Talk

The M x STPI | Panel Talk | Playing with Practice

24 August 2024, Saturday
4PM – 5PM

Join us for a panel discussion, Playing with Practice: Artists Reflect on the Possibilities of Printmaking and Beyond, with artists Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan (Philippines), Genevieve Chua (Singapore) and Manuel Ocampo (Philippines), moderated by Patrick Flores, the curator of Chances of Contact: Contemporary Prints from the Philippines and Singapore.

They will discuss the encounter of print in the artists’ respective practices, the opportunity to explore printmaking and papermaking during their residency with STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore, and their reflections on the place of print in their art after their time with the workshop. 

This talk is held in conjunction with Chances of Contact: Contemporary Prints from the Philippines in Singapore. The exhibition is co-organised by the Metropolitan Museum of Manila (The M) and STPI, in collaboration with the Singapore Embassy in Manila, and co-presented by Singtel Group.

Click here to register (₱550 / SGD12.6). This panel discussion will be conducted at The M. Tickets to this programme are inclusive of All Access Admission to The M’s ongoing museum exhibits.

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Talk

Talk by Kathleen Ditzig: Helen Frankenthaler’s Small Paintings

16 August 2024, Friday
6PM – 7PM

Join us for our upcoming talk, Helen Frankenthaler’s Small Paintings: A Case Study of American Abstract Expressionism in Southeast Asia, conducted by Kathleen Ditzig, curator at National Gallery Singapore.

Click here to register.

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Talk

Talk by Elizabeth Smith: Helen Frankenthaler in Her Time and Now

29 June 2024, Saturday
3PM – 4PM

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Talk

Bice Curiger: The Art of Collaboration 

7 March 2024, Thursday
4.00PM – 5.00PM

STPI is pleased to present a lecture by Bice Curiger, art historian, curator, and artistic director of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles since 2013.

Curiger is also the Co-founder and Editor-in-chief of Parkett, the book series featuring contemporary artists published in Zurich and New York from 1984-2017. These include luminaries such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, Angela Bulloch, Louise Bourgeois, Ai Wei Wei, El Anatsui, Edward Ruscha, Cao Fei and Hito Steyerl; some of whom STPI have collaborated with before as well in its Creative Workshop.

In this lecture, Curiger will provide insight into the history of the collaborations that Parkett has undertaken with 270 artists and more in its 33 years of existence. This will shed light on the invigorating outputs stemming from rigorous collaborations in the art world and thus the importance of such platforms, be it Parkett or STPI.

This talk is presented on the occasion of the exhibition The Complete Parkett Collection, running from 8 to 31 March 2024 at ArtSpace @ Helutrans, co-presented by Ikkan Art and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery.

Click here to sign up today.

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Talk

Artist Talk | A Guide to Shadow Libraries with Heman Chong and Brian Kuan Wood

17 January 2024
3.00PM – 4.00PM

Join us for a conversation between artist Heman Chong (Singapore) and exhibition curator Brian Kuan Wood (co-founder and editor of e-flux journal, New York) on the occasion of Chong’s second solo exhibition at STPI, Meditations on Shadow Libraries.

Over the course of the past two decades, Chong has been preoccupied with the public library as ideology, material and site, and Meditations on Shadow Libraries explores the unexpected shapes and forms of today’s personal, individual or informal libraries given the way we rapidly share information and knowledge. How can we begin to think beyond a mere capitalisation of data? Should everyone be allowed to share information freely and without consequence? What would that system look and feel like? What are the limits of control when the ease of sharing knowledge becomes increasingly commonplace?

Missed the talk? Click here to watch the recording on YouTube!

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Talk

Artist Talk | Smithereens: In Dialogue with Lee Bul and Xiaoyu Weng

4 November 2023
3.00PM – 4.00PM

Dive into the minds behind the extraordinary works on show and hear from the artist herself, in this special conversation between Lee Bul and curator Xiaoyu Weng.

Reserve your seat to this Opening Day exclusive, and unravel the fine lines that distinguish nature/ culture, human/ machine and utopia/ dystopia – thematic concerns which fuelled both the artist’s and curator’s collaborations at STPI.

Missed the talk? Click here to watch the recording on YouTube!

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Talk

Plane and Simple: Genevieve Chua in Conversation with Reuben Keehan

Saturday, 14 January 2023 | 3.00PM – 4.30PM

STPI is thrilled to welcome you back to the Gallery with a presentation of Genevieve Chua (14 Jan – 26 Feb). Join us in this dialogue between the Artist and Curator Reuben Keehan as they explore her latest experimentations at STPI Gallery, and the evolution of her practice at large.

Click here to watch the talk’s recording on Zoom.
Password: 2%4.2&la

Talk

A Forest Comes into Being: In Dialogue with Han Sai Por and Kwok Kian Chow

Saturday, 21 May 2022
3.00PM – 4.30PM SGT

Free admission | Registration required

Join artist Han Sai Por in conversation with Kwok Kian Chow, where they speak about the artist’s practice and her time at STPI, creating works featured in our exhibition The Forest and its Soul, which runs from 9 April – 22 May 2022.

Saturday, 21 May 2022
3.00PM – 4.30PM SGT

Walk-ins welcomed, priority for seats will go to pre-registrants (registration for live session closed).

Click here to watch the talk’s recording on Facebook.

Talk

The Word for World is Forest: Surveying Nature in Language

Saturday, 14 May 2022
3.00PM – 4.30PM SGT

Free admission | Registration required

Join Alfian Sa’at, Kevin Martens Wong and Jacqui Hocking as they explore how the forest and nature at large shape our language, and how language, in turn, directs our relationship with our ecosystems. This panel is held in conjunction with Han Sai Por: The Forest and Its Soul, which runs from 9 April – 22 May 2022.

Saturday, 14 May 2022 | 3.00PM – 4.30PM SGT

Walk-ins welcomed, priority for seats will go to pre-registrants (registration for live session closed).

Click here to watch the talk’s recording on Facebook.

Talk

Our Corner of the World: Public Places, Shared Souls

Saturday, 26 March 2022
3.00PM – 4.30PM SGT

Free admission | Registration required

In conjunction with our ongoing exhibition Notations in Space, join urbanist Sarah Ichioka, author Esther Vincent and editor and artist Diana Rahim as they enquire into how our public spaces shape our private and collective consciousness. They will further explore the significance of shared spaces for different communities, and how they may be transformed to serve a wider range of interests.

Saturday, 26 March 2022
3.00PM – 4.30PM SGT

Free admission | Registration required

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here. 

TalkPublic Programmes

Hereafter: A Youth-led Forum

Saturday, 22 January 2022
3.00PM – 4.30PM SGT

Free admission | Registration required

How do we build a place that has seemingly been built beyond its edges? How can we make peace with Home, when the beauty of Home comes at the cost of someone else’s?

Join us in STPI’s very first youth-led forum as our homegrown activists and educators contemplate the complexities of land reclamation in Singapore, an issue central to our ongoing exhibition, Charles Lim Yi Yong: Staggered Observations of a Coast. This panel features Madhumitha Ardhanari, Senior Sustainability Strategist at Forum for the Future whose research focuses on sand extraction in Singapore; Ho Xiang Tian, co-founder of environmental group LepakinSG which educates and organises public survey on land development and environmental impact transparency; and Woo Qiyun, sustainability consultant and founder of social media platform The Weird and Wild, which educates on issues surrounding the climate crisis.

Together with moderator Tim Min Jie, an activist for environmental and disability justice, the panel will deliberate sand as a commodity, question the narratives and realities of reclamation and development, and explore how we may navigate through the impacts and anxieties they bring. Altogether, the panel invites us to ponder the look of “progress” for the hereafter.

Click here to watch the recording of the live-stream. 

StorytellingTalk

Jiwa Pulau, Jiwa Laut (Spirit of the Island, Spirit of the Sea)

Sunday, 9 January 2022
3.00PM – 5.00PM SGT
Free admission | Registration required

Join us for an intimate session featuring two descendants of the Orang Pulau community, Asnida Daud and Firdaus Sani that explores the ‘Jiwa Laut’ (spirit of the sea) through personal anecdotes, beliefs, island traditions and poetry readings. The two-hour programme will shed light on two of Singapore’s Southern islands – Pulau Sudong, a once beautiful island that is now a fully-restricted military site, and Pulau Semakau, an ancestral land that has been reclaimed and turned into a landfill.

