In the self-explanatory show entitled Video, an Art, a History 1965 – 2010, the history and evolution of the video art genre are recounted through 50 video works and installations, drawn from the collections of both the Singapore Art Museum and Centre Pompidou. Having developed in tandem with the apparatus of television and the analogue and then digital video cameras, video art’s reconfiguration of the[.....]

The Singapore Biennale 2011: Open House threw open its doors to the public on 13 March 2011 with 63 artists from 30 countries presenting 161 works across four exhibition venues. Predicated on the belief that contemporary artistic practices are largely driven by discursive acts of exchange and transactions, Open House records the ensuing visual dialogue and contested ways of seeing that emerge when communication channels are[.....]

Not too long ago, I spoke with Howard Rutkowski, formerly of Sotheby’s and now director of Fortune Cookie Projects, intending to satiate my curiosity about art auctions and art dealing. While he probably scoffed at my naivety, he candidly said to me, “Plunging into the murky business of the art world is akin to swimming with the sharks. There’s a delicate dance that takes place[.....]

Japan is utterly strange, if we are to follow in the footsteps of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) as visitors to a country for whose culture and language have (nor do they want to have) absolutely no affinity. Yet their acute sense of dislocation and turmoil in which we are caught up simply play out at the fringes[.....]

Satirical and documentary, the visual language of former photojournalist Manit Sriwanichpoom in Phenomena and Prophecies displays a certain perspicacity in recognizing urban conflicts and decadence in contemporary Thai society. Inspired by his memories of student-driven activism of the 1970s, Sriwanichpoom’s works appear to have been produced with the intention of critiquing the overwhelming hypocrisy of political processes in Thailand and the burgeoning capitalistic mindlessness in urban[.....]

Digital Nights, an adaptation of Nuit Blanche that prioritizes the technological in the multidisciplinary vision of contemporary art, is a 10-day showcase of a varied lot of visualization projects by European artists Miguel Chevalier, Bertrand Planes and Art collectives Visual System and Lab[au], currently on view at the Singapore Art Museum, one of the few venues anchoring this joint project. It has been several decades[.....]

In the 2-story installation space comprising about 50 works at the Singapore Art Museum, Tags & Treats is a mid-career retrospective of Singaporean contemporary artist Vincent Leow’s artistic practice that spans almost 3 decades. Traditional genres of sculpture and painting play no small part in Leow’s early works which at once question and reaffirm institutional pressures, social change and identity. A palette of vivid colours[.....]