Sometime last year, I went on an art learning journey to Singapore
Biennale with my AEP classmates. It is situated at the Old Kallang Airport.
The first work that we encountered was What a Difference
a Day Made, 2008 by Michael Lin. This is
memorable to me because the scene of a local hardware store was reproduced to
scale with real samples such as buckets, bowls and mops. Videos of people
juggling these objects were also displayed. Personally, I think this is an
inspirational stimulation of real life scene. Not only did the installation
captured the mood of a simple hardware store, by allowing the viewers to walk
through the installation, the message to re-examine the potential of our daily
life objects is also conveyed across in a very impactful manner.
The second work that was memorable to me was Office Orchitect by
Michael Lee. In this series of works, miniatures of imaginary architectures
were displayed in a dark room. Some of these architectures came in the form of a
sphere with little buildings all around the boundaries of the circle. The relationship
between space and imagination was shown throughout the series which consisted of
studio, home and office architectural designs. Some have also depicted the
artist’s perception of a futuristic architecture. I was impressed by Office Orchitect mainly due to its
delicate and detailed models as well as the overall concept this artist has
presented. Personally, I think a lot of us would have the idea of creating something
in our minds, but this artist has brought his idea even further through
research and realised his creativity in those models. His skill and ability to
realise such idea is what I think we can all learn from.
The last work that I would like to mention here is Double Up by Michael Beutler. This is situated near the entrance of the Kallang Airport main building. It is contrasting in scale as compared to the work mentioned above. As it is connected through a door, when the viewer intially enters from another room, the space appears to disconnect from the rest of the building. I think the use of space and manipulation with scale made this installation very successful. The mass and size of paper scrolls in the space is a lot bigger than humans like us. This difference in scale could be symbolic of the amount of work left to complete in comparison with the artist's ability to do so. Personally, I felt intimidated when I first saw this installation, it looks like tones of work piling up and ready to bury us (viewers) alive.
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