Wei Leng Tay, Untitled, 2020, archival pigment print, 55x70cm. © Courtesy the artist.
Objectifs’ final major exhibition of 2020, opening at the Chapel Gallery on 10 December, will feature an installation of new mixed-media works by three Singaporean artists.
Titled Progressive Disintegrations, the show addresses what is perceived through an image, and asks how a photograph, as document, object and artefact, can be re-examined through a series of transformations, fragmentation and remaking. In the works included:
- Chua Chye Teck photographs and prints fluorescences of mould on planks of wood. The viewer is challenged to reconsider ephemeral organisms often regarded as destructive and unimportant as primary aspects shaping their relationship with the photographs, while also reconsidering the materiality of the photographic print.
- Hilmi Johandi works with a collection of postcards and posters of tourism in Singapore from the 1980s-90s in his reimagining / imaging of these scenes. In doing so, he reconsiders the sociopolitical constructions within the images, and the transformation of the subjects’ roles.
- Wei Leng Tay works with photographic slides from a family archive of early 1970s pictures depicting her family and their migration from Australia to Malaysia to Singapore. In these slides, the effects of time have degraded the image, leaving behind fragments of what had been. By digitally rephotographing and rendering the original analogue slide images into new photographs, she seeks to articulate a narrative that considers the lost image content, the migratory dislocation within the image, as well as the slides’ degradation.
In so doing, the artists seek to open up ways of re-looking at and thinking about what and who we live with, and how photographs inscribe ways of being. In their practice, all three artists ask how images are used and understood. In their works, they ask viewers to reconsider what they are looking at.
Opening (Extended Hours): Thu 10 Dec, 12pm to 9pm
Venue: Chapel Gallery, Objectifs, 155 Middle Road, Singapore 188977
When: 10 Dec 2020 - 21 Feb 2021, Tues to Sat, 12pm to 7pm / Sun, 12pm to 4pm; Closed on Mondays and public holidays
