What's On / Visual Arts

November 2009

The Substation's Sub_Space Presents :
TOGETHER AGAIN

TOGETHERAGAIN

By The Migrant Ecologies Project (Lucy Davis)

Artist Talk: Saturday 21 November, 4.30pm

The Migrant Ecologies Project embraces concerned explorers, curious collectors, daughters of woodcutters, miners of memories and art by nature. The project evolves through and around past and present movements and migrations of naturecultures in art and life in Southeast Asia.

This solo exhibition by Lucy Davis commissioned by The Substation consists of wood print collages, charcoal drawings and fragments of animation encircling memories of a tropical hardwood bed purchased in Singapore. The exhibition is a continuation of Davis’ exploration into the “secret lives” of timber objects in Southeast Asia and ongoing research into stories of, and relationships between, wood and trees in the region, where both are explored as material, metaphor, magic, ecological resource and historical agent.

The exhibition also continues an homage to the form and content of the Singapore modern woodcut movement, recast in a context of ecological crisis and contemporary “cuttings of wood”. Other protagonists in this exhibition include: The nineteenth century natural historian, Alfred Russell Wallace; Flora and fauna engravings from Wallace’s seminal Southeast Asian work The Malay Archipelago; William Farquhar, (Resident of Malacca and first British Resident and Commandant of Singapore); and shadow puppet, wood print renditions of the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Prints.

Lucy Davis is a Visual Artist, Art Writer and Assistant Professor at The School of Art Design and Media Nanyang Technological University Artist. She is artist in Residence with Double Helix Timber Tracking Technologies (http://doublehelixtracking.net/)

OCTOBER 2009

The Substation Sub_Space Presents :
ARENA - space, time & history

arena logo

Sound installation by Zulkifle Mahmod (Associate Artist)

We shape our buildings, and afterward our buildings shape us.

—Winston Churchill, 1943

While concepts such as architecture, acoustics, sound, perception, and anthropology have been part of our culture for centuries, they are usually considered in isolation from a narrow perspective. In contrast, aural architecture combines and reconciles them into a single interdisciplinary perspective, providing a new way of looking at the human experience of sound and space.

The native ability of human beings to sense space by listening is rarely recognized; indeed, some people think such an ability is unique to bats and dolphins. But sensing spatial attributes does not require special skills —all human beings do it: a rudimentary spatial ability is a hardwired part of our genetic inheritance. For example, when blindfolded, nearly all of us can approach a wall without touching it just by attending to the way the wall changes the frequency balance of the background noise. Similarly, the sounds of our footsteps hint at the location of stairs, walls, low ceilings, and open doors. To make this more obvious, walk through your home while listening to loud music through headphones; then do it again without the headphones. Notice how the clear sounds of your shoes on uncarpeted stairs provide navigational confidence, especially when your eyes are focused elsewhere.

ARENA explores the use of existing objects e.g. doors, glass windows, concrete walls and pillars in a physical space to create an aural architecture. These objects will be triggered by using DC motors and solenoids which will be programmed on the computer based on algorithm. Algorithm is a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer. The space will be converted into a ‘concert’ without players.

Arena also explores the ability of human mind in the space. Are we able to imagine in a space that is ‘cold’ and bright? Are we able to enjoy the ‘concert’? The interior of the space will be covered with white carpets. The whole space will lit with white fluorescent lights.

september 2009

An Exhibition by Valerie Ng :
Elemental Shifts

elemental

Workshop: Sat 26 September, 2 to 4pm – “Create art from junk mail and other ephemera” Cost: $35, BYO junk. Please click here for more info and to register.

The duality of forces and unpredictable nature of the elements are the inspiration for this series of works. It is interesting how the earth, fire, water and wind have the ability to either create or destroy – where subtle deviations in their states may result in different outcomes and the impact of these unexpected shifts are not always known. This too relates to my process of painting.

Colours are also great indicators and changes in hue can act as warning signs of the next transition. They also have an effect on the mood and it’s this immersive quality in the environment, along with the volatility and essence of nature that I would like to draw the viewer into.

