Singapore Art Museum

  

  

 Lee Wen, Splash

Rachel Reupke, Infrastructure

Dim sum and durian

Last night we took a bus to Singapore's red-light district 'Gelang' for... food. It was refreshing to be somewhere a little grimy. People were in plastic flip flops not Prada kitten-heels and there wasn't a single franchised shop-front in sight. We sat in 'Kung Khong Coffee Shop' and the girls ordered for us and themselves, they knew what was worth trying and what was not! There were sweet potato patties, deep-friend wanton, chicken porridge, egg tarts, poached pork dumplings...

Afterwards, we walked around for a bit before settling down at a fruit market-stall selling durian "The King of Fruits"

The durian fruit is an acquired taste. Personally, I hate it. I tried it first in Indonesia and I remember thinking that it tasted so much worse than I had imagined; than it smelt. And that is saying something because the fruit STINKS, like garlic, smelly feet... Apparently though, the smellier, the better. People will spend up to £15 for one fruit, but only after a long selection process. We observed men squeezing, smelling, cutting open, tasting a fruit before purchasing it. There are different 'grades' of durian which are reflected in the price and depends on its shape, colour and smell.  

So while the rest were tucking into their durian segments, I opted for these:

Rambutan was something I ate copiously in Indonesia. 'Rambut' means 'hair', so I guess this is known as the hairy fruit, which sounds really unappetising but rest assured, it is the sweetest most refreshing fruit on this side of the equator. 

The fruit stall supplied picnic tables to its customers. It turned into a bit of a fruit party as the place got busier and busier and more and more durians were being bought; men were getting more and more het up about the particulars of their fruit, the sellers were running around with axes in their hands trying to find the perfect one before cracking it open to be sampled and bought.

Swimming at Redhill public pool

I've been swimming a couple of evenings after work since being here, it's a lovely way to relax and cool down after a day in front of the computer. I particularly like how the sky is black but the outdoor complex is floodlit bright, the sound of the water is very nice too. It's an interesting thought and process: fitting into new surroundings. The changing room cubicles are a little dingy, here's a photo.

Recipes for reference 2

Late-night pork dumplings. Simply ground meat, wanton sheets and fresh spring onion.

'Nasi Lemak' from Qiji http://www.qiji.com.sg/ : Coconut rice, ikan bilis (fried sardines), omlette, otah, fish fillet and fish

For desert: Chendol (coconut, jelly, redbean) and Ice Kachang (redbean, jellies, condensed milk, sweetcorn, rose syrup and palm sugar syrup)

Week 2 at GsmDesign

This week I have had a the task to start researching existent natural history museums as well as general visual inspiration for GsmDesign's soon-to-be project of designing Singapore's own museum celebrating the natural world. Of course the design team want contemporary and cutting-edge visuals, and to be honest, a lot of natural history museums, in my opinion, are, visually, very out of date; lacking in interactivity and technology, and are heavily reliant upon man-made models to tell their story. I know that GsmDesign are far more progressive in their ideas than this. A lot of my research, therefore, has been separating good from the bad exhibition designs. With those which are good, I have been compiling a power-point presentation. Proudly, the Natural History Museum in London is actually the best case-study so far. They have very recently opened the Darwin Centre with a wealth of genuinely interactive and insightful resources on offer to educate, stimulate and inspire:

Not only is the content of the exhibition state-of-the art, but the building itself is extremely impressive. I rarely go to South Kensington so have failed to catch wind of, what must have been , a massive construction project:

When I was first told about this research task, Yixian said that she wanted the exhibition to be IMMERSIVE I immediately thought of Richard Hamiliton's exhibition at the ICA, On Growth and Form from 1951 which was inspired and based around the ideas of the Scottish biologist, D'arcy Wentworth Thompson's, book of the same title. The exhibition (and book) used the notion of nature as a generator of evolving forms, that the image of nature was not fixed but continually growing; it was a process not a form. Here are some quote from an essay about On Growth and Form by Isabelle Moffat, "A Horror of Abstract Thought": Postwar Britain and Hamilton's 1951 "Growth and Form" Exhibition, juxtaposed with photographs of the National History Museum's Darwin Centre:
'surreal impression of being reduced to the size of blood cells and wandering among multiplying minute organisms and cell clusters'

'shapes and forms move on screens on the ceilings or on the floor. Projected on the ceiling was the drama of crystal formation; on another screen, sea urchin's eggs divided themselves...'. The sense of dislocation and spatial confusion.'

'Going through these rooms you seem to shrink like Alice in Wonderland and the things round you seem to grow larger and larger'

I thought of this scene from the film 'Bright Star' as an immersive experience of nature



and of these art installations

White Lung Dress

Breathe from Helen Storey Foundation on Vimeo.

