Past Art Fair
S.E.A. Focus 2025: Disconnected Contemporaries 18.01.2025 — 26.01.2025
Information
Event has ended
18 – 26 January 2025
Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore
About The Programme
STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery kickstarts the 2025 art calendar with a presentation of works by artists from its international residency programme, including a strong local representation of seven Singaporean and Singapore-based artists. Throughout Singapore Art Week, STPI will be participating in three highlight events: ART SG, Southeast Asia’s leading international art fair, S.E.A. Focus, a homegrown curatorial platform dedicated to Southeast Asian contemporary art, and a solo exhibition by Suzann Victor, Constellations, at STPI.
“Singapore Art Week is an invigorating moment that throws the spotlight on STPI every year, inspiring our Creative Workshop and Gallery to put our best foot forward on home ground. We are excited to share our line-up of incredible artists, with audiences across international art fair ART SG, curated regional platform S.E.A. Focus, and our very own STPI gallery space. Visitors are welcome to discover and connect with these works, which the artists made in collaboration with our Creative Workshop team during their residencies, to forge new and dynamic expressions in their practice.”
– Emi Eu, Executive Director, STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery
At S.E.A. Focus, STPI will debut the latest works of Cultural Medallion Recipient Ong Kim Seng. Created during the artist’s STPI residency in 2024, they explore printmaking’s capacity for pictorial expressions of light and shade, through landscapes and scenes from Ong’s childhood.
The third edition of ART SG will run from 17 January to 19 January 2025, with STPI’s booth located at booth BA02. STPI is also the organiser of S.E.A. Focus, which will run from 18 January to 26 January 2025.
About the artist
Ong Kim Seng
Residencies in 2003, 2024
Ong Kim Seng (1945, born and based in Singapore) is a watercolourist who conveys evocative expressions of shifting landscapes through paintings of natural and urban environments.His signature style is marked by a sensitive handling of light, shadow and colour, which has been pivotal in advancing the practice of watercolour in Singapore.
A self-taught artist, Ong’s stylistic inclinations in the 1960s were influenced by British watercolour traditions and socialist sentiments. Constant experimentation with the medium led him to incorporate influences from other regions like the American West Coast, resulting in a brighter, more energetic primary palette as demonstrated in his California Style series. His depictions of local streetscapes trace decades of urban transformation in the city, and are often underpinned by notions of transience and nostalgia. An avid traveller to regions such as Nepal and Bali, Ong frequently paints his scenes plein-air to capture moments where native foliage, built structures and figures interact, translating these scenes into fluid, lyrical strokes.
Ong’s work is in numerous collections including the Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Singapore Maritime Museum, Singapore; the Agung Rai Museum of Art, Ubud; and Neka Art Museum, Ubud. He is the first and only Singaporean to have received nine awards from the American Watercolor Society. For his contributions to the local art landscape, Ong was conferred the prestigious Cultural Medallion for Visual Arts in 1990.
Notable exhibitions include Tracking Memories (2011), National Museum of Singapore; HEARTLANDS (2008), Singapore Art Museum; and Timeless Jiangnan (2005), Singapore Conference Hall.
Ong has had two residencies at the STPI Workshop in 2003 and 2024; the former culminated in the exhibition Moments of Light (2004) and the latter culminating in the exhibition Material Moves: Revisiting Print and Paper through Han Sai Por, Goh Beng Kwan, Ong Kim Seng and Chua Ek Kay (2025).
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