The tactile quality of the oil paintings reflects on natural surfaces and works on papier-mâché will be part of the renewal of materials and variation of form.

For more information: www.valng.com

Part of the Singapore Art Show 2009

September 2009

A SeptFest Outdoor Exhibition :
3D Stencil by trent Jansen

trent

We have a guest artist coming into The Substation from Sept 14 to 18 where he will be creating an installation piece featuring 3D stencils on one of the outside walls of The Substation. Trent is from Australia and is being supported by the Australian High Commission and will also be supported by students from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

Trent is a multi-disciplinary designer who wants, needs and desires to create sustainable design. Even with his 3D stencils, he slowed down his projects once he found out that the foam he was using wasn’t environmentally friendly. He researched and sourced a new foam that he was comfortable using, which contain environmentally inert ingredients.

Trent is a designer who has created award-winning furniture & lighting, been awarded travelling scholarships and been featured a one of the world’s 100 most interesting product designers. Not bad for a guy from a small town in Australia!

“Your average two dimensional stencil artist goes out on the street with a cardboard stencil and a can of spray paint. With the 3D stencil, I go out on the street with a small mould and a can of expansion foam....
The beauty of 3D stencil art is that it is open for everyone to see that walks along the street – it’s a sociable artform! The art exists for a fleeting period of time and then it is painted over or taken down, but that’s also what makes it nice – it is changing, evolving but also says something about what people are thinking at a certain point in time.”

This exhibition is part of The Substation’s SeptFest, a month-long celebration of 19 years as Singapore first independent art centre!

The installation will be open to the public for as long as the art works stays on the wall!

July 2009

Sanna Myrtinnen with The Support of The Substation Presents :
Back to the Roots - an environmental art project dedicated to BOS (Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation)

a new earth

(Pictured above "A New Earth")

Back to the Roots presents a unique environmental arts project bringing together the hopes and environmental concerns of nearly five hundred students from across the world.

The project is the result of an extensive one-year collaboration between the Finnish born painter Sanna Myrttinen, the world’s largest primate rescue project called The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS), its founder Dr. Willie Smits and the students of Munich International School, Germany.

Dedicated to BOS, the show aims to raise awareness of how deforestation adversely affects the Bornean rainforest and its endangered inhabitants. Back to the Roots is a subtle plea to save the remaining pockets of paradise and is an appeal to us all to start taking action for a more sustainable, new Earth.

The children’s messages and imaginative painting run like a red thread throughout the show and form the basis for Sanna Myrttinen’s playful, bold and subtly thought-provoking work.

The works range from colorful collages based on paintings by children in primary 1, to delicate woodprints and large, impressive mixed-media patchworks of poetry. Each piece is the result of a group effort between the children and the artist with a clear focus on our rainforests and on how we can help to sustain them and their inhabitants.

The artist along with the German and the Finnish Embassies of Singapore will be jointly opening the exhibition.

For more info:

www.sanna-art.com

www.savetheorangutan.org

www.mis-munich.de

pocket A Pocket of Paradise: Sanna Myrtinnen & students aged 7 to 16

 

 

 

 

paradise

"Once There Was Paradise" consists of 20 small collages of various sizes. The series contains motifs that were cut from 100 paintings created by children in Primary 1. Each child painted his/her vision of an intact rainforest then Sanna cut out the motifs, rearranging then on a canvas, turning them into this series of colourful collages. Each painting contains motifs from 6 to 10 children. This series has been sold in advance of the exhibition opening.

shimmers “Shimmers of Hope” is a series where a group of Primary 2 children painted canvases in the “wildest imaginable colours, shapes and images that they associate with rainforests”. Sanna then took all the canvasses and outlined every image in these paintings, blocking out everything else in black. She began to process these images by adding the children’s poetry and reflections on the current state of the rainforests.

