top left: Pinaree Sanpitak, noon-nom;
top right: Li Hui, Cage;
bottom: Eugene Soh, The Overview Installation, Images courtesy of Singapore Art Museum
In the sphere of visual art and daily life, vision and sight tend to lead our perception of events, but other senses play an equally crucial role in our comprehension of the internal and external world. At Sensorium 360°: Contemporary Art and the Sensed World, visitors are able to explore each sensory experience through specific works housed in dedicated galleries.
Sensorium 360° is a highly interactive exhibition of contemporary art that reveals the complexity of the human senses, and explores how sensory experiences locate us in understanding the world and knowing the self. 11 artists from Singapore and wider Asia – including Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and China – give expression to nine different senses, peeling back the multiple layers of sensory relationships that inform our personal well-being.
The Overview Installation, an interactive work by Eugene Soh, engages the viewer to look at the world through unusual points of view. Looking at sight from the other side, Unseen, a suite of ‘braille drawings’ by Alecia Neo, immerses the visitor in the reality of individuals who have lost or diminished sense of sight. Memory Rifts, a deliberately dispersed musical composition by Mark Wong broadcast in unusual parts of SAM, prompts ‘active listening’ to heighten the sense of hearing. On the other spectrum, Consciousness: Unconsciousness by Lavender Chang explores the sense of time through a series of photographs, created via long exposure to highlight the in-between state of our senses while we sleep.
In Cage, Li Hui uses green lasers to create two virtual cages that appear alternately. The effect of these immaterial beams of light is to create an impression of something solidly material, which in turn triggers instinctive responses of disorientation and even anxiety in viewers, who find themselves ‘trapped’ one moment, and standing outside the object of their imprisonment the next.
Christina “Goldie” Poblador presents a ‘keyboard’ of perfume scents through which she creates scent compositions that respond to four songs and musical arrangements. In another gallery, viewers are invited to get up close and personal with noon-nom by Pinaree Sanpitak. In a room of soft, round sculptures that evoke the feminine form, the visitor can touch and be touched by art.
Exhibition: Sensorium 360°
Dates: Till 22 October 2014
Venue: Singapore Art Museum, 71 Bras Basah Rd, Singapore 189555
Hours: Mon to Sun 10am – 7pm (Last admission at 6:15pm), Fri 10am – 9pm
Info: www.singaporeartmuseum.sg, www.facebook.com/singaporeartmuseum
