
Hong Kong-based street art collective Parents Parents spent last week holed up at Hotel Jen Tanglin Singapore with their spray cans and created three works of wall art, for and about Singapore, inspired by their surroundings – each stamped with their unique brand of chaos and whimsy.
Clifford Weiner, General Manager: “We reached out to Parents Parents to become our first artists in residency. Hotel Jen Tanglin Singapore is proud to support groups like Parents Parents by giving them platforms and opportunities to showcase their talents and products. The story of local creativity and culture is part of our hotel brand identity –from the bespoke hand crafted aprons that the F&B team wear, to the locally sourced artisan coffee in our 24-hour café – we are passionate about promoting talent and skill.”
The large wall at one end of popular all-day dining restaurant J65 reveals the artists’ take of the Lion City – with an enormous lion, the Singapore dialling code, a swirling bowl of laksa noodles combined with fragments of Singlish text – all painted in the hotel’s signature design colours.
Along the swimming pool wall on the 4th floor, the street artists created their quirky vision of the Hotel Jen Tanglin swimming pool incorporating the word ‘Jen’, a fish – and to reflect the many guests from abroad, there is a whacky plane.
The artists decorated the walls of Rumpoles Bar with graffiti style artwork using spray cans bought specially from a small local shop in Sultan Mosque called The Blackbook. The contrast between the colonial décor of the bar and the modern graffiti is extremely marked – calling to mind the idea that the bar had been broken into one night – and a beautiful mess left behind.
Established in 2012, and made up of Ysoo, Wong Tin-yau, Jimson and Chris – Parents Parents is a Chinese street art collective from Hong Kong, specializing in graffiti and illustration. Having snuck out (after dinner) to tag Hong Kong’s streets as teenagers, they are now receiving impressive commissions from Hong Brands brands such as Ovolo, Solas and Nice Pops, as well as international big hitters such as Nike, Kookai and Juicy Couture. The art of Parent’s Parents is characterized by bold, animalistic characters, illustration, typography and calligraphy.