Building as a Body
Interview with Grace Tan
By Tim Zeelie
 |
Building as a Body is an art installation by Grace Tan and Randy Chan at The Substation. Architectural in its scale and artistic in its intent, this installation will completely transform The Substation’s facade, and will highlight some central questions around its identity.
Tim Zeelie caught up with Associate Artist Grace Tan to uncover some more details about this mysterious shroud. |
Charting Unknown Territory
By Tim Zeelie
La Carte de Tendre is a map of love created in the 17th century. It charts the territories of a fictitious country called Tendre, and literally illustrates the routes one can take to either find love, or lose it. Through video installations and performance art, multidisciplinary artists Andrée Weschler and Lynn Lu are revisiting and rereading this classical map. Tim Zeelie caught up with Andrée to find out what she thinks about charting unknown territory.
To read the interview, please click below.
On The Substation’s 21st Birthday
By Audrey Wong
The article in The Straits Times on The Substation’s 21st anniversary (8 Sept 2011) took the angle of whether The Substation is “relevant” today – an angle which has covered before by various media in the past. Regulars at The Substation and close observers of the arts in Singapore would surely agree that there’s no question of its continued relevance.
What interests me more, as I reflect on The Substation’s birthday, is thinking about ‘what is the art that happens at The Substation and how and why this has connected with people all these years’. That took me down the road of thinking about Singapore’s arts development in the present day – not at the level of arts policy, but at the level of the everyday reality of the arts-goer and artists.
// Meet the Artist
The Substation is pleased to be able to confirm that Kian-Peng Ong, also known as Bin, has been chosen as the first recipient of the inaugural Sound Art Open Call for 2011. Joyce Teo caught up with him and asked him about his interests in the sound art genre, social media and his upcoming installation Within 140 Characters.
Open Call 2011 // Meet the artists
The Substation is proud to annouce Bruce Quek as the recipient for visual art, and Ho Wen Yang and Sherry Tay as recipients for performing art.
Open Call, established in 2008, is one of The Substation’s flagship programmes, supporting local artists and developing critical, rigorous artistic practices in the fields of visual and performing art. The artists selected for Open Call 2011 will realise their projects in September this year, as part of The Substation’s SeptFest programme celebrating the art space’s anniversary.
The Substation caught up with the recipients and spoke to them about their projects, themselves and about their interests in art.
Ceriph— Re-visualising Literature
An interview with Winnie Goh and Wei Fen Lee, curators of the exhibition SYNÆSTHESIA and creators of the publication Ceriph. This interview originally appeared in the Singapore Art Gallery Guide http://www.sagg.com.sg/
By Chris Ong
Ceriphs are the lines of letters, fine cross strokes at the top and bottom of alphabetical fonts. Visual artist and graphic designer, Winnie Goh, and editor and writer, Wei Fen Lee, did not adopt the name Ceriph for mere aestheticism, but to make a point: that the written word and visual representatons are important forms of expression, neither more important than the other. Their belief in both literature and design, has led them to create Ceriph, a quarterly book publication showcasing prose, poetry, social commentaries, photography and visual art by experimental and fledgling, writers and artists in Singapore. Chris Ong seeks out the visions and opinions about literature and the future from the font of knowledge that is Ceriph.
Madonna-Frankenstein
An essay on Eileen Reynoldsʼ exhibition Big Bio, on show at The Substation Gallery 4 – 20 March 2011.
Written by Cyril Wong
While chatting with Eileen Reynolds in a quiet café, we discovered our common ground. It was a Sunday and both of us were ensconced beside a deserted business district on Shenton Way, a somewhat fitting milieu surrounding our discussion about the link between callous industry and the mystery of creation —an unsettling relationship presented in her installation, Big Bio. In a country that values the economic and the technological over the less tangible rewards of introspection and philosophical reflection, the artist and I spoke about what it meant to create.
 |
Khairuddin Hori: Us and Them and You This is a critical essay written by the independent curator and art historian June Yap. The essay provides an incisive and acute introduction to Associate Artist Khairuddin Hori’s exhibition Us and Them and You, showing at The Substation Gallery from 29 November – 19 December 2010. |
 |
Point ZERO: Beyond Graffiti An investigation into Urban Art and the work of Associate Artist Zul Othaman / ZERO |
 |
A Spectacular Zero Graffiti in Singapore is increasingly recognised as a legitimate, creditable and valuable genre of art, and one of the local vanguard responsible for this change in mainstream opinion is Mohammed Zulkarnaen Bin Othman aka ZERO. As a member of the urban arts collective ARTVSTS, ZERO’s work has constantly revolved around the themes of street culture, the urban landscape, current affairs, and the conceptual idea of graffiti and the graffiti artist presented as a marketable “brand”. With his first solo exhibition at The Substation, ZERO continues to explore the use of graffiti in advertising and marketing campaigns. Chris Ong attempts to stencil the thoughts of ZERO about the state of graffiti art today. |
