FEBRUARY FEATURE - SINGAPORE

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FEBRUARY FEATURE

Welcome to the Singapore Art Museum, the home of Singapore's national art collection. The new art museum is devoted to the study and preservation of the contemporary art of the Southeast Asian region. The Singapore Art Museum boasts of a collection of art works that enjoys historical significance and aesthetic value. The collection includes art works by Singapore and the region's pioneering and established artists as well as works by younger artists.

Birth of the Goddess Gregorius Sidharta Soegijo

Born in 1932 in Yogyakarta, Gregorius Sidharta Soegijo is a sculptor, painter and printmaker. Birth of the Goddess demonstrates Soegijo's departure from the modernist sculptural formalism of his earlier years toward the indigenous aesthetic values and traditions. The birth of a child-goddess is an imagery which may have been drawn from Indonesian mystical beliefs of fertility and feminine mystical powers. Painterly treatment and decorative elements recall the long tradition of painted wooden sculptures and crafts in Indonesia.

To visitors and art lovers, the Singapore Art Museum offers exhibitions, educational programmes and publicationson visual arts from the regional and international scenes that aim to stimulate and enrich their cultural experience. A special educative feature is the permanently installed interactive programme in the Museum's state of the artE-mage Gallery. The interactive programme aims to provide users with an introduction to the art histories andcontemporary art practices of the Southeast Asian region. Through the programme, users will have access to digitised images of art works from the collections of the Singapore Art Museum as well as from important public institutional and private collections in Southeast Asia. The Singapore Art Museum is housed in a historic building that was until 1987, the Saint Joseph's Institution, a Catholic boys school.

National Language Class Chua Mia Tee

Born in 1932 in Shantou, Guangdong Province in China, Chua Mia Tee attended the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts from 1950 to 1952. To Chua, art must reflect real life. National Language Class is an early social realist work by Chua Mia Tee.
Less polished and finished technically then, work is however more boldly conceived and the rendition more painterly in quality.
The work is also a deliberate social commentary on the nation's aspirations during the 1950s and 60s.

In the conversion of the former school to an art museum of international standards, a careful balance was struckbetween the preservation of its architectural and historical character, and the building's new role as a contemporary site for the display of 20th century art.

The Tiger's Whip Tang Da Wu

Tang Da Wu studied and lived in England for many years before his return to Singapore in the early 1980s. The Tiger's Whip,the intention of the piece was to highlight the plight of the endangered tigers, who are being hunted down for their penises.
Chinese superstitious belief dictates that the tiger's penis when imbibed is a powerful aphrodisiac. Tang's work showed how
such a belief could clash with reality: the ultimate extinction of the species.

The Singapore Art Museum has 13 exhibition galleries of varying sizes located in the Central Building, and thenewly added Queen Street Wing. Equipped with full climate controls, the galleries have the capacity to meet with international conservation standards.

Struggle, painted in 1981, depicts mythological creatures in the form of serpent, lion and bird-like animals struggling with each other. The upper part of the painting shows two delicate butterflies fly past, barely escaping from two monstrous snake-like creatures. These are symbols signifying the idea of weakness versus aggressiveness, good against evil.

With more than 3,000 sq m of exhibition space, visitors can expect to view one or more on-going exhibitions at the Museum at any one time.

A Boy from the Temple Teo Eng Seng

Born in Singapore in 1938, Teo Eng Seng studied art and art education at the Birmingham College of Art and design in the1960s. A Boy from the Temple is a highly abstract piece by Teo. As a result of interlayering, varied images flicker throughoutthe picture plane. The emphasis is on a strange but undeniable play between colour and shape. A Boy from the Temple is like a mysterious landscape plotted on indefinite forms and colour innuendoes.

The Museum Cafe and Museum Shop offer refreshment, souvenirs and publications on the visual arts while the Museum's library is open to art researchers by appointment.

Singapore Waterfront Georgette Chen Li Ying

Born in France in 1907, Georgette Chen Li Ying recieved her training in Paris, New York as well as Shanghai and is considered to be one of the Pioneer Artists in Singapore who developed the Nanyang Style. Singapore Waterfront, executed in1958, is a painting of refreshing casualness, enhanced by the use of a variety of brushstrokes which seemed to change according to the surface which Chen wanted to represent.

Apart from theses public areas, the Museum's 10,000 square metres floor area also houses climatically controlled storage and collection spaces, conservation laboratory, administrative and curatorial offices, photography studiosand a patron's club. The Singapore Art Museum is the realisation of plans to meet expanded spatial and institutional need which hadoutgrown the facilities of the former National Museum Art Gallery.

The latter was established in 1976 as an annex of the National Museum, and was itself a realisation of longcherished dreams of local artists for a national gallery and repository for the visual arts in Singapore. The Singapore Art Museum completes the first phase of the National Heritage Board's museums development plans.

71 Bras Basah Road Singapore 189555 Tel: (65) 375-2510 OPENING HOURS 9.00am - 5.30pm Closed on Mondays