Watch the event’s Facebook recording here.

Talk

In Dialogue with Charles Lim Yi Yong and Dr Elizabeth Wijaya

Saturday, 8 January 2022
3.00PM – 4.00PM SGT

Free admission | Registration required

Join Charles Lim Yi Yong in conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Wijaya, Assistant Professor of East Asian Cinema at the University of Toronto, as they reexamine the artist’s ongoing project SEA STATE and its most recent expansion, Staggered Observations of a Coast, now on view at STPI Gallery.

Since 2005, Charles Lim Yi Yong’s ongoing project SEA STATE examines the biophysical, political and psychic contours of Singapore through the visible and invisible lenses of the sea. Staggered Observations of a Coast extends on this vigorous enquiry. For half a year, Lim sailed all along the east coast anchorage of Singapore, taking note of the wave patterns and clouds. As the passage of time occurred, Lim observed the same points, noted the changes, and allowed his instinctual and tactile senses to take hold; opening himself to feel and “taste” the air to gauge the humidity. By scrutinising the information from multiple entry points, the artist begins to “see” the invisible space, a construction of “nothingness” within an endless project for renewal.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here. 

Talk

In Dialogue with Amanda Heng and Jason Wee

Saturday, 4 December
3.00PM – 4.00PM SGT

Join us for a discussion between artist Amanda Heng, and artist, writer and curator Jason Wee on the occasion of STPI’s group exhibition The Lines Fall Where They May curated by Wee. The Lines Fall Where They May is on mark-making and the delicate, faint signs of nonhuman life and environments.

This session will take Heng’s residency at STPI as a starting point, where she collaborated with 12 individuals from STPI to create her eventual print works. In a manner that resonated deeply with her renowned oeuvre, the artist allowed for the stories and experiences of these individuals to take the centre stage, with a treasured object or heirloom as a catalyst for this sharing. The speakers will further touch on Heng’s use of conversations and dialogue as the material of her artistic practice, and on what it means to work with the intangible, where such material often end up not getting documented at all.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here. 

Talk

In Dialogue with Genevieve Chua and Jason Wee

Saturday, 13 November
5.00PM – 6.00PM SGT

Join us for a discussion between artist Genevieve Chua, and artist, writer and curator Jason Wee on the occasion of STPI’s group exhibition The Lines Fall Where They May curated by Wee. The Lines Fall Where They May is an exhibition on mark-making and the delicate, faint signs of nonhuman life and environments.

Mark-making is often thought of as visual aggregations of colour, shape, texture and scale, subject to the tightening and release of the artist’s control. In response to this, the exhibition suggests that marks form the ways in which the artist is ever so slightly decentred, and marks are the small signs of life left by others. These marks are openings through which stories other than the artist’s own are known; they are how nonhuman systems and environments make themselves felt, whether those worlds are cybernetic, vegetal, mineral or animal. These signs are barely there, but sometimes in the barely-there exists enough consideration and measure of worlds apart from our own.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here. 

Talk

In Dialogue with Adeline Kueh, Jason Lim, Ian Woo, Zul Mahmod, Marc Gloede

Saturday, 23 October
3.00PM to 4.00PM SGT
In Person OR Zoom Webinar

Join us for a panel discussion among artists Adeline Kueh, Jason Lim, Ian Woo and Zul Mahmod on the occasion of their group exhibition at STPI. This discussion is moderated by Marc Gloede, who is also the guest curator for the show, On Time. On Time inspects the role of time in the artists’ production period during their STPI residency, as well as the experience of time during and of an exhibition.

The range of works on view spans print to sculpture, relief to installation, and address the impact of time on manifold levels. They invite the audience to encounter and reflect on the facet of time that is most obviously embedded in the artworks: the time of production. They further consider the role of the audience’s engagement and ask: how much time are we spending with each work and how might our perception of it change over time?

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here. 

Talk

In Dialogue with Pae White and Rory Padeken

Saturday 21 August, 10am SGT
/ Friday 20 August, 7pm PST
Zoom Webinar

In conjunction with ‘Pae White: Friendship is Magic’ at STPI, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia, join the artist and Rory Padeken, Curator at San José Museum of Art, online as they delve deep into the artist’s practice. Taking the artworks that White created while on residency with STPI as a starting point, the conversation will shed light on her diverse body of work, where each artwork often starts from material experimentations to reveal the everyday and the forgotten.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

In Dialogue with Shambhavi Singh, Thukral & Tagra and Shireen Gandhy

Saturday, 17 July
3.00PM – 4.00PM
Zoom Webinar

We are pleased to present a dialogue session among past residency artists Shambhavi Singh and Thukral & Tagra, and artist Hema Upadhyay’s gallerist Shireen Gandhy of Chemould Prescott Road gallery.

In this session, the speakers will touch on how the artworks created at STPI relate to the complexities of contemporary globalisation, and how this is revealed through scrutinising its impact on India. They will also discuss how this links to their artistic practices at large, and how the themes explored have continued relevance in the world today.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

In Dialogue with Suzann Victor, Penny Siopis & Martin Guinard-Terrin | Moderated by Clément Delépine

Saturday 8 May
5.00pm — 6.00pm
Virtual Livestream

In conjunction with ‘Of Waters’ at STPI as part of Galleries Curate: RHE, join us for a dialogue between Singaporean artist Suzann Victor, South African artist Penny Siopis, and co-curator of the 12th Taipei Biennial ‘You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet’ Martin Guinard-Terrin as they speak on the artists’ contribution for RHE. The discussion will be moderated by Galleries Curate coordinator Clément Delépine.

With a focus on Victor’s ‘Fire Water’ (2021) as well as Siopis’ ‘She Breathes Water’ (2019) and ‘Obscure White Messenger’ (2010), the speakers will share their thoughts on the mutability of perception. From a bodily to planetary scale, the discussion will flow between the micro and macro perspectives that the works inspire, such as getting deep in touch with your sensorial capabilities, to the ecological urgency of the state of Earth today. The discussion will also touch on non-human actants to defamiliarise our normative modes of perception, and what that can offer in re-thinking how history is written.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

In Dialogue with Suzann Victor and Marc Gloede

25 April Sunday
3.00pm — 4.00pm
Virtual Livestream

In conjunction with Of Waters as part of Galleries Curate: RHE, join prolific artist Suzann Victor and Guest Curator Marc Gloede online as they talk about the exhibition in-depth, as well as how the element of water echoes across the artist’s body of work. In her practice, this exchange with the element requires a multisensory approach that, when transformed into works, similarly flows through all of the audiences’ senses. Beyond that, the talk will be an open-ended and candid exchange, allowing for the conversation to flow along in organic directions, much like the sense-shifting qualities of water.
Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

In Dialogue with Heman Chong & Kathleen Ditzig

Saturday 20 Feb
3.00pm — 4.00pm
At STPI Gallery
Virtual Livestream available

Heman Chong has been described as an archetypal conceptual artist. Yet, with an expansive practice that has included the making of texts, objects, installations, and situations, and seen Chong take on at different times the various roles of writer, curator and artist, his practice escapes any simple categorisation.

Organised on the occasion of Chong’s first solo exhibition at STPI “Peace Prosperity And Friendship With All Nations”, this artist talk will see Chong speak to the diverse forms of his practice and the urgencies that have defined his work. As part of his presentation, Chong will perform Words, They, Wrote, a performance based upon texts written by other artists and accompanied by slides that contextualise the texts.

Words, They, Wrote, which is always deliberately performed within a symposium, lecture, panel discussion or exhibition space, encapsulates the complex entanglements between text, image and meaning-making. Chong sees the performance as an expanding series of proposals for imaginary exhibitions. For Chong, the list of texts is never complete. There will always be more words written and said. Just as no two artist talks – even by the same artist – are ever the same, no two performances are ever the same.

Talk

“Kim Lim: Wind, Water, Stone” | In Dialogue with Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol and Guo-Liang Tan

Saturday 23 Jan
3.00pm — 4.00pm

Join art historian and curator at the Singapore Art Museum, Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol, and Guo-Liang Tan, artist and guest curator of “Strange Forms of Life” for a thoughtful discussion centred on the prolific practice of the late Singaporean-British sculptor Kim Lim.