 

"Sunbird"sunbird

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JUNE 2009

The Substation & Victoria Cattoni Present :
What if I want to waterski? And other questions

sakina

Artist talk: Saturday 13 June, 12 noon

What if I want to water ski? And other questions A Digital Media Installation by Victoria Cattoni

In this beguilingly titled exhibition, What if I want to water-ski? And other questions, artist Victoria Cattoni asks us to unveil our perceptions and perhaps, misconceptions, of the Muslim headscarf for women, otherwise known generically as hijab, or locally as tudung.

Part of a broader project, ‘Re-Dressing the Veil’, begun in 2007 in Malaysia with the support of an Australia Council for the Arts grant, the exhibition What if I want to water-ski? And other questions draws on Cattoni’s ongoing exploration of cross-cultural experience, taking us on a journey between Singapore, Penang and Cairns/Mareeba in North-eastern Australia via the hijab.

This is a journey that firstly documents the headscarf as it is worn by Muslim women today in each of the places where the project has taken place – Singapore, Penang, Cairns and Mareeba - but with a focus here at The Substation, on Muslim women in Singapore. These photographic portraits, as well as documenting a cross-section of types of tudung worn locally, are intended to challenge mainstream representations of women in headscarf. The photographs offer instead, very personal depictions of the Muslim woman in headscarf, locating her as 'portrait-able'. For whilst Muslim women in headscarf are an intrinsic and visible part of the social fabric and landscape of Singapore, their very ‘familiarity’ with all of its attached assumptions can simultaneously render them distant.

In addition to, and in dialogue with the photographic portraits, the video work in the exhibition reveals perceptual and personal journeys of individuals involved, who in the main, do not wear hijab and who are not Muslim. We witness these individuals trying on headscarf for the first time, reacting in very different ways. We view and listen to these women as they respond to seeing themselves in headscarf. We watch as they explore their thoughts and feelings on it, as they consider the headscarf as a garment, symbol and inadvertently, a cultural text. While it might seem like an opportunity to just dress-up in something exotic, by demystifying the hijab, we actually come closer to personalising something that might otherwise seem far away.

The installation encompasses video and digital photographs, as well as books that are documents of past direct audience interaction. The audience at The Substation will also be invited to contribute to books.

A preview of the work was recently exhibited in Australia [December 2008] and a segment included in the Jakarta Biennale Arena: Fluid Zones [February 2009]. The work being presented at The Substation is the most extensive presentation of work from the project to date and will precede an exhibition at the Penang State Gallery in early 2010.

may 2009

The Institute 0f Critical Zoologists (ICZ) & The Substation Present :
If a tree falls in the forest

if a tree

The Institute of Critical Zoologists, otherwise known as ICZ, have announced plans for their upcoming exhibition at The Substation titled “If a tree falls in the forest”. The exhibition aims to question common views of and relationships with animals, and challenge these pre-conceived ideas by making subversive changes to the way we observe them.

“If a tree falls in the forest” is made up of three parts: a live performance titled “Before the flood”, “Kings” an exhibition of rare animals never before seen in Singapore and “Soon Bo’s Cold Room and Shelves”, an exhibition of photographs. “ICZ aims to promote discourse on the principles and practices of animal spectatorship, animal advocacy, animal killing and animal-related policies across the fields of entertainment, social science, commerce, culture and ecology and we hope that viewers will look upon animals in a different light after seeing this exhibition”, says Mr Tomo Kawasaki, Director of The Institute of Critical Zoologists.

“Before the flood” is a live performance that will feature hundreds of mousetraps spring-loaded with white ping pong balls. Each ping pong ball represents one of the thousands of mouse species in the world. This piece consists of a separate document listing the names of different mouse species each ping pong ball represents. The traps will be contained inside a case. They will be activated, nuclear fission style, with a single ping pong ball thrown onto the traps, creating a chain reaction when the subsequent balls fly about in the case and land on other traps, springing more balls into action. Once all the balls have been jettisoned all that will remain is hundreds of balls lying on the floor amongst the spent traps, like death markers for each species of mouse each ball represents.

