I kinda forced myself to go to South Beach today knowing that I should take the opportunity of making full use of my $10 ticket.
Cheo, Chai Hiang
Teh Tarik (Courting After School 1950s Style)
The texts in this art by Chai Hiang are from Singapore Cultural Medallion winner Yeng Pway Ngon’s
Little Incidents: Between Me and Myself, a Chinese Singaporean novel about they shy thoughts of a young boy and a girl as they make their way back home from school in the 1950s. The installation in itself has possible substantive meanings. Language, dialogue, translation, loss, poetry and inter-culturalism in Singapore can figure in the work depending on one’s perspective.
Heman Chong
Teardrop
Cobangbang, Lena
Terrible Landscapes
Cobangbang recreates newspaper photographs of disaster into detailed maquettes using left over food. She then photographs and blows them up to a size that appropriates landscape photography. Spoiled food and left overs are the primary source of material of Lena Cobangbang’s maquettes of disaster.
I certainly did not realise that her pieces were made of food.
Hair Salon
Erlich, Leandro
This installation by Erlich is devised so that when you look into the mirror on the wall it appears as if the room is reflected in the mirror, but in fact, there is an identical room that has been created symmetrically behind the mirror. The mirror is used as a trick, a devise to surprise people and to pose an interesting question about reality and illusion. It shows us what one thinks is an illusion is actually real and that there is only a fine line between them.
This is the installation that I was looking forward to. I was surprised when I peered in the “mirror” and saw a girl walk into the room. I looked behind and she was not there and then I realised that she was on the other side of the room.
Beauty and the Beast
Rashid, Layla Juma A.
Beauty and the Beast are a series of photographs of images of sculptures made of chewing gum. Knowing its property (gum when chewed and softened, turns into a very flexible material), Layla has transformed ‘chewing gum’, usually considered useless and discarded after being chewed, into something of value through her means of artistic expression.
If you ask me, I’d say it’s pretty disgusting.
The Dancer
Tan, Truong
The Dancer is an enormous installation with enough girth and vibrancy to eclipse the entire corner of a room. Despite the imposing mass of the piece, Tan’s interweaving lines of multicoloured cord stretch the eponymous dancer’s body across all directions. One can imagine The Dancer morphing into a variety of other objects, adding to its potential, outside of its obvious form.
Private Moon
Tishkov, Leonid
Private Moon is a visual poem about a moon that has descended from the sky and is living a peaceful existence with a man (the artist himself). The idea of a moon as a pet (or a lover) is humorous fantasy and it could be read as a joke, a romantic reverie, or perhaps a phantasmagoria (means a shifting series of phantasm, illusions, or deceptive appearances, as in a dream or as created by the imagination. definition from dictionary.com).
Swing
Tse, Su-Mei