What does it mean to approach Kim Lim as an artist interested in the life of materials? Such a question may seem to go against the impersonality of the serial and gridded compositions she is known for. But lively presence in Lim’s work is conjured precisely through a careful minimalism of means. Across sculptures and prints, sinuous energies of the meticulously drawn line jog an elemental imagination: the shimmering tension of a liquid surface, the deepening of rivulets into shadowy troughs, the gentle fan of a current petering out into air. Understanding animation as the interplay of material thing and its evocation of memory, this talk suggests the relevance of Lim’s work for a sculptural imagination that cuts across usual measures of time and place. In the past few decades, Lim’s practice has been increasingly distinguished as a strong point of reference for abstract practitioners.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

In Dialogue with Han Sai Por, Adele Tan and Guo-Liang Tan (in English and Mandarin)

Saturday 16 Jan
3.00pm — 4.00pm

Join us as we invite artist, Han Sai Por, Senior Curator from the National Gallery Singapore, Adele Tan, and Guest Curator of “Strange Forms of Life”, Guo-Liang Tan, for a discussion situated around Han’s biocentric approach to abstraction. Exhibited alongside other notable local artists, Han’s paper pulp works, created at STPI’s in-house workshop, are presented as part of “Strange Forms of Life”, STPI Gallery’s ongoing exhibition. Han’s rich interest in organic and natural forms comes through most prominently in her works, offering an artistic vantage point from which a different and sincerely generative perspective of nature may be formed.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

In Dialogue with Sherman Sam and Guo-Liang Tan

Friday 11 Dec
3.00PM — 4.00PM

In conjunction with ‘Strange Forms of Life’, join us for a dialogue between artist Sherman Mern Tat Sam and Guest Curator Guo-Liang Tan, exploring ideas of liveliness and questions of form, in relation to abstraction as a mode of engaging with different aspects of being. The virtual conversation will feature Sam speaking from his studio in London, and snippets of the group exhibition currently on view at STPI Gallery.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

In Dialogue with Amanda Heng and Joyce Toh

Saturday 10 Oct
3.00PM — 4.00PM

In conjunction with STPI’s Annual Special Exhibition 2020 Shaping Visions, you are invited to join us for an online dialogue between exhibiting artist Amanda Heng and independent curator Joyce Toh. Hosted on Zoom webinar, the virtual conversation will revolve around Heng’s interdisciplinary practice that explores collective memory, identity, human relationships, social issues and urban transition in Singapore.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

In Dialogue: Suzann Victor, Pinaree Sanpitak and Tan Siuli

Online Exclusive
Saturday, 12 September
3.00pm — 4.00pm

In conjunction with Turning the Axis of the World, join us for a second dialogue centred around the exhibition premise which considers pertinent possibilities and meanings that arise from the turning of earth’s axis. Hosted on Zoom webinar, this virtual conversation features exhibiting artists Suzann Victor and Pinaree Sanpitak as guest speakers, and will be moderated by the exhibition’s Guest Curator Tan Siuli.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

Let’s Chat with Entang Wiharso

Online Exclusive
Wednesday, 16 September
8.00pm — 9.00pm

Let’s Chat aims to reignite intimate first-hand conversations with artists and explore sentiments behind their work, practice and life a little closer.

You are invited to a dialogue with Entang Wiharso. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, he is widely regarded for his unique depictions of contemporary life that employ a dramatic visual language, creating artworks that exist in relation to the mythologies of a centuries-old animist past and the high-speed, hyper-connected lifestyle of the 21st century.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

In Dialogue: Ashley Bickerton, Heri Dono and Tan Siuli

Online Exclusive
Saturday, 29 August
3.00pm — 4.00pm

In conjunction with Turning the Axis of the World, the first dialogue centred around the exhibition premise which considers pertinent possibilities and meanings that arise from the turning of earth’s axis. Hosted on Zoom webinar, this virtual conversation features exhibiting artists Ashley Bickerton and Heri Dono as guest speakers, and will be moderated by the exhibition’s Guest Curator Tan Siuli.

Watch the talk’s recording on Facebook here.

Talk

Let’s Chat: Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan

Thursday, 23 July 2020
6.00pm — 7.00pm

As part of our Let’s Chat series, we featured Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, Philippines-born husband-and-wife artists. Their collaborative activities evolved within the spheres of family and community, including personal relationships, and those they share with other artists. Their work consistently seeks to address, discern and unravel the meanings of ‘home’ and ‘identity’, both elusive notions prone to reinterpretation and personal subjectivity.

Joining us in the fruitful conversation was Can Yavuz, Founder and Director of Yavuz Gallery (Singapore, Sydney).

Talk

Let’s Chat: Dinh Q. Lê

Thursday, 25 June 2020
5.00pm — 6.00pm

As part of our Let’s Chat series, we featured Dinh Q. Lê, one of Asia’s most established artists to date. Lê consistently challenges how our memories are recalled with the context in contemporary life; he is known for his large-scale photo-montages, where he weaves photographic strips into a tapestry of images that revolve around the theme of the Vietnam War.

His work is in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum; The Bronx Museum, New York and The Israel Museum, amongst others. Besides being an artist, Lê also co-founded the Vietnam Foundation for the Arts (VNFA) and co-founded San Art, the first not-for-profit contemporary art space and reading room in Ho Chi Minh City.

Talk

Let’s Chat: Suzann Victor

Thursday, 28 May 2020
4.30pm — 5.30pm

As part of our Let’s Chat series, we featured Suzann Victor, a prolific Singaporean artist whose practice spans over 20 years, from her early practice in the late 1980s as an award-winning abstract painter in Singapore to being the first female Singaporean representative at the 49th Venice Biennale. Her installations have since graced international platforms, including 6th Havana Biennale, 2nd Asia-Pacific Triennial at Queensland Art Gallery, the 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale.

Together with Jasdeep Sandhu, Gallery Director and Founder of Gajah Gallery, we delved into the artist’s rich practice, her experience at STPI, and personal reflections on art-making.

Talk

Artist Talk: Genevieve Chua, in Conversation with Melanie Pocock

Saturday, 22 February 2020
3.00PM — 4.30PM

Join the artist and Melanie Pocock (Curator, Ikon Gallery, UK), guest curator of Twofold, as they discuss how Chua’s notion of painting as a medium which occupies ‘two-and-a-half dimensions’ unfolds in her latest exhibition.

Read a segment of the conversation here.

Talk

Talk: Hans Ulrich Obrist at STPI

Saturday, 11 January 2020

Talk

Artist Talk: Manuel Ocampo, with Joyce Toh

Saturday, 18 May 2019
STPI Gallery

Join Ocampo and Joyce Toh, Senior Curator of Singapore Art Museum, as they elaborate on the artist’s distinct visual language developed at STPI – a collaboration through which he continued to employ symbols and iconography that straddle between the familiar and the arbitrary.

Multiple award-winning painter Manuel Ocampo (b. 1965, Philippines) is known for his frequent and strategic stylistic drifts in response to new contexts and subject matter. His shows are often constructed around contradictory tendencies, elaborating discrepancies between what a painting appears to be and how it behaves in relation to the structures that legitimate its appearance. He always embraces sudden shifts of style and emphasis. He paints, but doubt is created as to whether any particular medium is the solution.

The artist has been a vital presence on the international art scene for over two decades now; his works were presented in two of the most important European art events, Documenta IX (1992) and the Venice Biennale (1993). In the early 1990s, he participated in the iconic exhibition “Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s” at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1992).

Read the transcript of the panel talk here.

Talk

Panel Talk: Abstraction As: Object, Process, Rhythm, Force

Saturday, 27 April 2019
STPI Gallery

Featuring:
Marc Nair, Poet
Aya Sekine, Jazz Musician
Guo-Liang Tan, Visual Artist
Toh Hun Ping, Film Researcher and Artist
Moderated by: Jeremy Sharma, Artist

Listen to the audio transcript below:

This panel considers how abstraction operates and surfaces within and across various practices and disciplines, such as music, poetry, film, and visual art. Held in conjunction with Jason Martin: Meta physical, the discussion takes the traditions of abstract painting as a point of departure, and invites a different, broader elucidation of abstraction – in particular, what it can bring to varying modes and registers of perceiving, expressing, and producing realities.

