with the architectural planning of one of Singapore’s first purpose built art galleries.
Dahl takes this concept of the white box exhibiting space, a cabinet of curiosity, left over from the 60s and 70s avant-garde art practice, as a starting point to investigate the history of the empty white spaces as the place to showcase contemporary art. [See “Stark on You: white interiors are the in thing for art spaces as they make the displays more stylish” Karl Ho Straits Times Saturday, Jan 1 2005]
As an Arts and Cultural Management graduate, as well as a practicing artist, Dahl is interested in the relationship of art practice, business, law and economics. She is interested in the mutual benefits that could be put in to play by bridging the terms aesthetics, culture, economics and trade.
Through a process of finely starched cotton thread, the installation speculates on the human condition - a delicate vision of a life mapped out in a labyrinth of policies, laws, and control.
In late 2004 the artists’ stored household and studio effects, including an art collection and personal letters, photos etc were destroyed in bushfires in Australia. The notion of attachment and the sense of belonging to her homeland Australia was essentially put into focus and this has been an integral force behind the making of this work.
“pouch” running concurrently in the upstairs gallery by artist Cassandra Schultz, similarly investigates what a sense of connection to place may hold as a signifier for identity, culture and personal history.
“As a non-indigenous Australian woman artist currently living in Singapore, my connection with place therefore lies divided between 3 separate countries, Singapore, where I have returned to live after 30 years. (I spent two years of my childhood here.) Australia, my country of birth, and England, my country of colonial origin.”
Schultz goes on to say that “in each locale, much has changed and many things exist now only as memories.” However her intention in this work is to “recognize the past as altered by the political and gendered omissions from official history.” … A shuffling between these official voices of authority and the more personal recounting of the nature of the journeys and in particular the “general absence of the female voice.”
The installation of figurines modeled in incense, commissioned by Schultz and produced by a local joss stick maker and cropped, shaved and etched kangaroo skins, honors her ancestors by replicating early colonial illustrations of Australian indigenous animals, historical maps, maritime tattoos and contemporary symbols in a faux museum dedicated to local knowledge and absent voices.
A series of hand bound books is inspired by a popular childhood game in Australia known as Chinese whispers, where by a sentence is whispered from child to child seated in a circle. The last child says out loud what they have heard; always entirely different to what was originally whispered.
Two different art practices two different shows, both attempting to share with each other and with the viewer the other space of Art making – ‘The Art Gallery”
The exhibitions will officially open on Saturday 5th March at 2:30pm at The Art Gallery National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk Singapore, and continue through till the 30th March 2005.
Iola Lenzi, art writer, critic and curator based in Singapore will formally open the exhibition.
Lenzi is author of the recently released book ‘Museums of Southeast Asia,” a comprehensive and accessible reference guide to Museums throughout Southeast Asia including an up-to-date guide to the region's locally known alternative art and cultural spaces.
A chartered bus transporting people to and from the City to Jurong/NIE free of charge for the opening event will leave from Stamford Road opposite Raffles City Shopping Centre at 2pm and return at 5:30pm. RSVP to ksdcgr@singnet.com.sg for seat reservations on bus.
The exhibition is sponsored by ZoCard, Singapore’s First Free Postcard Company, and The Butcher, Singapore’s first Aussie butcher shop.
The artists especially thank the National Institute of Education and the Visual and Performing Arts Department, the Australian High Commission, Tourism Australia and AUSTRADE under the umbrella of Celebrate Australia 2005 program.
Gallery hours are Monday to Thursday 10am to 5pm and Friday 10am to 4:30pm, or other times by appointment with the artists. Further information about The Art Gallery contact: Suharti tel: 6790 3557 email: vpa@nie.edu.sg
The artists are available for interviews prior to and throughout the show. Contact ksdcgr and followed by @singnet.com.sg for appointments.
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... one step further than
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Sunday, January 30, 2005
Life's Interpretations
a decade of drawing by Wong Shih Yaw
Thursday 3rd February 2005 7 pm
Utterly Art Exhibition Space
208 South Bridge Road 2nd Level, Singapore 058757
Tel: 6226 2605
Mon-Sat 11.30 am - 8 pm Sun 12 noon - 5.30 pm
The exhibition runs to Sunday 20th Feb 2005
but will be closed from 8-10 Feb 2005 for Chinese New Year.
The art illustrator may service various functional art forms such as animation, cartoons, comics, caricature, print and broadcast advertising, as well as editorial, political, book and graphic illustration – Wong Shih Yaw has contributed to several of these functional art forms in his time as an artist, but he has also drawn purely to please himself. Life’s Interpretations is a collection of illustrations amassed from more than a decade of drawing, from 1993 to 2004. Using a fine-tipped drawing pen, Shih Yaw creates these piquant vignettes of life and fantasy as a hobby when he finds himself free, commenting with light irony on social, sometimes personal situations. Typically message-driven, Shih Yaw’s wry observations touch on general societal issues, truisms of human relations, studies of personality traits and personal Christian beliefs. The exhibition is a mixed bag of acerbic bon mots offered by Shih Yaw for the immediate delectation and subsequent digestion of his audience.
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