“Kings” is a collection of rare white Tottori cockroaches, never before displayed in Singapore. They are from the Tottori sand dunes of Japan and are an attempt to illustrate how animals are assigned a certain “status” based on their aesthetic appeal. “Simply put, the cuter the animal, the more protection and support it will receive. We assert that the panda, which is marketed as a cute and cuddly animal will never become extinct as long as the WWF - World Wide Fund for Nature features the panda on its logo,” explains Mr Kawasaki. Animal souvenirs and memorabilia from around the globe in the museum’s collection also accompany “Kings” and pose the question, “What purpose do they serve and what memories do they contain?”

The third part of “If a tree falls in the forest” is titled “Soon Bo’s Cold Room and Shelves” and is a series of photographs of animals owned by collector, taxidermist and biologist Soon Bo, who died in 2006. Soon Bo's love for animals and his skill as a taxidermist brewed a bizarre collection of specimens over the years. They started off as pets for research, where he would study and observe them, as a scientist would. After they died Soon Bo would stuff them then photograph each one. Robert Zhao, member and resident artist of The Institute of Critical Zoologists spent a short time as Soon Bo’s student in taxidermy. ““Soon Bo’s Cold Room and Shelves” blurs the lines between the natural and the artificial, as this collection of animals stare at you with questions in their glassy eyes and an eerie hint of life in their bodies. Soon Bo believed that animals can attain higher status when mounted and he encouraged experimental research on this topic,” explains Mr Zhao.

“If a tree falls in the forest” by The Institute of Critical Zoologists questions our views and relationships with animals. They are prey, pets, trinkets, trophies and pests. This exhibition makes subversive changes in the way we observe animals and illustrates how these changes can alter perceptions and interpretations and ultimately question the human to animal relationship.

march 2009

Marisa Keller, Kelly Reedy & Julia Roberts Present :
Moving

moving

(Pictured right from top to bottom: Marisa Keller's "Summer Days", Julia Roberts' "Lush" & Kelly Reedy's "Duad detail")

“Moving”, a group exhibition featuring the work of Marisa Keller, Kelly Reedy and Julia Roberts, will be shown at The Substation Gallery in Singapore from March 3rd to 15th. Each artist will address the nature of change, shifts in perceptions and evolving personal viewpoints.

Marisa Keller presents new works that aim to go beyond a picturesque representation of actual landscapes, to evoke multiple perspectives on the constant fleeting experiences we have in relation to the natural world. This print series is created and constructed from found and collected natural materials, which Keller chose for their intricate patterns and textures. By presenting the work in a panoramic format, the landscapes frame a journey through an imaginary territory of ideal reflection. The aesthetically rich and highly detailed works should leave viewers with a sense of awe, respect, and connectedness to nature.

Kelly Reedy’s recent work integrates stylistic and iconic references from different parts of the world. She lived in Europe and the US prior to moving to Singapore in 1997. In an effort to blur the lines of time and place, her new figurative collages layer cross-cultural images, artefacts and memories. Exposure to the traditional arts of Asia has led her to incorporate the use of natural dyes, fabric, and handmade paper into her mixed media pieces. For this exhibition she has created a bold new series of drawings and paintings, “moving” us beyond the mundane.

Having recently returned to live in Australia, landscape artist Julia Roberts’ new work is a tribute to her 10 years of living in one of Singapore’s colonial Black & White houses. Moving out of her home after over a decade inspired what Roberts calls her desire to ‘souvenir something of Singapore’, to capture the moment, the thoughts, the emotion and the imagery before it is all past, lost, gone and forgotten. Depictions of lush tropical gardens and fragments of B&W blinds combine to form large chequer board compositions. “Our tenure was but a small chapter in the house’s long history” states Roberts, hence these new paintings comprise many squares to reflect the house’s many occupants.

For more information about the exhibition and the artists please visit: www.marisakeller.com, www.kellyreedy.com, www.studioroberts.com

2008-2009

The Substation's sub_Space Present :
Open Call 2009

decopmposition

The Substation invites artists to put in proposals for a visual art project to be realized at The Substation Gallery in May 2009.

The Open Call programme is an annual event at The Substation Gallery. The previous Open Call saw two exhibitions presented in the gallery in March 2008: Videology, curated by Urich Lau, which showcased works by Claes Erik Eriksson, Julie Lee, Patricia Ho, Maxine Chionh and Veliana; and DEcomposition II: Publication is Prostitution by vertical submarine (Justin Loke, Fiona Koh and Joshua Yang).