Talk

In Dialogue: Pinaree Sanpitak, Adele Tan and Vipash Purichanont

Saturday, 12 October 2019
STPI Gallery

Talk

In Dialogue: Urban Collages

Saturday, 22 June 2019
STPI Gallery

Featuring:
Elaine Chiew, Writer and Visual Arts Researcher
Fyerool Darma, Artist
Vikas Kailankaje, Designer and Lecturer

Moderated by Melanie Pocock, Assistant Curator, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (ICA), LASALLE College of the Arts.

This panel is held in conjunction with Filipino artist Manuel Ocampo’s exhibition, Ideological Mash-Up/Remix (18 May – 22 June).It takes Ocampo’s syncretic approach to image-making as a point of departure, and considers what collaging might further look like as a mode of constructing personal and cultural realities in the urban.

How do signs operate through concepts of ‘mash-up’ aesthetics? How have digital technologies impacted the ways in which we read, generate and distribute signs? How do the materials of signs — paint, fabric, pixels — affect their semantics? Can signs be empty, or are they perpetually vehicles of meaning and value? Might the polemics generated by ‘mash-up’ culture then require a more urgent and careful reconsideration?

Read the introduction by Melanie Pocock here.

Talk

Artist Talk: Jason Martin, with Greg Hilty and Mark Gisbourne

Saturday, 23 March 2019
STPI Gallery

Join artist Jason Martin as he discusses his artistic process and body of work developed at STPI. Reviewing the artist’s collaboration with STPI that has culminated in the exhibition Jason Martin: Meta physical, Martin has redirected his enduring spirit of experimentation – particularly in response to the materiality of painting, and the painted image’s nature of arrival and emergence – to the medium of pulp and paper.

In conversation with the artist are Greg Hilty (Curatorial Director, Lisson Gallery) and Mark Gisbourne (art historian, critic, curator, and writer).

“The experimental nature of the workshop afforded me the freedom to explore materials in exciting new ways. The exhibition will hopefully reveal surprises in how materials can be transformative.

The works as a whole endeavour to hold some mysteries questioning the nature of their materials and how they have come into being. If my overall studio practice can be understood as developing a pictorial language, my collaboration with STPI takes me on an R&D tour of the grammar inherent to that language.” — Jason Martin, interviewed by Prestige Singapore

Talk

Collectors’ Insights: Lito Camacho, Kim Camacho, and Kenneth Tan

Saturday, 26 January 2019
STPI Gallery

Held once a year during Singapore Art Week in January, this session is a platform for prominent collectors to share the philosophy behind building their outstanding private collections.

About the speakers:

Husband-and-wife Lito and Kim Camacho have accumulated one of the most important private collections in the Asia-Pacific region; notably including major works by teamLab, Yayoi Kusama, and Gutai works. Both their Kusama and Gutai collections have been shown at the Ayala Museum, Philippines. Their collection also includes seminal works of the American Abstract Expressionist, Alfonso Ossorio, as well as fine selections of Filipino and Southeast Asian artworks.

Kenneth Tan is a fund manager based in Singapore, who began actively collecting art since 2002. The private collection diversely represents more than 80 artists from Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, Europe, and the Americas; consisting of over 250 works by Natee Utarit, Suzann Victor, Edmund de Waal, Robert Mapplethorpe, Takesada Matsutani, Jose ‘Jojo’ Legaspi, Jonas Wood, and Wong Hoy Cheong. Ken’s most recent addition are two historical works by American artist Jennifer Bartlett.

Read the transcript of the panel talk here.

Talk

In Talks With: T.K. Sabapathy

Saturday, 19 January 2019
STPI Gallery

Thoughts on Composition: on seeing pictures by Cheong Soo Pieng

A lecture by T. K. Sabapathy

About the Speaker:

T. K. Sabapathy, born in 1938, is Singapore’s foremost art historian, curator and critic. For four decades, he has devoted his life to the research, documentation and support of contemporary visual arts in Singapore and Malaysia.He has been a lecturer of art history at the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological Institution and National Institute of Education. He set up and headed Singapore’s pioneer art research facilities, the Contemporary Asian Art Centre and subsequently, Asia Contemporary. He has also written countless articles, books, catalogues and artist monographs, making an invaluable contribution to the study of art in Southeast Asia, and is well respected for his scholarship and beloved for his tireless advocacy of art and artists of Singapore and Malaysia.

Read the transcript of the talk here.

Talk

Art Week Brunch: Art and Economics – Projecting the Future Value of Art

Friday, 25 January 2019
STPI Gallery

Featuring:
Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan, Artists
Magnus Renfrew, Founder, ARTHQ; Co-Founder, Taipei Dangdai
Jasdeep Sandhu, Director, Gajah Gallery
Jasmine Yan, Regional Business Development Director, Phillips Hong Kong

Moderated by:
Ning Chong, Co-Founder, The Culture Story

This session hopes to distill notions of ownership, marketing, and collecting strategies both today and in the future. The areas of discussion include thoughts and challenges on the current primary market; views on marketing tactics on the secondary market; collecting with respect of connoisseurship vs. focusing on art as investment through market observation; the rise of Asia as an engine of growth of the art market; and discussing on the social and cultural value of art, beyond its monetary value.

Read the transcript of the panel talk here.

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Panel Talk: SG Arts Today

Saturday, 23 February 2019
STPI Gallery

Featuring:
Genevieve Chua, Artist
Stephanie Fong, Director, FOST Gallery
Paul Tan, Deputy CEO, National Arts Council

Moderated by: Kathleen Ditzig, Independent Curator and Writer

This segment aims to thoughtfully examine the factors shaping the trajectories of art in Singapore today. Reflecting on past and current challenges and opportunities for our country’s artistic growth and reach, it further considers how these experiences can help to sharpen our approach to and vision of moulding distinct cultural and national identities.

The panel discussed our visual arts scene’s growth and international involvement, the shaping of our value system, critical art writing and journalism, as well as the ecosystem’s future sustainability. Our invited panel speakers are artist, Genevieve Chua; gallerist, Stephanie Fong, FOST Gallery; cultural policy-maker, Paul Tan, National Arts Council. The talk was moderated by independent researcher and curator, Kathleen Ditzig.

Read the transcript of the panel talk here.

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In Talks With: Leilani Lynch, The Bass Museum of Art

Saturday, 17 November 2018
STPI Gallery

In conjunction with Aaron Curry: Fragments from a Collective Unity, Leilani Lynch, Assistant Curator of The Bass Museum of Art, provided valuable insights into the artist’s practice, artistic influences, and collaboration with the STPI Creative Workshop.

Lynch is the curator of Aaron Curry’s current exhibition at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, Florida, titled Tune Yer Head (2018); in addition to co-organizing exhibitions with Ugo Rondinone, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Laure Prouvost, and Paola Pivi. She has recently participated in panels for ArtTable and ICOM, as well as served on juries for Art Center, South Florida and Apexart, New York. Before her stint at The Bass, she served as Exhibitions Manager at Locust Projects, Miami’s longest-running alternative arts space, producing site-specific experimental exhibitions with international artists.

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Coffee and Conversations with Melati Suryodarmo

Saturday, 13 October 2018
STPI Gallery

Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo returns to her exploration of human inhabitations and our relationship with abandoned spaces. She utilised materials collected from her hometown in Surakarta, Indonesia – the same city where she founded Studio Plesungan, an experimental space focused on performance art. Join Melati in this in-depth discussion as she talks about her practice and processes during her residency at STPI.

Best known for her powerful and emotionally charged stage presence, Melati is fascinated by the resilience of the human body; how it is able to adapt and push its own boundaries for newer ways of being human. She has presented her works in various international festivals and exhibitions, including Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2016); Asia Pacific Triennale, QAGOMA, Brisbane, Australia (2015); Luminato Festival of the Arts, Toronto, Canada (2012); and Manifesta7, Bolzano, Italy (2008).

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Coffee and Conversations with Pinaree Sanpitak

Saturday, 8 September 2018
STPI Gallery

Thai conceptual artist Pinaree Sanpitak discussed her past practices, existing works, and her exploration of material at STPI. Revisiting one of her earliest sculptural materials—mulberry fibre, the artist used her iconic breast motif as a symbol of motherhood; examining the female form as a vessel of perception and a metaphor of the self.

Over the past twenty years, the artist’s work has been featured in numerous museums and major biennales across Asia, Europe and the United States. Her works are in the public collections of Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), among many others.

