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These plays show how a newly-married couple cope with living independently. Or so they think, till their mothers visit.

These plays show how a newly-married couple cope with living independently. Or so they think, till their mothers visit.

An imaged Adventure
Experiemnt: #34
Venue: HDB stairwell
Date: 15 June
Time: 334pm
LabPartners: Chong Tze Chien & Lucy Davis
Medium: Installation with Tin Can telephones & Plastic Baskets
Dimensions: Variable

Tin-can telephones, "wired" together by strings, will be the centre piece of our grand experment, which will link the blue painted stairwell of HDB block number 67 with the rooftops of the spanking new Marine Parade Community Building.

And small baskets for sending messages back and forth will also be fixed onto pulleys that run from the Community Building rooftop to the stairwell on the other side. Our magnificient vision is of a web of strings through the skies between the two buildings, as we put out feelers into an unknown world of urban planning and community communications.

And perhaps we may even garner a reply.

Medium: Installation with bookmarks
Dimensions: 21cm x 4cm

'Non-invasive' bookmarks will be slipped between the pages of 50 selected library books and placed back on the shelves. The bookmarks will be shaped as elongated ellipses with rivet-holes on each end. A soft hair-elastic band will be secured through even rivet-hole so that the elastic band acts as a kind of flexible grip the book and bookmark.


The bookmarks would bear relations - either through images and/or text - (tangential, cryptic, obscure or direct) to the content/theme/title etc of the book/chapter/page. The books selected will be relevant to the theme of the exhibition: books on social constructs, ideology, critical theory, cultural studies, architecture, art etc.


These bookmark serve as 'link' - marking and cross-referencing textual events and ideas on the shelves. They could be seen as metonymic progressions, associatively looped. It is hoped that reader will take up a random tail of 'tracking' down these 'marked' books on the shelved and see connections between and within the marked pages of various books. A selection of these bookmarks will also be distributed to the public while the exhibition is on.


The concept of 'hotspots' also suggests the boundaries set up on certain issues which are considered taboo, or too 'sensitive' for the public or community to comment or enter into discourse upon. Yet these are the very zones where negotiations and reconciliations of differing perspectives within a community can be effected. Art often performs within these boundaries and the public encountering these 'hotspots' through art can enter into social, ethical or philosophical discourse on issues otherwise deemed necessary to be invisible, or even non-existent. This engagement is especially relevant when art is encountered in places other than those designated for the 'display' of art i.e. the gallery or 'artspace'.

50 books amongst thousands - hotspots might very well be a case of the chance encounter with the individual leader. Here in the library, through the very private act of reading, a discursive, hopefully pleasurable conversation between the reader, book and artist can take place without the self-conscious awareness of having to isolate the experience as an encounter with 'Art'.

Medium: Outdoor Installation
Dimensions: Variable

Don't let your dreams fly by.

Medium: Acrylic Windmills with Text (30)
Dimensions: 40 x 60 cm each

On a quiet day when the wind is still, remove your lime-green tinted glasses and read between the lines. You may hear your own thoughts.

Number of works in series: 5
Medium: Charcoal on Paper
Dimensions: 104cm x 61cm

I am interested in commenting on thing, places and situations around me, especially those which deal with changes over time, history and space. This current series focuses on the rapid transformations which affect an individual such as myself. I have adopted the generic shape of an HDB block of flats as a symbolic element to convey this comment.


By re-rendering the images into simplified units whose latent contents can be amplified into issues of social significance, the abstract and minimal drawing somehow conceal much of what has happened throughout the years. The mundane is deconstructed; however, they have all undergone a timely process in doing so.


At the environment around us develops quickly into uniform structures, containing no history, and therefore no identifying characteristic, it creates problems for people like myself, who are continually searching to fit into a niche where we can live ourselves our own way. We are all individual - each one with our own identity; however, we are at the same time discouraged to be ourselves, and are instead offered pre-shaped forms which we must somehow fit in. We are either never at the right place at the right time or are simply not moving fast enough.


Why are we pushed into a system whereby we are forced to look only to the future, without having the time to reflect on what we have at present, to fully understand and appreciate the current moment?
How much restless energy is contained in each of these mundane forms, we do not know. I am waiting for the day when all around is silent, beautiful and still - a product finally completed and waiting only for its timely and overdue appreciation.