For the 2009 exhibition, ONE project will be selected. This can be a solo artist project or a group project. Artists will have access to curatorial and technical advice by The Substation’s artistic co-directors and technical team. The Substation will carry out the marketing and publicity for the exhibitions. A modest budget will be provided for production and publicity costs.

We are looking for projects with strong artistic ideas, possess critical rigour, and which can be executed practically. We are looking particularly for projects that demonstrate a fit with The Substation’s artistic mission and with The Substation Gallery’s role as a contemporary art space.

Other criteria for selection:

How to Submit:

Send in aproposal (at least 2 written paragraphs) with accompanying images of past or present works, or sketches of the proposed exhibition, and a biodata, to The Substation by email: admin@substation.org or by post: 45 Armenian Street, Singapore 179936.

Closing date: 22 December 2008.

DEcember 2008

Artists from NorthLight School :
Our Mess

our mess

It was a random gathering of artists. One, a prolific photographer, also a Mechanical instructor to the students. Another, a librarian who graduated from Goldsmiths. Yet others, established artists in the field of print-making and Chinese painting; a ceramist born out of pure interest, a teacher aid trained in Art at NAFA and experienced at interior design; an arts manager who performs and sets up contemporary art installation work.

This is Our Mess, our collection of interests and interjections. It is Our Mess which gives us the common ground to meet and to speak as individuals even as we work together for a common cause.

Meet the artists of Our Mess

Ho Chan Seng has more than 35 years of technical teaching experience. Ho has great passion in photography and 6 years ago he start attending formal photography course in Singapore. He was awarded “Distinction in Advance Travel Photography by the Photographic Society of Singapore in 2005”.

Haryana Bte Mohd Dom is a self-taught art teacher with about nine years of teaching experience in local schools. Her interest in ceramics started when she was in National Institute of Education (NIE). She later furthers her passion by teaching young children the therapeutic art of ceramics. She also conducts workshops on recycled sculptures, glass and porcelain painting for adults.

Aside from ceramics, Haryana also indulges in Nature and Travel Photography with a focus on capturing nature and rural life.

Cynthia Foong graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. Foong’s work comes from common daily life. Change and repetition is the fabric of everyday life. Her work seeks not to capture a specific image but to capture a moment in time.

Cheryl Tan graduated from Goldsmiths College in 2006 with a degree in Contemporary Art Practice. She is interested in the notion of time and space and often makes work focusing around the themes of nostalgia and how it affects our understanding of time and space.

Foo Kwee Horng is an artist who has taken part in numerous print-making exhibitions over the last decade. He is presently a full-time teacher and has a Masters in Visual Art (research) NIE, NTU.

Jenny Kwan studied Fine Arts in Nanyang Academy of Fine Art. She is an artist, an interior decorator and she has a keen passion for all things artistic, She works with a variety of media, particularly with clay. Inspired by biomorphic shapes, she has created a series of Globular Sculptures. Among the Biomorphic Shapes – some spiky, some globules and skeletal finished in unglazed clay.

Felicia Low graduated from Goldsmiths College, London, with a degree in Fine Art in 1999, Felicia has always been interested in New Genre Public Art, a form of Art which involves the concerns and actions of the community in collaboration with the artist. Besides holding independent public performances as well as installations in Singapore, Felicia is interested in how Art can be more relevant to the lives of the community through education.

The Northlight School (Chinese: 北烁学校) is an institution for students who are at risk of dropping out of school and aims to provide an engaging education and prepare them for lifelong learning and employability. Admission to the school is based on at least two failed attempts at the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE). The school also accepts premature school leavers who have yet to complete secondary education.

Ho Chan Seng's work, pictured above.