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Coffee & Conversations with Manuel Ocampo

Saturday, 28 July 2018
STPI Gallery

Filipino artist Manuel Ocampo (b. 1965, Philippines) unpacked the symbolism and dark humour of his works and shares his thought processes behind his use of societal taboos and religious iconography.

The multiple award-winning painter is known for his frequent and strategic stylistic drifts in response to new contexts and subject matter. His shows are often constructed around contradictory tendencies, elaborating discrepancies between what a painting appears to be and how it behaves in relation to the structures that legitimate its appearance. He always embraces sudden shifts of style and emphasis. He paints, but doubt is created as to whether any particular medium is the solution. 

The artist has been a vital presence on the international art scene for over two decades now; his works were presented in two of the most important European art events, Documenta IX (1992) and the Venice Biennale (1993). In the early 1990s, he participated in the iconic exhibition “Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s” at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1992).

Find out more about the artist here:
https://www.stpi.com.sg/artists/manuel-ocampo/

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Coffee & Conversations with Pae White

Saturday, 24 March 2018
STPI Gallery

Join acclaimed Los Angeles-based artist Pae White in this exclusive session as she provides insights into her expansive practice that embraces sculpture, installation and painting as well as architecture, furniture and graphics.

Pae White’s diverse practice is marked by her uses of unconventional materials such as glass, marble, fabric, marzipan, marshmallows, and vinyl. Merging art, design, craft and architecture, White responds to materials and the site to create captivating works that challenge our perception and expectation of mediums and techniques. By collaborating with different artisans and industrial fabricators, the artist realises her ideas through playful explorations, reflecting a desire to create work beyond her personal skillset.

The artist’s ecent solo exhibitions and public commissions include Demondaine, Kaufmann Repetto Gallery, Milan (2017); Qwalala, Le Stanze del Vetro, Venice (2017); Command- Shift-4, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle (2015); Special No. 127, neugerriemschneider, Berlin (2014); Genau or Never, greengrassi, London (2014); O R L L E G R O, MAK, Vienna (2013); Too much night, again, South London Gallery, London (2013) and S U M M E R X X, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2012); among many others.

Find out more about the artist here: https://www.stpi.com.sg/artists/pae-white/ 

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In Talks with: Theresa McCullough, Principal Curator of the Asian Civilisations Museum

Saturday, 21 April 2018
STPI Gallery

The Khmer civilisation was one of the greatest Southeast Asia had ever known. At the heart of it is the city of Angkor, which at its height, from the 11th through 13th century, was one of the largest anywhere in the world. The landscape was punctuated by great stepped, pyramidal temple-mountains built by successive kings to honour their gods.

Join Theresa McCullough, Principal Curator of the Asian Civilisations Museum, as she explores the artistic legacy of Khmer culture through its art and architecture and touches on recent ground-breaking discoveries that are continuing to reshape our understanding of this rich civilisation.

This talk is held in conjunction of the exhibition of Dinh Q. Lê: Monuments and Memorials.

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Artist Talk: Dinh Q. Lê

Saturday, 17 March 2018
STPI Gallery

Artist Dinh Q. Lê provided valuable insights into his artistic process and the works that he developed at STPI for “Monuments and Memorials”, including the inception of the Splendor & Darkness series, which first began in 1998.

“It all started with my first visit to my hometown Ha-Tien on my first trip back to Vietnam more than twenty years ago. The town is situated right on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. That visit brought back horrific memories of the invasion of my hometown by the Khmer Rouge when I was a child, and it led me to visit Cambodia subsequently over a period of ten years to learn its history and the Khmer Rouge. I was trying to make some sense of it all. Cambodia: Splendor & Darkness (1998) thus came about as one of a few series that deals with the recent and past history of Cambodia.”

Find out more about the artist here: https://www.stpi.com.sg/artists/dinh-q-le/

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Coffee and Conversations with Aaron Curry

Saturday, 10 February 2018
STPI Gallery

“Curry’s paintings exist in the realm of the future as imagined in the 1980s—with impressions of spray paint, graffiti and neon signs. They hang suspended like jagged portals, and curiously give the impression that one is looking through the picture plane into the abyss contained within them.” – Artillery Mag

“It is a curious Oedipal drama that Mr. Curry stages. Wielding postmodernist insouciance as a club, he seems intent on overthrowing the fathers of Modernist sculpture and having their primordial muse for himself.” -New York Times

Critically acclaimed Los Angeles-based artist Aaron Curry shared his art practice and key works with us. Constantly incorporating qualities of one medium into the other, his works challenge the divisions that isolate one medium from another to reveal a richness in the middle ground. His signature totemic sculptures resemble sculptural collages of flat, organically cut shapes. They possess a distinctive 2-dimensional quality and reference a wide range of artistic styles; from the bright colours of Pop and the distorted planes of Cubism, to the biomorphism of Surrealism, they display a bold and intensely saturated visual language that is distinctively his own.

For more information on this artist and his practice, check out our website:
https://www.stpi.com.sg/artists/aaron-curry/

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SG Art Week Panel: Art Institutions, World Leaders

Saturday, 27 January 2018
STPI Gallery

Join Chong Siak Ching (CEO, National Gallery Singapore), Reuben Keehan (Curator, Contemporary Asian Art at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art) and Pauline J. Yao (Lead Curator, M+), in a panel moderated by Robin Peckham (Curator & Editor-in-Chief of LEAP).

The discussion will present the perspectives of diverse curators and museum leaders on how art institutions play leading roles in their communities and in the world at large. Touching on areas including collection management and audience engagement, together we ask how and why art can lead.

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In Talks With: Alex Turnbull, Estate of Kim Lim & Joleen Loh, National Gallery Singapore

Saturday, 13 January 2018
STPI Gallery

“My concern is not so much with volume and mass, as with form, space, light, scale and a sense of rhythm; the last may seem an odd thing to mention in terms of sculptural qualities, but for me it is no less physical than the others – it is as real as pulse and breathing.” – Kim Lim.

Alex Turnbull (Estate of Kim Lim) and Joleen Loh (Assistant Curator, National Gallery Singapore) discussed the life and influences of Kim Lim, and how the artist both consented to and refused the parameters of Minimalism on her own terms. They will unpack her artistic development in the context of post-war Britain, and explore what it means to re-visit and re-evaluate Lim’s practice and legacy today.

This talk was held in conjunction of the exhibition Kim Lim: Sculpting Light (2018).

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Artist Panel – Looking In/Out: The Future of Indonesian Art

Saturday, 18 November 2017
STPI Gallery

Join our distinguished panel of artists: Agus Suwage, Heri Dono, Jumaldi Alfi & Titarubi, in discussion with moderator Nadya Wang (Managing Editor, Art Republik) on issues of locality and pluralism in today’s dynamic Indonesian art scene. This conversation is held in conjunction with our first ever Indonesian group exhibition “Allegories & Identities“, which explores the unconventional modes and spirited expressions embedded within the works of Eko Nugroho, Entang Wiharso & Heri Dono.

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In Talks With: Johnson Chang

Saturday, 19 August 2017
STPI Gallery

Roaming Vision:
A walk in Mountain-Water Paintings

Exploring the moving vision in traditional Chinese landscape art, Chang will draw attention to historical paintings with a focus on the Hong Kong contemporary master Leung Kui-Ting, who adopts ‘roaming vision’ and ‘digital vision’ in his own landscape paintings. From classical gardens and rockeries by Zheng Li and Ye Fang to selected Old Masters, this session takes us on a stroll through oriental perspectives – one that affirmed Hockney’s vision.

About the speaker

Chang Tsong-Zung (Johnson Chang) is independent curator, guest professor of China Academy of Art (Hangzhou, China), and director of Hanart TZ Gallery (Hong Kong). He has been active in curating Chinese exhibitions since the 1980s, including co-curator of Guangzhou Triennial in 2008 (“Farewell to Post-Colonialism”), Shanghai Biennale in 2012, and “East Meets West” at Saatchi Gallery in 2014.

Current active projects include Jia Li Hall, a series of research on Confucian rites and aesthetics; West Heavens, Sino Indian exchange in art and social thought; Yaji Garden (a project relating to the Yellow Box Projects), which investigates Chinese aesthetic space and its culture of connoisseurship; and Inter-Asia School, which organised the “Inter-Asia Biennale Forums” at the Shanghai Biennial, Gwangju Biennial, Taipei Biennial and Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2014 and 2016.

