Week 5 - Museum visit to SAM - singapore art museum

 We made a museum visit to the Singapore Art Museum which is also known as SAM with our visual arts group. it was a pretty exciting and a whole new experience for me since it was my first visit there. The theme for this month is ''After Utopia''. It is about revisiting the ideal in Asian Contemporary Art. To get started, I will be sharing some photos on this platform!

    

Before entering the exhibits, we had to show the guards our student pass and get a sticker to verify that we are NAFA students and the sticker is for verification purposes. When we made our way inside the museum, I chanced upon this booklet on the shelves and grabbed a copy for reference. next on, we went to see some of the exhibits. more photos coming your way!

this was one of the exhibit that we went to, it was called The Chapel. The whole interior was just exactly like a church chapel. It was so glamourous and it was filled with serenity, peace and holiness. Being a Christian, I cant not feel holy for one moment and enjoy the beautiful lightings and the whole serenity and peaceful environment. I think this was a really good exhibit and it was a really realistic one as well. I spend quite a bit of time inside this exhibit as it was really peaceful and nice to be in for once, to escape the outside world and to just calm yourself down in the peaceful environment.

 

 

 

 

this was another shot of the interior that I captured of. everyone should really go there and have a look, especially the chapel exhibit. I am certain they took some time to do up the entire place to make it look so extravagant and beautiful. I was 'bedazzled by all the glamourous lightings and set up. Not only that, I saw something amazing too behind this long huge curtain.

 

 

This was the super bling and royal looking crystal artwork that caught my eye. This art piece or rather a crystal window was found by one of my classmate, Nathania. I walked over and was really bedazzled by this whole piece of art work. it definitely took a really long time to piece this work together and that it isn't easy to do such a piece of tedious art work. I stared at this artwork for a moment and decided that it would be a waste if I did not capture this wonderful and beautiful art piece down. this was hidden behind a what seems to be like a pillar or rather a wall. this resembles those huge windows made up of glass piece or crystals in chapels or churches.

Then, we went on to this other random gallery. It felt a sense of home as it was mainly about Singapore and the people's life in Singapore. This artwork is made up of many ( I didn't count how many exactly) plush like human beings to put it together to make it into an art piece. I found it quite cute and creative and snapped a photo of it as well. This reminds me of unity and strength and being in a multi-racial society. I guess the meaning behind this art piece is to let others know that we Singaporeans, live in a multi racial society and that we are hand in hand together with the other races to build up the Singapore today. The different coloured stuffed toys seems to represent the different races in Singapore. Not only these, there are other artworks that made me feel that it represents Singapore.

this was another photo that reminded me of Singapore as well. this artwork is really quite unique and I guess it isn't easy to do as well.

this was another photo that I took. all these places just reminded me of childhood. each and every scene is just so familiar and it really represents the uniqueness of Singapore. Every one's childhood was built on dreams, mine was built by all these things. It is just so amazing and heart warming that they actually went to fix up and frame these photos up and put it up in the museum for visitors to view it. Moving on...

next up, we went to this small part of the museum just beside the gallery one level two. It looks like some jungle/forest sort of place but it is just a mini photo area for people to take pictures in the mirrors that they put up. the mirrors are each quite uniquely shaped and they have many mirrors of different sizes as well.

this was another photo taken at the mirror exhibit. it was a good experience imagining myself taking pictures in a jungle/forest environment. it gives off this traditional yet nostalgic feeling to people.

 

this is a photo of me and my group mate for visual arts, Gloria. we snapped a photo as a proof of evidence that we went to the museum and did snapped some photos in there as well. we took this photo at the mirror exhibit as we found it rather interesting.

 

  this is a photo of mini sculptures being placed in an enclosed area that allows people to just view it and not be able to go near it to have a closer look. This mini sculptures reminds me of Cambodia or Thailand. it has a total of 366 carved wooden sculptures in there. That is indeed a huge number. this figure represents the total number of days in a year, poetically marking the passage of time.

this was the write up for the mini sculptures as shown above.

while walking, I chanced upon this painting and I thought it was a really good one as the colours used really captivated my attention and the strokes are brilliantly

 used and it is a very bold piece of work. the great artist who did this was Ian Woo, the title of this piece is called ''We have crossed the lake''.

this exhibit is called ''Letters from the forest (III) it is a reminiscent of a gentleman's study desk from colonial times, with an array of paraphernalia strewn across its surface alluding to themes of voyage,

discovery and study: a magnifying glass, butterfly specimens in a wooden tray, books and a compass. Anchoring this installations are two evocative, other worldly landscape dioramas, composed from layered paper cut-outs of flora and fauna.

 

this is another exhibit that got me feeling amazed just by looking at the designs and creativity of the art work itself. This piece is called ''Annexation'' by JiTish kallaT. It was done in 2009 and it uses black lead, paint, resin and steel. it is one of SAM's collection as well. An imposing and somewhat menacing sculpture, Annexation's surfaces are festooned with motifs of flora and fauna, adapted from the friezes adorning the Chhatrapati Shivaji Shivaji Termunis- the busiest train station in Mumbai, India.

 

 

Yes, you are not seeing wrong, what you just saw is two giraffes right infront of your eyes. It feels pretty surreal isn't it? This was one of the interesting exhibits that I chanced upon as well. when I first took a sneak peek into the boxes, I got a shock. however this is really interesting and would be fascinating for first timers as well. The title of this exhibit was called 'Cabinet' , and the artist behind this work is known as Gao Lei. it is a metal cabinet which has 3 rows of lightboxes. Gao lei's cabinet functions almost as a mini city unto itself. set into three chests of drawers, are 24 peepholes boxes, containing images based on two bodies of Gao's earlier work.The pictures are computer generated.

this was another pretty interesting exhibit that I saw. It is titled ''svay saReTh'' by Mon Boulet. it is a single-channel video installation with metal sphere. This metal sphere is really heavy and it is 80 kilograms! At the same time, the movement of the metal sphere surfaces of the roads and paths traversed makes reference to traditional Asian practice of scraping the skin on the human with an object to expel toxins, balance energy and hence achieve healing. The metal ball, dented and scarred by its journey and etched with questions scratched into its once polished surfaces by passers-by, has now come to rest in the a gallery, a moving testament to Svay's Sisyphean task and the indomitable human spirit.

this is an art piece done entitled Sembawang that is done by artist Tang Da Wu. This exhibit makes use of multimedia installations. Tang da wu was an influential figure in Singapore's art history and was the founder of the artists village (TAv) in the 1980s. it was a loose collective of avant-garde practitioners who housed themselves in a kampong, or village in the Sembawang neightbourhood.

 

this exhibit is rather unique and interesting as it uses motorcycles exhaust pipes and stainless pipes. It is entitled ''Made wianTa''. It is a monumental arabesque of entangled motorcycle exhaust pipes, Made Wianta's Air Pollution is a sculptural statement on the environmental problems plaguing his native Bali. While Air Pollution was created in response to local issues, its commentary on the city and on urban crowds could just as easily be applied to other cities in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

 

 

Every group had to take a group shot with the lecturer, Miss Hayati Haron. Here is our group shot.

left to right.

Marcus, Leon, Miss Hayati, Myself, Gloria, Maha and Seung Ju.

I had a great time at the museum as it was actually my first time being at SAM. This is one museum in Singapore that I have always wanted to visit due to the highly raved photobooth just right outside the museum and the artistic vibes about this place. I am really glad to be able to visit this art place. Sure enough, we gained more knowledge and information about the various exhibits as well.