A month ago, Telok Ayer Arts Club was full of dust and rubble; a constantly evolving site of sandbags, pipes, wires, cement, and paint. Now, it’s a newly-minted bar and restaurant, with a curved façade of terracotta tiles and a 100-year-old teak bar with terrazzo-tiles.
As a response to the rapid change and non-stop upheaval we witness in urban spaces like the CBD, Telok Ayer Arts Club – a new multi-concept venue by The Supermarket Company – invited artist Goh Abigail to witness this transition from renovation site to restaurant. For in-inhabitations, she will watch, study, feel and experience the pulse of the place. She will inhabit this space; a habitué of the Arts Club.
Abigail approaches Telok Ayer Arts Club as a medium for sound. She observes and collects sounds, forms and objects from when the site was being speedily refurbished to now when it is in full operation. With the objects, she reconfigures their function to create sound instruments that performs or re-enacts the kind of sounds we hardly pay attention to – like the reverberation within a pipe, or a chair dragging across a floor. To her, the process of finding an interesting sound is similar to a painter finding the right colour, or a sculptor finding the right form.
Drawing is also a fundamental process for her. At times it is a blueprint, a score, or a way to understand and document an experience. Her drawings consists of lines, shapes and forms on paper. It makes visible a sound—whether it’s a sound she hears or a sound her objects will perform. It also visualises the sound’s loudness, sharpness, dullness, weight, movement, arrangements, layers and tone. As Abigail accumulates her experiences of the space, more and more of these drawings and sound-performing objects will start inhabiting the Arts Club.
A special menu comprising a deconstructed dessert of Frozen Lemon Dome, Orange & Coconut Crumble, along with Sweet Melody, a fruit-forward gin and tea concoction will be made available throughout the duration of her show.
Venue: Telok Ayer Arts Club, 2 McCallum Street, Singapore
When: 29 Aug - 23 Oct 2018,