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Artist Panel: Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan

Thursday, 28 September 2017
STPI Gallery

Panelists:
Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan (Artists)

Elaine Ng (Editor & Publisher, Art Asia Pacific)

Russell Storer (Deputy Director, Curatorial & Collections, National Gallery)

“The pivotal point that was being stressed in these projects is the inter-human relations that go into the artistic production of the works. By setting up situations that create responses and fuel a collective interaction, these projects go beyond their material form.” – Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan

In conjunction with the opening of their exhibition ‘Of Fragments and Impressions’, this conversation will focus on the artists’ process, a vital part of their collaborative, community-based practice that is often invisible. Gain insights into the way the works at STPI have come full circle, as fragments of past projects are reworked and reconfigured in print and paper.

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In Talks With: Joselina Cruz: Constellations

Saturday, 4 November 2017
STPI Gallery

In Talks With | Joselina Cruz: Constellations – Configuring Objects

Join Joselina Cruz, Director and Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde in Manila, Philippines, as she looks at practices amongst artists such as Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan, and those of institutions that employ accumulation as more than mere gestures, but as active processes to understand and make sense of the world.

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In Talks With: Barbara Bolt: Differential Seeing

Saturday, 15 July 2017
STPI Gallery

Differential Seeing:
Picturing David Hockney in the World

In the late 1960s, David Hockney embarked on a quest to construct and compose pictures that bring us, as viewers, into a different relation with the image and with the world. In this public lecture, Barbara Bolt draws on Hockney’s drawings of the 60s, his photomontages of the 70s, his photographic collages of the 80s and his recent photographic drawings to investigate how Hockney used the vexed relationship between painting and photography to enact his critique of one-point perspective.

For Hockney, the problem of one-point perspective is not just a pictorial issue that is of concern to artists and the art world: It is an existential and also a political question of how “we” get out of the vice-like grip of a single perspective and come to see the world differently and differentially.

Dr Barbara Bolt is a practising artist and art theorist and Professor in Contemporary Arts and Culture at the Victorian College of Arts at the University of Melbourne.

Her publications include two monographs Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image (2004) and Heidegger Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts (2011) and four co-edited publications, Material Inventions: Applying Creative Arts Research (2014), Carnal Knowledge: Towards a “New Materialism” through the Arts (2013), Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry (2007) and Sensorium: Aesthetics, Art, Life (2007).

Her research establishes a strong dialogue between practice and theory. Publications such as ‘Elegy to an Oz Republic: First Steps in a Ceremony of Invocation towards Reconciliation’ (2015), ‘After Motherwell, after Manet and after Goya: the performative power of imaging and the intensely present’ (2015), ‘Whose Joy?: Giotto, Yves Klein and neon blue’ (2011), ‘Unimaginable happenings: material movements in the plane of composition’ (2010), ‘Rhythm and the performative power of the index: lessons from Kathleen Petyarre’s paintings’ (2006), ‘Shedding light for the matter’ (2000) and ‘Impulsive practices: painting and the logic of sensation’ (1997) have emerged from this dialogue.

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Artist Panel: Kim Beom, Azusa Hashimoto & Eitaro Ogawa

Saturday, 6 May 2017
STPI Gallery

From 1994 to the present, Seoul based Korean artist Kim Beom has been exploring a world in which the relationship between the appearance of the “seen” and its true nature is questioned. There is no question that his workshop experience at STPI was an exciting challenge for him.

Join our distinguished panel: Eitaro Ogawa (STPI Chief Printer), Azusa Hashimoto (Curator of the National Museum of Art, Osaka) and the artist himself, to examine how he developed his idea in this workshop.

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In Talks With: Joan Kee: Fugitive Contemporaries: Korean Art

Saturday, 3 June 2017
STPI Gallery

Joan Kee, Associate Professor of the History of Art at the University of Michigan, offers her perspectives on Fugitive Contemporaries: Korea Art, 1953 – 1989

Join our esteemed speaker as she offers an overview of some key themes and developments through the works of artists during the immediate decades following the provisional end of the Korean War in 1953, where artists in Korea were left unmoored as previous distinctions yielded to new priorities and pressures. How did they reimagine new streams of action? Addressing painting, photography, installation, sculpture as well as intermedial works, the session will feature the works of artists like Jun Min-cho, Kim Hong-joo, Oh Yun, Shin Hak-chol, Park Bul-ddong and Sung Neung-kyung.

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Artist Panel: Blind Collectives & Exquisite Collaborations

Saturday, 18 March 2017
STPI Gallery

“Social interactions and the potential of art to stir exchanges have always been a driving force in his practice, likewise in the work of Carsten, Tobias, and Anri. But what such works instigate is also a reflection on the artistic process and how it “happens” in its encounter with the viewer.” – Ute Meta Bauer & Anca Rujoiu, From ‘Exquisite Corpse to Exquisite Truth. Life Happens and We are Part of its Happening’.

Join our distinguished panel: STPI Chief Printer Eitaro Ogawa and Artists Tobias Rehberger & Rirkrit Tiravanija, in conversation about the collaborative project as well as the notion of collaborations itself. Moderated by Mark Rappolt (Editor-in-chief, ArtReview)

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Talk & Workshop : Bean Sprouts & Papermaking with Amanda Heng

Saturday, 25 February 2017
STPI Gallery

Taking her cue from an earlier work titled Let’s Chat (in which bean sprouts were plucked and conversations were had as part of the performance), Amanda Heng embarked on the early days of her collaboration exploring papermaking with bean sprouts and other food items as the core medium. Let Amanda and STPI Senior Papermaker Gordon Koh show you how this is at all possible!

Demonstration and a chance to take home your own beansprout paper included.

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Artist Panel : Process & Engagement

Saturday, 7 January 2017
STPI Gallery

“The medium of performance and installation doesn’t confine or restrict the artist to a specific material or principle, and encourages the artist to experiment. It opens up different kinds of possibilities.” Join our distinguished panel in a discourse surrounding Amanda Heng’s interdisciplinary practice, collaborative approach, and the role of the artist as facilitator.

About the Speakers
Cultural Medallion recipient Amanda Heng is a full-time art practitioner who dapples largely in performance and installation, adopting an interdisciplinary approach to her art practice that explores issues of history, memory, communication and human relationships in urban conditions.

Louis Ho is co-curator of the “Singapore Biennale 2016: An Atlas of Mirrors” and a curator at the Singapore Art Museum, where his focus is on the art of Malaysia, Myanmar and Brunei. Previously an independent art historian, critic and curator, Ho has lectured at the National Institute of Education and is a contributor to various art publications such as Art Asia Pacific and Pipeline. Trained in art history, Ho’s research interests include Southeast Asian visual culture, particularly film, and the intersections between art and the social.

Anca Rujoiu heads Publications at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore). Previously curator for exhibitions there, Rujoiu was part of the founding team of the Centre and has contributed to the early stages of its development. Together with Professor Ute Meta Bauer, NTU CCA Founding Director, she co-curated several exhibitions including Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions (2015); Allan Sekula: Fish Story to be continued (2015); Simryn Gill: Hugging the Shore (2015). She is co-director of FormContent, a nomadic curatorial institute adopting a subjective attitude towards cultural production and using fiction as critical tool. Her practice is driven by questions of curatorial and institutional self-reflexivity, explorations of the language and processes of exhibition-making, and an expansive understanding of the curatorial including programming and publishing.

Dr June Yap is a curator and art historian based in Singapore, previously Deputy Director and Curator of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, and curator at the Singapore Art Museum. Selected curatorial projects include Dear Painter at Sundaram Tagore (Singapore), No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia as part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative (New York, Hong Kong, Singapore), The Cloud of Unknowing at the 54th Venice Biennale (Italy), Das Paradies ist Anderswo / Paradise is Elsewhere at Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) (Germany), and Bound for Glory at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Museum.

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Guest Lecture: Japanese Contemporary Art from the Kansai

Saturday, 29 October 2016
STPI Gallery

From the “Gutai” group of the 1950s in Osaka, to the new wave of painting and installation styles called “Kansai New Wave” in the 1980s, and finally, the art scene of today—guest speaker Yuka Uematsu will present a survey of the Japanese contemporary art developments of Kansai, the southern-central region of Japan’s main island Honshu and the second most populated area in Japan after Greater Tokyo. Artists covered will include Morimura Yasumasa, Miwa Yanagi, Kohei Nawa, Teppei Kaneuji, Yuki Kimura, Tomoko Yoneda, and younger artists. A parallel project of Singapore Biennale 2016.

