Contemporary Art at SAM

8Q sam is located at 8 Queen Street, Singapore,
On the opposite side of the street from the museum’s “DOME cafe” and the Church of St. Peter & Paul

EVENTS

Today, 15 Aug is the opening of 8Q, the new wing of the Singapore Art Museum, which specialises in Contemporary Art. Opening is 6.30pm onwards. A few events over the weekend will follow:

Gallery Turn Studios at 8Q sam
16 – 17 Aug (Sat & Sun) • 8Q sam Gallery Level 1 • 10am – 7pm • Free
Come interact and find out how artists work as they transform a museum gallery into a working studio space to create artworks! Do not miss this opportunity to mingle with The Artists Village artists as they create artworks, turning a gallery space that is traditionally reserved for the display and presentation of art into a creative space where art comes alive!

“Uninvited Obstacles” Install II workshop by artist Agnes Yit
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Visualise your thoughts with artist Agnes Yit, who will pose questions and set you thinking on the role that you adopt in your everyday life.
Expect an installation of punching bags, which was exhibited in Post-Ulu at The Substation in the year 2000. Post-Ulu was organised by newer members of TAV who did not experience the early phase of the group and space at Lorong Gambas.

“When The Ship Comes In” workshop by artist Lee Wen
Time: 3pm – 5pm
Express your imagination to social history of Singapore and respond by creating your own artwork. Selected artworks will be used to form a collage to be installed at the future Bayfront MRT Station.
Commissioned by Land Transport Authority of Singapore (LTA), Cultural Medallion recipient & artist, Lee Wen will be conceptualising an artwork as part of LTA’s Intergrated Art Programme.

EXHIBITIONS

School: 8Q-Rate
(16 Aug 08 – 9 Jan 09)
Tour by curator: 22 Aug 08, 7.30pm (free)
School: 8Q-Rate is a contemporary exhibition where eight curators will work with eight artists from multi-disciplnary backgrounds to present works that play on the theme of school.

The Artists Village: 20 Years On
(9 Aug 08 – 5 Oct 08 )
Tour by curator: 29 Aug 08 & 12 Sep 08, 7.30pm (free)
The Artists Village: 20 Years On addresses issues concerning the history, or rather, memories of The Artists Village (TAV). The dynamics of individual and collective social memories of the TAV artists during the Ulu Sembawang period and the Post-Ulu period offer multiple entry points to the understanding of TAV.

Masriadi: Black Is My Last Weapon
(15 Aug 08 – 9 Nov 08 )
Tour by curator: 19 Sep 08, 7.30pm (free)
Masriadi: Black is My Last Weapon gathers more than 30 paintings by Indonesian artist I Nyoman Masriadi from early 1990s to his most recent 2008 works. A first solo exhibition of contemporary Indonesian art at the SAM, the exhibition forms part of SAM’s ongoing efforts to feature significant modern and contemporary Southeast Asian artists, continuing from solo exhibitions of Affandi and Widayat in 2007. The works on display for Masriadi: Black is My Last Weapon have been borrowed from individual collectors in , and Hong Kong.

For more Info visit the Singapore Art Museum website: www.singart.com

Singapore Night Festival 2008 – Week 1

It’s Monday and my fingers are having the blues so I won’t be typing out much but I’ll just paste some photos we took at the first weekend of Night Fest. Enjoy!

ps: for those of you wondering, my camera is a compact Fujifilm F100fd. And I love it!

The National Museum of Singapore, note the dancing couple in the middle

Sailing ship and dancer suspended in the air from wires

Extreme piano playing

Part of the crowd and a line of local girls in gigantic skirts on wheels

Giant luminescent ball – can’t really see it here but there’s a dancer suspended in the centre of the sphere

The moon (I assume) and two ladies

Dancers suspended from some really pretty balloons

Another view of the balloons – personally the red one is my favorite

Classical-style faces projected onto a screen of fine mist from a sprinkler

Water dance, a bit like gymnastics with goldfish in a bowl

Fire dance, ladies in nighties with pyromaniac tendencies

Fire umbrella, patent pending – waiting for scientific proof that spinning fiery spokes will keep you dry

Celebrating My Entry to the Late 20’s

My birthday’s over but the gathering’s happening this Saturday, 19 July 2008. We’re gonna have dinner at Ricciotti (Italian, which is a safe choice for all the picky eaters out there. I’ve never heard of anyone not liking Italian food. Well OK except my Dad, who, like many other Indonesians, his age especially, can only eat Indonesian and Indonesian-Chinese food. But not my friends. Nobody’s ever complained of Italian.) It’s gonna be followed by some board-games (I know I know. Geeky. Yeah.) and whatever thing you wanna do after since we’ll be around Boat Quay and Clarke Quay and there are watering holes abound.

I know it’s unrealistic to post an invitation here because nobody reads my blog anyway, but (hi, nobody!) do dress up in stripes and drop by if you wanna.