November 2008

The Substation & Patrick Storey Present :
Sometimes A Long Five Miles

sometimes

Artist's talk and reception on Saturday 15 November at 5:30pm

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

Indeed, we at the Substation gravitate towards the experimental and non-conformist and sometimes find ourselves on the path of most resistance when we push artistic comfort zones and are true to our artistic mission and integrity. And so when American artist Patrick Storey came along with a proposal for an installation called “Sometimes a Long Five Miles” that was going to depict his self-imposed isolation in the mountains of Colorado, living a life that the vast majority of Singaporeans would find unbearable, with few modern conveniences and no vehicle to easily access civilization five miles down the road, it struck a familiar chord.

“Sometimes a Long Five Miles" refers directly to the distance from the town of Aspen, to Patrick’s unrenovated cabin in the mountainous woods of Conundrum, Colorado in the United States not far from the notoriously rich and famous town of Aspen. Patrick would walk, hitchhike, ski or ride his bike up and down the mountain, day or night, sharing the road with bears, elks and coyotes. This journey was at once beautiful and harrowing, hence the title of the exhibition.This rustic cabin bordering the National Forest and surrounded by the Rocky Mountains was Patrick’s home for eight years, along with his German Shepherd dog “Bosco” for companionship.

This work is a portrait of the lifestyle Patrick lived in the Rocky Mountains 18 months ago and is meant to provide a view to another world that is host to an entirely different culture and climate on the other side of the globe. The show will consist of a log cabin-like building, sculpture, paintings, video footage and photographs from his home and of the surrounding landscape in Colorado. Patrick is planning to live in the gallery space for much of the exhibition and part of the installation will be created live.

However, most Singaporeans who have grown up in this city-state with modern conveniences at every turn might be puzzled as to why someone would choose to live on an isolated mountain for eight years with minimal infrastructure. Patrick elaborates that he had “lived in the inner city parts of the United States and had some bad encounters with crime, so it seemed time to trade in the risk of living in the city in a big warehouse studio to living in the mountains 3000 kilometres away in a tiny shack. This exhibition is a worthy example of how one’s environment can be a direct and clear influence on their art. Andy Warhol’s paintings were seen as a direct response to the inundation of mass advertising at the time and Jackson Pollock found inspiration in his early years during his frequent road trips across the United States. In the case of “Sometimes a Long Five Miles”, creating the exhibition and living in the gallery “reflects a life choice of not separating life from art. Life and art are always connected so being an artist is both a blessing and a curse by virtue of this integration. You never get a day off,” quips Patrick.

In “Sometimes a Long Five Miles,” Patrick points to “inadequacies in trying to portray a memory or re-live it.” It is also an attempt to share a part of his life with the local Singapore community that has shared theirs with him. The local culture reveals itself daily to Patrick and this “opening up” of a culture depends on the “willingness or ability to take it in and learn about it as well as being accepted by it. This exhibition is, in a way, trying to give back by informing about an alternate reality and culture that is completely different.”

Written by Emily J Hoe, printed in the November 2008 issue of Singapore Art Gallery Guide

November 2008

ACS International Present :
MAPS

maps

Presented by Year 5 IB art students from ACS (International)

The exhibition, entitled “Maps”, is an exploration of self identity in today’s youth. The purpose of maps is for navigation and finding direction, hence it serves as a metaphor for personal reflection and the concept of rediscovering oneself. The proverbial predicaments of teenage angst and identity crises have been a source of inspiration for many.

In this exhibit, one is able to admire the vast array of paintings and mixed media works created by a diverse group of students with their own distinct styles, with many of the students still in the process of nurturing their artistic advancements.

The display aims to shed light on each young artist’s personality and gives some introspect into the core of each young soul, thus charting his or her artistic growth. The works put on show are relevant to both the young and old. The youth are able to identify with their fellow adolescents, while adults are given the opportunity to step back into the childhood they left behind.

October 2008

The Substation & the Contemporary Arts Centre of South Australia (CACSA) Present :
Flipside

flipside

Other than being the B-side of a vinyl record, the term ‘flipside’ indicates a sharply contrasting point of view, and at its most extreme, describes a completely opposite imaginary world. This exhibition presents the work of six Australian artists that incorporate such acute positions in their work to draw our attention to aspects of the world that would otherwise go unnoticed or unchallenged, and to help us individuals to push against the momentum of the wider world where we find it necessary.

