calendario eventi  :: 

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1/11/2011

Replay

SG Private Banking Gallery, Alliance Francaise de Singapour, Singapore

A group exhibition by Justin Lee CK, Ranae Lee, Loh Sau Kuen and Tay Bee Aye Summary
The show is a documentation of the artists’ learning process. It displays their refection, discoveries, implementation and strategies towards art making. It is a mixed-media of ceramics, fabric, food and parchment presented through installation pieces within the space. The theme challenges our perception towards social issues and community values. It also portrays a second investigation “How many steps away are the materials applied after it was transform from its raw state from the earth”.

Introduction
Written by: Margaret Tan Ai Hua
Associate Fellow, Tembusu College, National University of Singapore "I make, remake and unmake my concepts along a moving horizon, from an always decentered centre, from an always displaced periphery which repeats and differenciates them" (Gilles Deleuze Difference and Repetition xxi).

Replay – to play back, to repeat – seems to suggest repetition of the same over and over again. But repetition, as French philosophers have taught us, is inseparable from difference since individuals remain bound to the varying forces that constitute them.[i] Repetition hence also implies contingencies, unique series of things or events. Replay embodies this complex relationship between repetition and difference. Based on the themes of re-looking, re-thinking and re-loading, this exhibition marks a reunion of sorts of former classmates who graduated twelve years ago from the School of Fine Arts, Lasalle College of the Arts. Since then, all of us have remained committed to the arts, one way or another, under varying circumstances and in our different capacities.

Replay encapsulates the differing responses of four artists to the same living environment, that is, Singapore. Conversely, it captures their identical interest in the processes of art making with diverging outcomes. In the spirit of repetition and difference, the current exhibition should be understood as being as much about the works as it is about the creators of the works, in connection with their past and what they have to say about the future – of art, society, and the relationship between art and society. REPLAY provides an inspirational moment for those interested in the arts. This re-grouping of former art students, twelve years on, suggests that it is not simply productivity (how much art one can produce) that counts, but one’s commitment to self-reflexivity, to the re-invention of the roles of art and artist that will continue to keep art unique and alive in our society.

Artists
Justin Lee was a graphic designer before joining Lasalle College of the Arts. He is now an established full-time artist known for his representation of Singapore society and lifestyle using a unique blend of eastern and western cultural icons. His current works reflect on the relationship between texts and our notions of self, specifically, how mass media, consumer products, and art shape our thoughts and expressions.

Ranae Lee now holds a degree in Fine Arts and a diploma in Disability Studies. She conducts weekly art workshops for children and youths with special needs at one of Singapore’s Voluntary Welfare Organisations. Her early works investigated the notion of “home and heart” through prints of internal architectural spaces with repetitive lines, grids and negative space. For this exhibition, drawing on her Peranakan heritage, Ranae extends the same notion through food, recipes, and the processes of preparing and cooking several dishes.

Loh Sau Kuen holds a degree in Fine Arts. She has been teaching art to youths and adults with intellectual disability and special needs in a not-for- profit charitable organisation for more than a decade. Her early works were influenced by constructivism in art and she used abstracts to convey the concept of transit and change. Inspired by constructivist teaching strategies, which emphasise effective learning through active engagement in the learning process, Sau Kuen presents here works she made with her students that focus on notions of progress and variation.

Tay Bee Aye is a full-time artist known for her signature soft sculptures and site-specific installations using fabric. Her current works extend her earlier explorations of two-dimensional hanging pieces that allow audiences to interact with and become part of the artworks. For this show, Bee Aye extends this methodology to comment on the competitive culture in Singapore.

Margaret Tan was a former classmate of the exhibiting artists. Although unable to participate in the current show, she is deeply honoured to be asked to write this Introduction. She is also a researcher with the Science, Technology, and Society Research Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
[i] I am referring specifically to Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida.

Message
Written by: Tan Boon Hui
Director, Singapore Art Museum
Contrary to romantic notions of the heroic artist blazing new horizons for the plebeian masses, being an artist is in the main the most unheroic profession one could undertake. Most work alone, both physically and emotionally, for all genuine artistic creation is a solitary pursuit. In Singapore, more than ever, to choose to be an artist is to choose a vocation, a calling rather than a job. It pays terribly most of the time, the money is unpredictable and usually one is misunderstood easily. That the four artists in this REPLAY exhibition, Justin Lee, Ranae Lee, Loh Sau Kuen and Tay Bee Aye are still making art twelve years after graduation from art school is a testament to the power of their artistic calling and their individual beliefs in the vocation they have chosen.

Compared to our Southeast Asian neighbours whose artists are constantly steeped in the rich crafts and artisanship traditions of their societies, contemporary artists in Singapore have had to start almost tabula rasa, on a blank slate. This has not been tragic but rather liberating, for among regional artists, it is our local artists that have had possibly one of the most adventurous engagements with the possibilities of making art that is fully contemporary, without the shackles of the past. Much more critical thought needs to be given to looking at Singapore artists in this light. The four artists in this exhibition thus fully explore the possibilities of materials and mediums found in contemporary society without baggage or inhibition. Let us congratulate them in the spirit of the contemporary and all its possibilities for change and growth.

More informations:
Mr Benedict Tan, Gallery Manager DID: +65 6833 9314 email: benedict@alliancefrancaise.org.sg

Private Banking Gallery, Alliance Française de Singapour
1 Sarkies Road, Level 2, Singapore
Hours: mon to Fri, 11am to 7pm. Sat, 11am to 5pm. Sun and PH Closed
Admission is free

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