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Guest Lecture: Shinro Ohtake & Benesse Art Site Naoshima

Saturday, 22 October 2016
STPI Gallery

A bath house transformed, a disused factory, an abandoned house, and a former school – these are Shinro Ohtake’s major permanent installations on the islands of the Seto Inland Sea in Japan. Commissioned by the Benesse Art Foundation, Shinro Ohtake is a name that has become strongly tied to the far reaching initiative of the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, which strives to create symbiotic interrelations between art, architecture and nature for the revitalization of local communities. Join guest speaker Akiko Miki in this much anticipated lecture, where she will highlight Ohtake’s contributions as well as other leading artists and architects behind these large-scale projects.

Akiko Miki is the International Artistic Director of Benesse Art Site Naoshima and the Co-Director of Yokohama Triennale 2017. She has worked as Chief/Senior Curator of Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2000-14) and as the Artistic Director for Yokohama Triennale 2011 amongst other key positions. She has curated important exhibitions in both Asia and Europe, including the “TransCulture” at the 46 Venice Biennale (1995), Taipei Biennial “Site of Desire” (1998), “Nobuyoshi Araki: Self-Life-Death” (2005), “Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art” (2008), “Hiroshi Sugimoto: Today the world died” (2014), “Takashi Murakami: The 500 Arhats” (2015), and “Takashi Murakami’s Superflat Collection – from Shōhaku and Rosanjin to Anselm Kiefer” (2016). Author/editor of number of books including Insular Insight about Benesse Art Site Naoshima (Lars Müller, 2011 DAM Architectural Book Award).

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Coffee & Conversations with Kim Beom & Sunjung Kim

Saturday, 1 October 2016
STPI Gallery

Join us for our next segment of Coffee & Conversations with South Korean artist Kim Beom who is back in Singapore for the second phase of his residency. He will be joined by Sunjung Kim, the director of the Art Sonje Center, Seoul, and artistic director of the REAL DMZ PROJECT, which engages issues surrounding the division of Korea and the border region near the demilitarized zone.

From 1998 to 2004, Sunjung Kim was the chief curator at the Art Sonje Center, Seoul, and in 2005 was Commissioner of the Korean Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale. In addition to Kim, she has worked on numerous exhibitions of artists such as Martin Creed, Haegue Yang, Shinro Ohtake, Lee Bul, Jewyo Rhii, Sung Hwan Kim, and Abraham Cruzvillegas at the Art Sonje Center. Through Samuso, Kim established and curated Platform Seoul, an annual art festival whose editions include “Platform in KIMUSA: Void of Memory” (2009) and co-curated the “Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists From Korea” exhibition in 2009 at LACMA and MFAH. Kim has taken many roles in a wide range of projects: Artistic Director of Media City Seoul (2010), Artistic Co-Director of Gwangju Biennale (2012), Agent for DOCUMENTA 13 (2013), and Artistic Director of ACC Research & Archive in Asian Culture Center in Gwangju (2014-2015).

At STPI, Kim Beom challenges perceptions and reflect on the metaphysical—”we don’t know who we are, we don’t know where we are, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but we all run no matter what we are”. Through an expansive practice that spans drawing, sculpture, video and artist books, Kim contemplates a world in which perception is radically questioned. His visual language is characterised by deadpan humour and absurdist propositions that playfully and subversively invert expectations. His works have been shown in institutions including the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, Canada), Hayward Gallery (London, UK), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LA) and Artsonje Center (Seoul, Korea).

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Coffee & Conversations: Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan

Saturday, 20 August 2016
STPI Gallery

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Guest Lectures: “Integration of Two Worlds: Zao Wou-Ki” by Joyce Chan

Saturday, 13 August 2016
STPI Gallery

Integration of Two Worlds: Zao Wou-Ki

Speaker: Joyce Chan, Christie’s Hong Kong

French art critic Daniel Marchesseau once said that Zao Wou-Ki’s painting is the “integration of two world unique”, that is to say of a “Paris Chinese, a Chinese Chinese”. Most view Zao Wou-Ki as a Western painter who mastered oil painting, but in fact Zao is an artist with Chinese cultural background which enabled him to successfully bridge Chinese and Western aesthetics, and thus create novel abstract painting since 1950s when Western artists were dominant. This Eastern and Western cultural exchange is a two-way interaction, without subordination. In this lecture, we will first look into this interaction through Zao’s early printmaking method which is unconventional in Western art scene but closely connected to Chinese ink painting practice. The printmaking experience steered the development of Zao’s early oil painting in the 1950s.

Apart from print and oil painting, Zao also produced watercolour since the late 1940s, and then initiated his ink painting in the 1970s. Zao’s watercolour and oil painting have undergone a neck-and-neck development. Stylistically, they have also kept their forces united. In the second part of this lecture, we will look into the relationship between Zao’s watercolour/ink and his oil painting in the process of free transmigration between East and West aesthetic traditions. A focus will be drawn to how elements of traditional Chinese art influenced Zao, allowing him to develop personal style which distinguished him from other Western abstract artists. In the last part, we will share statistics about the auction market of Zao Wou-Ki’s works.

About the Speaker:
Joyce Chan is a Senior Specialist of Asian 20th Century & Contemporary Art department based in Hong Kong, and the Head of Sale for Asian 20th Century Art. Joyce began her career at Christie’s Asian 20th Century & Contemporary Art department in 2006 after she received her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art at the University of Hong Kong. Joyce is responsible for researching, catalogue production, business-getting, client advisory and exhibition. She is the recipient of Arts Administration Scholarships (2013) supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council for her post-graduate studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Image © Zao Wou-Ki ProLitteris, Zurich, 2016

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Lecture Series: The Handmade Paper & Other Projects

Saturday, 23 July 2016
STPI Gallery

Come spend an hour in our paper mill with senior papermaker Gordon Koh as he shares a brief history on the types and methods of paper-making and compares Eastern and Western traditions. He will guide you through the infinite creative possibilities of paper-making that have developed as a result of key projects with resident artists at STPI, who endlessly push the limits of humble paper pulp.

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Lecture Series: From Orde Baru to Reformasi by Tan Siuli

Saturday, 18 June 2016
STPI Gallery

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Lecture Series: Models and Maniacs by Dr Wulan Dirgantoro

Saturday, 11 June 2016
STPI Gallery

Models and Maniacs: Deconstructing the Feminine in Indonesian Contemporary Art

Speaker: Dr Wulan Dirgantoro, Lecturer, MA Asian Art Histories Programme, LASALLE

The lecture shall discuss the intersection between art making and gender politics in Indonesian contemporary art. It will trace the construction of the feminine across three important periods in Indonesia, namely the New Order, Reformasi and Post-Reformasi eras to situate the sociocultural and political context of the artistic practices by Indonesian artists. The lecture shall examine how artistic strategies by artists such as Arahmaiani, Titarubi, and IGAK Murniasih have challenged and questioned the feminine models as prescribed by the State and society within a feminist framework.

About The Speaker
Dr Wulan Dirgantoro is a lecturer in the MA Asian Art Histories Programme at the Faculty of Fine Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts. Her research interests are transnational feminism and trauma and memory in Indonesian modern and contemporary art. She is currently a participant in “Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art”, a research project within the Connecting Art Histories initiative by the Getty Foundation.

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Coffee & Conversations: Amanda Heng

Saturday, 16 April 2016
STPI Gallery

Join us in a conversation with Singaporean interdisciplinary artist Amanda Heng as she begins her residency at STPI. She is known to champion the representation of women by examining notions of the female body through her performances, her work with WITAS (Woman in the Arts Singapore) and various artists’ initiatives in the early 1990s. The 2010 Cultural Medallion recipient often collaborates with people of different cultural backgrounds and fields to juxtapose eastern and western values, and address gender roles in the fast changing multicultural landscape of Singapore. Her recent work focuses on the issues of history, memory, communication and human relationships in urban conditions.

