Last Minute " Shopping"

Last minute ‘shopping’

Mayo Martin takes one final look at the more ‘everyday’ works at this year’s edition as we go ...

Mayo Martin
mayo@mediacorp.com.sg

WHILE we’re of the belief that the best works of art should be savoured slowly and repeatedly, there’s no reason to be ashamed of doing things at the last minute.

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You can put this to practise by rushing down to catch the tail-end of the Singapore Biennale 2008, which ends on Sunday.

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The jury’s still out but Biennale general manager Low Kee Hong is optimistic that this year’s edition has been a success. The National Arts Council, which organised the event, is expecting to hit its half-million audience target by the end of the festival. Their last official count was around 325,000.

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It’s a smaller target compared to 883,300 who went to the bigger and longer 2006 edition but, more importantly, they’ve been getting the younger crowd, thanks to the outreach programmes and the Kids Biennale section. During the 2006 edition, about 8,000 young ones visited the biennale. This year, it’s a “big jump” to 30,000.

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As for the “adult crowd”, Low said they’ve been getting positive feedback about the works’ accessibility. “I think we’ve managed to achieve what we set out to do — from eliciting some kind of awe or surprise to getting people to think about things.”Interest for some 15 different artists has also been expressed from other curators and exhibitions, Low said, citing works by Sherman Ong, Jane Lee, Joshua Yang, Heman Chong, Rachel Goh, among other fellow Asian artists such as the Indonesian art collective Tromarama, Lee Yong Deok, Ki-Bong Rhee.

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After repeatedly dropping by the three different venues, we’ve come out with our favourites: From the amazing video works at City Hall (including Charly Niijensohn’s The Wreck of Men, Apichatpong Weeresethakul’s Emerald and the sneak-up-behind-you charm of Sherman Ong’s Flood and Drought) to South Beach Development’s selection of installation and site-specific pieces (Shubigi Rao’s meticulously set up “museum” The Tuning Fork of the Mind and Heman Chong’s devil-may-care work consisting of black name cards scattered all over a room, for starters).

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But enough about what we liked. We’re taking our cue from Operation Supermarket, a selection of photographs by Iranian artists Farhad Moshiri and Shirin Aliabadi, and compiled 10 works that use things you’ll find at a mall and see just how much — as the biennale’s theme goes — “wonder” these daily household items can evoke.

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Happy shopping!

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mayo@mediacorp.com.sg

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FURNITURE

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WHAT Little Guilin (Bukit Batok Town Park) and Wonder Wrap

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SHOP AT City Hall and Central Promontory, respectively

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SELLING POINT The Australian artist Gary Carsley took photos of Little Guilin Park in Bukit Gombak and Chinese Garden and using photo paper, stuck these into the inside of Ikea wardrobes and other furniture — for your little piece of heaven.

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SOLD? No. Looks like wallpaper to us.

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GOURDS

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WHAT Evolutional Mythology

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SHOP AT City Hall

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SELLING POINT According to Biennale artistic director Fumio Nanjio, the Korean artist Han Jong-Gun painstakingly shaped by hand these bottle gourds (a kind of melon) for a year to make these eerie alien-like figures, some of which are in beakers and others drying up like plants.

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SOLD? Yes. Imagine someone lovingly tending to these things. Pretty soon, they’ll be talking. Creepy but cool!

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CHARCOAL

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WHAT I Wonder Why

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SHOP AT City Hall

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SELLING POINT Indian artist Srinivasa Prasad is preoccupied with death, having used the ashes of dead people to cover the walls of his studio for a previous work. For this one, he creates various objects such as a bullcart, urns and, yet another Vespa, all from charcoal. One enters a sombre “burning” room courtesy of video projections of flames and sitar music.

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SOLD? Yes. It’s one, er, hell of a solemn experience standing inside the room.

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YARN

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WHAT Tropicana and One Thousand Year Bloom

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SHOP AT City Hall

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SELLING POINT Taiwanese E Chen has created sculptures of objects, such as a Vespa, using yarn, which is expected to have unravelled by the end of the exhibition. The idea of “disintegration” is part of his works. He has used wood, steel, paper, and for the past three years, this “feminine material”. He can’t knit, though, so he hired someone else to do it. “She was an extension of my hand,” said Chen, 42.

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SOLD? Yes. We were so tempted to tug at the ends. Plus, his mom came down to help him set up.

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CHEWING GUM

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WHAT Beauty and the Beast

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SHOP AT South Beach Development

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SELLING POINT Photographs of close-up shots of chewing gum make up most of United Arab Emirates artist Layla Juma Rashid’s piece. The glistening, glazed surface of these abstract, curvy images? That’s spittle. There are some teeny-weeny gum sculptures on display, too, which were “curatorially chosen from 15 pieces,” quipped co-curator Joselina Cruz.

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SOLD? No. A 2m-high wad of gum would’ve had much more impact. We prefer Lee Wen’s gum paintings, thank you very much.

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SOAP

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WHAT fei zao

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SHOP AT South Beach Development

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SELLING POINT Twelve thousand soap bars melting away outdoors under the shade of a tree. Why soap? “It’s something that everyone uses. It’s part of human action,” said Italian artist Paolo Tamburella before adding: “It’s the first time I used soap in my life.” We hope he means for making art.

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SOLD? No. We preferred it when, during the biennale’s opening night, a wonton mee seller from Tiong Bahru sat in the centre for a “bath”.

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SUGAR

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WHAT: September Sweetness

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SHOP AT: South Beach Development

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SELLING POINT: This biennale’s most controversial work — in a shape of a Burmese temple — was so heavy that Burmese artists Chaw Ei Thein and Aung Ko, as well as Vietnamese Rich Streitmatter-Tran, had to use a crane to install it. Cruz said they had intended to use lime at first, but decided to use a rice-sugar composite, which addes to its “bittersweet metaphor for hope and loss”.

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SOLD? Yes. We kind of like how the pesky bees and ants keep us from coming closer to admire its crumbling beauty. Much like how we feel about going to Myanmar.

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SECOND-HAND CLOTHES AND EQUIPMENT

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WHAT Address

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SHOP AT South Beach Development

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SELLING POINT It’s a huge, densely-packed cube structure made of strangers’ clothes, appliances and other objects – and no glue was used. Australia-based Filipino artist couple Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan started this series in Spain a couple of years ago as a commentary on the plight overseas foreign workers.

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SOLD? Yes. Awe-inspiring, gargantuan and totally packed with history.

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LEFTOVER FOOD

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WHAT Terrible Landscapes

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SHOP AT South Beach Development

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SELLING POINT A selection of photographs using chocolate, parsley, mouldy bread, mashed potatoes and other leftover food are used to depicting tragic moments based on newspaper clippings. Filipino artist Lena Cobangbang blames her mother, who likes to cook a lot, as well as her experiences laying out food for magazine photo shoots. “They really dress it up, and sometimes it doesn’t look like food anymore.”

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SOLD? No. It’s an interesting concept, though not really appetising.

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SLIPPERS

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WHAT Flight

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SHOP AT Central Promontory

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SELLING POINT Another popular pick at the biennale, this piece by the Aquilizans features 2,000 pairs of slippers donated by Singaporean inmates, propped up on bamboo poles. Some 50 bamboo harps are also installed, making sweet music if there’s wind. If.

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SOLD? Yes. Too bad about the backdrop of construction cranes though.

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City Hall is at St Andrews Road, South Beach Development at 20 Beach Road and Central Promontory at 1 Marina Boulevard (behind NTUC Building). Tickets at $10 at City Hall and South Beach. Visit www.singaporebiennale.org for more information.

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