Participating Artists:

Roy Ananda uses regular hardware supplies in extraordinary ways to create objects that push our understanding of the qualities of form and materiality, emphasising the value of weight, shape and texture in a world that is becoming more and more dependant on the virtual.

Bianca Barling is best known for her film and videos which explore our collective beliefs about what constitutes femininity, and the ways in which our understanding may be expanded in the future.

Matthew Bradley is renowned for his ingeniously inventive sculptural and video works that consider the creative potential of those that exist on the fringes of society.

Louise Haselton, lecturer at the South Australian School of Art, creates curious assemblages of eye catching materials that allude to the possibility of unknown forms of energy and dynamics that may exist undetected by human perception.

Sean Ruiz develops simple processes by which he reconfigures maps and other printed matter to emphasise the remarkable capacity for our planet to sustain life, and the importance and richness of the opportunity it provides.

Mark Siebert draws our attention to certain imbalances emerge between the individual and mainstream culture and society through his humorous and irreverent actions documented in photography.

Supported by the Australian High Commission, Singapore

Curated by Peter McKay.

A longer description: as written by Peter McKay for Singapore Art Gallery Guide, October 2008 issue.

Other than being the B-side of a vinyl record, the term “flipside” indicates a contrasting point of view that describes a completely opposite imaginary world. As an artistic device, such a vantage-point enables an artist to expand their audiences' capacity to perceive and comprehend their world by distinguishing it against what it is not. Working across sculpture, video and photography, Roy Ananda, Bianca Barling, Matthew Bradley, Louise Haselton, Sean Ruiz and Mark Siebert each assume such acute positions in their practices in order to draw our attention to aspects of the world that would otherwise go unnoticed or unchallenged – and to assist us as individuals to push against the momentum of the wider world. In many varied ways and for different purposes these artists can be seen to question the nature of reality such that they emerge somewhere on the 'other side' – and return to us with their discoveries of what might be possible.

Presented by The Substation in partnership with the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia [CACSA], FLIPSIDE has been curated to compliment the 2008 Singapore Biennale theme Wonder. Barling, Bradley and Siebert for their own purposes explore the limits of what is considered socially accepted and expected behaviour, and suggest that there might be much gained by crossing or even removing some of these bounds. Barling's particular investigation is conducted principally in reference to femininity, whereas Bradley and Siebert explore the innovative and regenerative aspects of divergence. By their explorations Barling, Bradley and Seibert open our minds to what new potential the world might hold if only we only took the time to attempt to perceive it clearly and imagine it anew.

In contrast Ananda, Haselton and Ruiz each incorporate systematic approaches to working with their materials in order to strictly focus their attentions and infuse their work with structures that can help to emphasise certain qualities that are lacking in our day to day lives. Ananda reminds us of the comfort that can be found in the weight and texture of the real world, qualities that are increasingly neglected in our computer dependant societies. Similarly Haselton and Ruiz both reflect on the importance of unity and its absolute necessity to continue the succession of the gift of life to future generations.

Alan Cruickshank, CACSA Executive Director and instigator of this international partnership with The Substation states, “in recent years the CACSA has established a significant regional Australasian and Southeast Asian profile for the CACSA’s exhibition, publishing and public programs. FLIPSIDE further exemplifies our ongoing commitment to the presentation and promotion of Australian visual art and artists in Australia, and establishing lasting cultural partnerships with the Southeast Asian region.” Over the past 5 years the CACSA has exhibited in Australia artwork by Ho Tzu Nyen, Qiu Anxiong, Miao Xiaochun, Tatsuo Miyajima, Chen Chieh-Jen, Leung Mee Ping and Qiu Zhijie among many other leading artists from the broader region.

A 48 page colour catalogue with essay by Peter McKay, curator of FLIPSIDE and the CACSA, will be available from both The Substation and the CACSA. FLIPSIDE exhibition and catalogue has been assisted by the Government of South Australia through Arts SA.