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Artist Talk with Do Ho Suh

Saturday, 7 November 2015
STPI Gallery

Do Ho Suh (Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in London, New York and Seoul. He received a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA in sculpture fro Yale University. The artist is currently exhibiting at MOCA Cleveland until 10 January 2016. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include “Home within Home within Home within Home within Home”, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2013); “Do Ho Suh: Perfect Home”, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2012-2013); “In Between”, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan (2012); “Fallen Star”, Stuart Collection, University of San Diego, California (2012); “Home within Home”, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea (2012); and “Wielandstr.18, 12159”, DAAD Galerie, Germany (2011). In 2001, Suh represented Korea at the Venice BIennale and subsequently participated in the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, the 2010 Liverpool Biennial and the 2012 Gwangju Biennial.

His works are included in numerous museum collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate, London; Leeum, Seoul; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, among others.

Do Ho Suh is presented by Lehmann Maupin, New York/Hong Kong and Victoria Miro, London.

Talk

Coffee & Conversations: Alfredo Jaar

Saturday, 14 May 2016
STPI Gallery

“I became an artist because I do not understand the world. Everything I know, I understand through making art.” – Alfredo Jaar in 2012 interview with The Financial Times.

Join our new artist-in-residence Chilean-born artist Alfredo Jaar as he shares concepts behind recent projects. Jaar has received wide critical acclaim for his thought-provoking practice that addresses global sociopolitical concerns.

Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York City. He was born in Santiago de Chile.

Jaar’s work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the Biennales of Venice (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), Sao Paulo (1987, 1989, 2010) as well as Documenta in Kassel (1987, 2002). Important individual exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Whitechapel, London; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. A major retrospective of his work took place in summer 2012 at three institutions in Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst e.V. and Alte Nationalgalerie. In 2014 the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki hosted the most extensive retrospective of his career.

Jaar has realized more than sixty public interventions around the world. More than fifty monographic publications have been published about his work.

He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000.

His work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum, New York, the MCA in Chicago, MOCA and LACMA in Los Angeles, the Tate in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Centro Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlaebeck and dozens of other institutions and private collections worldwide.

Art Photography © Cristobel Palma.

Talk

Art Week Panel: Becoming Jane

Sunday, 17 January 2016
STPI Gallery

Join Singaporean artist Jane Lee, STPI chief printer Eitaro Ogawa, gallerist Sundaram Tagore and art writer Tony Godfrey as they present different facets of Jane’s artistic journey and practice as an artist. Known for her use of unconventional materials and innovative techniques, her paintings highlight their processes, drawing attention to the way the paintings have been made or constructed. Most of her works re-examine painting’s significance and relevance for contemporary art practice. At STPI however, Jane has embarked to explore the mediums of printmaking and paper, and this discussion will also reveal her residency experience.

Freely, Freely is part of Singapore Art Week (16 – 24 January 2016). An initiative by the National Arts Council, in partnership with the Singapore Tourism Board and Economic Development Board Economic Development Board, Singapore Art Week reinforces Singapore’s position as Asia’s leading arts destination. It is a nine-day celebration of the visual arts, offering a myriad of quality art experiences, from art fairs, gallery openings, exhibitions to lifestyle events, public art walks, as well as enriching discussions on art and culture.

Talk

Coffee & Conversations with Shinro Ohtake

Saturday, 10 October 2015
STPI Gallery

Join Shinro Ohtake and Chief Printer Eitaro Ogawa for a casual afternoon as the artist takes us through his multimedia practice. While his oeuvre includes drawing, painting, sculpture and photography, as well as large-scale assemblage pieces and experimental music and videos, it is his activity of collage that appears to be most characteristic of his artistic expression. Much of his work utilises found objects, images and scraps from urban culture and mass media, often with reference to the underground music culture. He is best known for his ongoing series of ‘Scrapbooks’ – an extensive presentation having been shown at the 2013 Venice Biennale, as part of the “Encyclopaedic Palace”.

Talk

Coffee & Conversations with Shirazeh Houshiary

Saturday, 26 September 2015
STPI Gallery

Get to know our artist in residence Shirazeh Houshiary as she returns to complete the second phase of her residency. Born in Shiraz, Iran, where she attended university before moving to London where she currently lives and works, Houshiary studied at Chelsea School of Art, London, and emerged with the New British Sculpture movement in the early 1980s, alongside artists including Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon and Anish Kapoor. Houshiary’s broad practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, architectural projects and film. Notable works include Chrysalis, a 26-foot sculpture for Jimmy Choo’s flagship store and the East Window of St-Martin-in-the-Fields. Recent projects include the solo exhibition, “Breath”, a Collateral Event of the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); the Kiev Biennale (2012); and the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010). Houshiary’s solo exhibition at STPI is slated to open in March 2016.

Talk

Lecture Series: The Renaissance in Post-War American Art and the Era of Creative Printmaking

Saturday, 22 August 2015
STPI Gallery

Examine the art and printmaking practices of 20th century artists namely Josef Albers, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Robert Motherwell, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein, along with several others who worked with Kenneth Tyler. This special lecture is held in conjunction with the current exhibition, ‘As We Never Imagined: 50 Years of Art Making’. Led by Dr. Jane Kinsman, Senior Curator of International Prints, Drawings & Illustrated Books at the National Gallery of Australia.

Talk

Coffee & Conversations: Heri Dono & Tan Siuli

Saturday, 15 August 2015
STPI Gallery

Get to know our artist in residence Heri Dono (Indonesia) as he returns to complete the second phase of his residency. He will be joined by SAM curator Tan Siuli, who will offer perspectives on the Indonesian art scene. Heri recently showcased at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Coffee & Conversations is a casual session that aims to connect our artist with the public, giving them the chance to introduce their practice and ideas prior to their stint at STPI. It also offers audiences the rare opportunity to view works in progress in the artist studio.

Talk

Artist Talk: Jason Martin

Sunday, 13 September 2015
STPI Gallery

In conjunction with the exhibition “Collaborations”, presented by Lisson Gallery & STPI.

Born in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, Jason Martin lives and works between London and Portugal. He has a BA from Goldsmiths, London, and is perhaps best known for his monochromatic paintings, where layers of oil or acrylic gel are dragged across hard surfaces such as aluminium, stainless steel or Plexiglas with a fine, comb-like piece of metal or board in one movement, often repeated many times. The resulting grooves and ridges absorb and reflect light, energizing the once monochrome surface with tonality. Martin does not use the material as a means to an end of representing objects; he celebrates the material itself. He is slated to begin his residency at STPI in March 2016. Recent exhibitions of Martin’s work include “Gestural Ubiquity” at Galeries Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais, Paris (2014) and “Patois” at Sala Gaspar, Barcelona (2013).

Talk

STPI Public Talk with Artist and Curator Bob Matthews

Thursday, 28 July 2011
STPI Gallery

“Contemporary Printmaking and the Legacy of David Hockney at the Royal College of Art”

Join Bob Matthews, an artist and curator, from the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, for a talk about the advances in the medium of printmaking. In conjunction with STPI’s David Hockney exhibition, Matthews will also share insight into Hockney’s time as a student at the RCA and take a look at the early works he produced there, such as his etching series, The Rake’s Progress (1961-9163).

Bob Matthews has worked as a tutor in the Printmaking Department at the RCA since 2002. He was educated at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art & Design, Kent Institute of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art.Both his studio practice and recent curatorial projects focus on the landscape and its use by Utopian communities. Bob has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, where his work is held in public and private collections.

He was the 1998 Fine Art Fellow at the University of Gloucestershire, Printmaking Fellow at the RCA in 1999 and was nominated for the ICA/Beck Futures Award in 2000. During the last 10 years he has had solo exhibitions in London and San Francisco and has taken part in numerous exhibitions, including those at the Jerwood Gallery, Gasworks Gallery, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Art Dunkerque and the Royal Academy of Art. He has also curated exhibitions for Castlefield Gallery, Cell Project Space, Herbert Read Gallery, Wolverhampton City Art Gallery, Royal College of Art, The Nunnery, the Bank of America and the Study Gallery of Modern Art.

Publications include: Lubok 8: London Special, Lubok Verlag Leipzig, Germany (2009) and Review articles include: Shotgun Review, June 2009; Art Monthly, March 2008; Flash Art, January 2008.

He is also senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University for the Creative Arts at Canterbury.

Image credits: David Hockney, Bedlam (from The Rake’s Progress) 1961-63, Etching and aquatint.