Material Moves: Revisiting Print and Paper through Han Sai Por, Goh Beng Kwan, Ong Kim Seng and Chua Ek Kay 16.08.2025 — 05.10.2025

About The Exhibition

What new possibilities can arise when artists depart from mediums and styles that they are most familiar or identified with?

Material Moves explores this question as we uncover another side of celebrated Singapore artists Han Sai Por, Goh Beng Kwan, Ong Kim Seng, and Chua Ek Kay—each of whom returned to the STPI Creative Workshop at various points in their careers, often decades apart.

Known for their work in sculpture, collage and painting in watercolour or ink respectively, these four artists have played important roles in Singapore’s contemporary art landscape. At STPI, they embraced the opportunities and challenges of working in new methods and environments. These departures have culminated in the print and paper works shown here, demonstrating the generative potential of material experimentation.

From painting on mulberry bark to using paper pulp as sculpting material, Material Moves invites us to reflect on subtle acts of ‘tweaking’ and testing. It presents the palpable shifts and unexpected directions for the artists and speaks to STPI as a site of exploration.

This sense of renewal and play in the artworks and exhibition curation is a fitting metaphor for Singapore’s 60th anniversary, marking not just the passage of time but a proposition for evolution and movement.

– Adele Tan, exhibition curator