Parabola - Genevieve Chua

This exhibition is held from 21st November 2014 to 21st December 2014 at Tomio Koyama Gallery at Gillman Barracks.

Gillman website release, Tomio Koyama release.

Genevieve Chua showed works from her Tillandsia Usneoides, Swivels and Parabola series. But the highlight of the show is Parabola #1.

Not talking much about her body of work as it's well written up and various of her earlier works have been shown at the museums.

One word : Excellent! (bet you said it in your mind in like Mr Burns)

Picture from Tomio Koyama FB page, the artist in front of Parabola#1 and flanked by 2 prominent art collectors.

Points for collectors: Definite buy. In fact I would buy the Parabola#1 if it hasn't been sold already. But it doesn't quite fit into our collection criteria, so Pizza Queen drags me away unwillingly.

Just Beyond - Art Fellas

This exhibition was held last weekend 14th to 17th November 2014 by the The Art Fellas gallery at the Ion art space.

The three artists featured were Danya Yu, Tew Bee Lan and Yen Phang.

Tew Bee Lan is a abstract artist, the main works presented were the poured coloured and mixing it about. Interesting but nothing innovative. Ok I guess.

From Art Fellas FB page

Yen Phang was more interesting working with gel and paint to create an installation of small tiles which are sold individually. He did some 'negative' paintings of a medical subjects and some coloured abstract pieces. More interesting.

From Art Fellas FB page

From Art Fellas FB page

Danya Yu, I have mentioned before in a few posts earlier. Much better works here than the ones she presented at Fresh Air Fine Art. She had a new pilgrim series and Paris series which were good.

Points for collectors: The works were priced very reasonably at the exhibition. Yen Phang and Tew Bee Lan; not a buy yet for serious collectors but nice pieces at a good price point. Danya Yu is evolving, the Pilgrim Pieces and the Paris pieces are a buy. Art Fellas is a new gallery less than a year old. But the man behind the company has a good business sense, hope he's not only in this for the money (art boom or bubble in Sg now) and develops a good program for the young artist who are paid a stipend by him.

Instinc 10 - The Great Collaboration.

The culmination of the past weeks of collaboration between the 10 artists starts with the presentation of a sneak preview of their works.

Why it is a sneak preview is because on show are the 5 different pairs of artist's typical works. But the collaborative works are only 30x30cm small pieces and each pair only shows 5 of these small squares.

Must say the end result is interesting, especially if you are familiar with the artists' works.

They will be at AAF booth 3D-25, showing the larger format and juicier works. So don't think you will be able to catch this opening cause it's for 2 days only. But do catch them at the Affordable Art Fair.

Points for Collectors: This is a collaboration for 'Art's Sake' , producing nice works. Where the works are the objects and the beauty is in the object and the expression of  the beauty of the collaboration and of Instinc's past 10 fruitful years. Definitely nice pieces will be produced by these talented artists, but not sure where this will sit in the history of art.

Fresh Air Fine Art Festival

This exhibition is held at the Luxe Art Museum from the 15th to the 21st.

It's a festival of Music and Visual art. You can check out the details at their website.

It features various artists.

Summary of the artists/works that interested me:

Valerie Ng: she showed her usual abstract paintings, some recent, some older. But she really had this excellent new body of work where she painted old linen and canvas (of various sizes and shapes) and sewed them together, so from far it looks like a geometric assembly of visual field works. But up close it's obviously patch work. But it melded very well together. An excellent piece.

Raymond Yap: He did more of his signature texture gloss paint. There were two older pieces (2009) which I consider misses. However he has shown progession with the two newer large circular pieces called Unexplored Galaxies. The new work has the typical textured ridges, spots of paint and covered with a resin (macam Alan Oei) to give a glossy appearance. Very good piece of work.

Danya Yu: some paintings of Singapore. Some pieces of her riparian series. Think her back alley series is better. With this series the paintings are of a darker hue and reminds me of modernist paintings. A step backward? But she used this to good effect with one of the European Architecture paintings (displayed with Art Fellas). The modernist style works well with that obviously. But Danya is a great artist, and just needs to meet a good curator/collector or gallerist to give her a nudge in the correct direction.

Stefanie Hauger:
She showed a couple of her mandala pieces, i.e. the same style that won her UOB painting of the year last year. Nice looking pieces. But the other two, one a ' textured' visual field piece and the other one a swirly, 'rain drops on water' type of  painting. Both are misses I feel.

Valerie Ng

Danya Yu

Stefanie Hauger

Points for collectors: Val Ng is a buy and her pieces are ok. Raymond Yap's Galaxy piece was very good but overpriced, even more expensive than an Ian Woo piece if you go by square feet. That's the unique thing about the art market in Singapore. There are very few full time artists, most have other jobs in the art eco-system in Singapore,s o they don't need to sell art to survive and can price things according to their whims and fancy. This is an interesting topic that an academic should write about to understand art in Singapore. Stefanie Hauger's Mandala pieces are reasonably priced. Danya Yu is an artist to watch, but would give these pieces a miss for now.

