Lee Weng Choy

Article: the SAS Companion, launched in September 2007, and published by The Substation and the Singapore Section of the International Association of Art Critics, was an experiment.

On the one hand, it is a straightforward proposition. A team of mostly young writers, together with some more experienced hands, put together a single-issue newspaper that covered a number of projects from the 2007 Singapore Art Show. Article featured interviews with SAS artists, previews and reviews, and a couple of general pieces on topics in contemporary Singapore art. On the other hand, there is more to Article than reportage of the biggest visual arts event of last year.

Let me give some background to the Singapore Art Show. Initiated in 2005, the SAS is a key part of the National Arts Council’s strategy to promote and develop visual arts. Alternating with the Singapore Biennale, the SAS focuses entirely on locally based artists, whereas the Biennale is a showcase for regional and international artists (and a select group of locals). SAS 2007 had a budget of $1 million, and opened on 2 August — and ran till 8 October. It took place across 47 different venues, and featured the Singapore Art Exhibition as its main platform, and included 31 partner programmes and 5 satellite events.

Beyond being a companion guide to last year’s SAS, Article suggested possibilities. In Singapore, there has been a considerable investment in spectacular arts events: from the Singapore Arts Festival, to the Biennale, to the Singapore Art Show. There has been an even greater investment in buildings: the Esplanade — Theatres on the Bay, and now the former City Hall and former Supreme Court will be transformed into the forthcoming National Art Gallery. The cost for that will be in the hundreds of millions. But what of investments in people? in ideas? Art can be bought and sold, but what they don’t say in those Visa commercials, is that what’s really at stake has no price.

Article is an investment in public conversations about art. The newspaper as a form has its origins as a central public space not only for the dissemination of information, but also the expression of considered opinion. This publication aspires to that ideal: the common meeting point that does not aim to lower the common denominator, but to elevate it.

Article owes a conceptual debt to two other publishing projects. For several years, Sydney’s Artspace has published a Critical Reader: ten or so writers, curators and artists are asked to quickly write their thoughts on the Biennale of Sydney. The Critical Reader is published within a month of the opening of the Biennale, and is meant to be a companion for the exhibition, one that spurs critical thinking.

In 2006, the Institute of Modern Art and the Artworkers Alliance invited me to be the editor for a new publication — a single-issue, full-sized newspaper — devoted to Brisbane’s Asia-Pacific Triennial. The Artreader, as it came to be called, involved eight mostly young writers. Unlike the Artspace Critical Reader, the writers all worked together to develop the content of the whole newspaper (with the Critical Reader, contributors work pretty much on their own). The Artreader was also conceived as a project to develop and nurture writers. Likewise with this SAS Companion.

We hope you enjoy Article: the SAS Companion. Hard copies are still available at The Substation, and they are free. Or you can click the following link to view / download a PDF version: article2007.pdf

And look out for the 2008 edition of Article, which will cover the second Singapore Biennale.