Update: we’re gonna head down to the Night Fest at 11.30pm

Library Book Sale

Date: 18 – 20 July 2008

Time: 9.30am – 8.00pm

Venue: Singapore Expo Hall 4A

The National Library’s having a garage sale, a “cuci gudang”. English & Chinese books are going at $2 a pop, magazines at $5 for a pack of 10. Malay and Tamil book are going at at $1 a pop and magazines at $5 for a pack of 20. Your purchase is limited to 50 copies, tho. And they also provide delivery service through SingPost.

Unfortunately I’ll only be able to visit the sale on Sunday (that’s the third and final day) cos today I’m gonna go to the night festival opening, then tomorrow we’re going on a field trip to the Matisse exhibition at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI) and my birthday dinner. So.. yeah I really really really hope they still have buy-worthy stuff left on Sunday. I can visualize the kiasu Singaporeans queueing up and loading their baskets up with any book they can find, and bringing along friends or members of the family so that they can buy more than the 50 book quota. Fingers crossed!

Update:

According to the bf there were 600 people waiting outside the hall before the sale opened this morning. Damn.

Singapore Night Festival

Date: 18 – 26 July 2008

Venue: National Museum, SMU lawn, and its vicinity

Time: at night

There’s gonna be some fun happening the next two weekends. Singapore is holding a Night Festival which includes performances spectacular (imported, of course) some outdoor Zouk-ing and a slew of other performances and installations.

The Italian aerial Performance, The Dancing Sky by Studi Festi, will be on 18 and 19 July at 9.00pm at the National Museum with a second performance at 11.30pm. It’s gonna involve suspended stuff and people flying around. There are also other performances around the venue.

The highlight on 25 and 26 July is the Zouk Beatnik Picnic outdoor party (do I hear PARTY? Yeah!!!!) A number of heritage-related events will be held in museums and and vicinity, and watch out for the light installation that will paint the facades of the National Museum and the Art Museum. They’re also going to screen (the John Travolta) Hairspray and Willy Wonka (the 1971 version) outdoors, under the huge banyan tree outside the National Museum.

And.. and.. they’re all FREE!!!! And the 5 museums in the civic district (Asian Civilisation, National, Peranakan, Art, Philatelic) will be open to the public until 2.00am on both weekends the 25th, and.. and.. it’s FREE admission from 6.00pm onwards! Now how cool is that?

I picked up a pamphlet with all the performance schedule but apparently they don’t have an online version of it. The National Museum website lists the programmes but the website isn’t really that friendly – but anyway it’s better than nothing, so if you wanna know more you can visit their website then click on the Night Festival link at the bottom of the page and then click on the respective dates to view the programme line-up.

Numbify My Mind, yes.

I’m not sure why but ants are crawling all over my work desk. They crawl on me, and bite me at their own convenience. If you imagine fire ants or man-eating ant colonies, no they’re not that exciting – just regular small annoying ants. The only explanation I can come up with is ants have developed a taste for me. So I’ll just have to wait for the time when I develop a taste for ants, then I’ll get my revenge. Muha ha ha!

Anyway, the cough isn’t gone yet and it’s getting much more annoying. Yesterday my throat felt like it’s got a whole Monthong Durian stuck in it and my body tried to cough it up all through last night, letting me get 3 hours of sleep. Fortunately today the durian is gone, but I still can’t finish one sentence without coughing my lungs out.

It’s only Wednesday – and Wednesday’s not even over yet, so still half a work-week to endure through *sigh*. I went over to the NUS Museum to see the S Sudjojono exhibition, which was quite interesting and pretty refreshing for lunchtime entertainment. Billy went along too, as he had an interview in Science Park earlier in the morning so we thought why not just meet up for a sandwich lunch and drop by the museum.

The position he interviewed for was Assoc Engineer (image/print) with MINDEF, which deals lots with image retouching – I have my suspicion that what they actually do is airbrush many photos in the press, like maybe Mas Selamat doesn’t actually look like the short javanese guy with a thin mustache, or maybe some political figures weren’t actually at the place the photo was shot at. Or maybe conjure up gruesome photos for cigarette pack warning labels.

Until the end of Friday, I’ll just anesthetize my mind with the thoughts of things to do this weekend. We’re gonna watch the new Indiana Jones movie starring the sagging Harrison Ford, catch the Singapore Arts Fest opening at Boat Quay, featuring Water Fools – which looks like Cirque du Soleil on water to me, and my first training session for the Singapore Art Museum Volunteers. And how smart of the Museum! Apparently guides in the museums in singapore are all voluntary guides – so the Museum doesn’t fork out any money to pay these people. And we, the volunteers, even have to pay for the training fees! Which is not really that cheap, but if you consider it as a college-level crash course in art, then it’s not really that expensive at all. And I’ll get to know more people, too! And it gives me something productive to do on weekends, other than doing the laundry or sweeping the floor.