More stuff in November

1. FOST Gallery is having a group show which opens this Friday 14th of November 2014. It's also late night at Gillman Barracks this friday.

The show is called Echoes of Anticipation featuring, Chun Kai Feng, Ang Song Ming, Heman Chong, Ang Soo Koon, Jimmy Ong, RSCLS, Grace Tan, Izziyana Suhaimi, Ashley Yeo, Luke Heng, Khairullah Rahim and Tan Wyn Lyn.

From the website, it looks like works that have been shown before. So will have to pick and choose between the Fresh Air Fine Arts Festival which opens on the same day.

Qn: Is it easier to park at Cathay,on Friday night which also happens to be the last day of the school term or at Gillman Barracks on a "Late Night at Gillman" evening with the SABF going on?

2. Ipreciation is also having a show for these three weeks called "Portable Fine Art", which is a departure from their usual large format paintings. They seldom have medium sized paintings (which are good for most Singapore homes). So you can guess their target audience. Anyway back to the point, the show is about showing small format works of their artists and the price of the objects are under $10000. Getting into the AAF mood? Anyway I will try to check it out and let you know.

Later.

Three more things to look for in November

In addition to the exhibitions and fairs mentioned in this POST.

3 things to add.
1. Fresh Air Fine Arts Festival (organised by BrownHill consultancy) from 15th-21st November 2014 at the Luxe Art Museum. Amongst the artist featured are Danya Yu, Lawrence Liu, Raymond Yap, Valerie Ng and Stephanie Hauger.

2.Bank Art Fair Singapore from 20th to 23rd November 2014 at Pan Pacific Hotel. Done a la Art Apart style, i.e. paintings in rooms. Intentionally marked for that period to coincide with Affordable Art Fair, as the hotel is just a walk away from the F1 Pit Building.

3. Instinc Art's 10th Anniversary, 'Celebrating a decade of art and collaboration'. The art exhibition's opening and artist talk will be held at Studio67 Art Space on 15th November 2014. They will also have a booth at AAF 3D-25.

One more...

Not exactly an art exhibition, but we have the Singapore Art Book Fair happening at the Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore at Gillman Barracks from the 13th to 16th November 2014. I love to curl up with a good book about art while sipping on my mug of hot chocolate; so I hope to get some interesting books there.

Southeast Asia and Diaspora: Breaking and Reconstructing the Circle

This exhibition is organised by OneEast Asia, based in Singapore, but held in London at Gallery Art 8 with help from Asian Art in London, it runs from the 28th of October to 8th of November 2014.

Didn't go to this exhibition;was too far away. But from the from the facebook pictures of the event, you see Jeffrey Say of Lasalle (art history), Cheah Ui-hoon of Business Times and more attending this event. Just really happy to see Singaporean works exhibited overseas and that they are well supported too.

Think this is the third time One East Asia is showing Singapore and SEA art in London. The artists this time are:

Anida Yoeu Ali (Cambodia)
Anchalee Araypongpanit, Prapat Jiwarangsan (Thailand)
Andres Barrioquinto, Mark Lewis Higgins, Renato Orara, Mark Valenzuela (Philippines)
John Clang, Jane Lee (Singapore)
Grogorius Sidharta Soegijo (Indonesia)
Sherman Ong (Malaysia/Singapore)

Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani (Co-curator)

Report from SEAArtsFest.org

Being a blog on paintings, the works that obviously interests us would be that of Jane Lee's. She had two paintings which are called Sacred I and Sacred II. Awesome Jane Lee works. John CLAng photos were interesting too.

Picture from OneEastAsia FB page, Jane Lee Sacred I (L) and II (R)

Picture from OneEastAsia FB page

Picture from OneEastAsia FB page

Points for Collectors: Always good to buy a Jane Lee or two if you can. Seems like I am stating the obvious. As for John CLAng's works, they are a buy rating too, if you are into photography.

Art Paris 2015

Though this is not in Singapore but in Paris in the Spring from 26th to 29th March 2015, but still relevant. Press release in art agenda's site.

For Art Paris, the focus is on Russian, Middle East and Asian art so as to set it apart for FIAC. The last two editions, the 'Guest of honor' ie pavillion countries were Russia and China. So for next year, the GoH is Singapore, along with other SEA countries if they still have the space I guess.

Think this is in conjunction with SG50 also, so with National Arts Council's funding and the local galleries, we will be able to see a good gathering of the best contemporary artist in Singapore. And it would be lovely to see it in a commercial setting rather then in a  museum, biennale or academic setting with too much involvement of the art Gods in Singapore as to who is presented. I still feel that the commercial galleries and the commercial side of things are mainly responsible for making the wheels of the art world turn.(Coline Milliard's article on Artnet -"What make's an art capital?" is a good read.)

So try to plan your holidays about it. Pity it's on the weekend after the March school holidays, otherwise it would be perfect for people with school going kids if it were a week earlier.

Not much news from Art Paris yet, as I believe the application for exhibitors only close in Dec 2014.

So keep it on your calendar and pop over if you're in Paris for the spring.