Recipes for reference

Fried tofu with soy sauce, bean sprouts, cucumber, crushed peanuts and fresh lime:

Steamed rice with deep fried fish, runner beans, pineapple/cucumber/pineapple salad and tofu: "Nasi Padang". And lime juice to drink. Reeeeeeefreshing:

Grass jelly water:

Apple Vinegar:

Chicken and rice cookies with chilli sauce:

Tahu Huay: Sweet soya bean jelly:

Chicken porridge: 1 part rice to 6 parts water (chicken stock), fry the rice first in garlic and ginger before adding the liquid. Add chicken pieces and simmer until rice is saturated. Serve Hot with chili/soy sauce,  crutons, spring onions, crispy-fried onion/garlic.

Waiting in-line for lunch

Every day so far Esther has taken me to the nearby 'cafes' for lunch. They line River Valley Road, right by the office and cater Chinese, Malay, Indian and Thai food. Lunch will cost no more than $5 and tastes so good. There is so much to try but too few lunches left.

And back at the office to eat...

The girls at the office use these really cool stainless steel, insulating bowls (see above) which stack, are clipped into place with a handle, and used as take-away lunch boxes. I need to get some of these for Edinburgh...

Getting my hands dirty at work

On Friday the job of cataloguing the artefacts was done! And Wayne the company techy gave me the job of making the electronic receptor plates for the touch-sensitive screens used in GsmDesign's exhibitions... It was a fiddly job and I made quite a mess. Here are them finished:

gsmdesign so far...

After being at the National Museum of Singapore on Monday, I have since been stationed at the office working on the Malay Heritage Museum project which has been ongoing for the last two years. The Malay Heritage Center is a government-funded space within a listed building and, along with the Indian Heritage Center and Chinese Heritage Center, serve to represent the historical and contemporary multi-culturalism in Singapore.
GsmDesign and GsmCreative have been contracted to curate and design the new permanent exhibition of Malay artifacts from Singapore. The reason the project has taken such an unusually long time to realize is down to the political and social controversies surrounding it. It was these controversies which made the previous permanent exhibition unsuccessful as the narrative of it was argued, by some, as an inaccurate retelling of history. Over the last few years GsmCreative has meticulously studied the history of Malaysia's involvement with Singapore to produce an appropriate and interesting story for the exhibition. One that was respectful to the indigenous Malays without offending others and, more importantly, causing political controversy.
Now that GsmCreated has finalised the storyline (they are just waiting for the official go-ahead), the GsmDesign team must decide upon the physical content to support it i.e. which artifacts will be displayed. There are over 400 of them, of which about half I have been studying and cataloging. This is one of the earliest stages of the design process, one of those jobs which one no one really wants to do but is crucial in making the final selection. I'm required to log images, dimensions and descriptions of the artifacts. I haven't found it too tedious (as I was warned) although it has taken much longer than I first presumed it would.
And at least it's not stressful (how could I be stressed with a fishpond next to my desk?!), the others are working on tight schedules; there are three exhibition openings in 2 weeks!

At the moment I am reading...

Monday 13th June: £2 lunch

Asian food is great. I was very excited by this lunch, my first one since arriving in Singapore. I went into what looked like a food hall, 'Kopitian', the kind you get in shopping malls. This one however, was situated opposite the National Museum of Singapore and a university, on a busy junction. It was a place that drew in all walks of life: men, women, children, students, suits, tourists... 

Lining the walls were different food counters serving different cuisines and filling the vast space in front were tables, chock-a-block with diners nattering away, chopsticks in hand. Although the Mexican and Japanese kitchens were tempting I couldn't help getting my hands dirty at the Mei Hong Yong Tau Foo; a dish where you choose your ingredients 'buffet style' before handing them over to the cashier who steams them for you and adds a broth. I chose various forms of tofu with shitake mushrooms and pak choi. To drink, I took an aloe vera juice with peach. 

Monday 13th June: Observing the installation of the Vacheron Constantin exhibtion at the National Museum of Singapore

A fine Swiss watch company propositioned the National Museum of Singapore to showcase the history of their desgns. They have been extremely involved with the curation of the exhibition, with a strong sense of what they wanted and have had only used the museum's curatorial team for small advisory matters. After speaking to one of the members of the design team contracted by NMS, this has actually turned out to be a rather stressful situation. It appears that the watch company are struggling to trust the creative judgements and expertise of the Singapore-based design team down to the smallest detail including the tone of brown used to paint the walls with. However this lack of trust is hardly surprising considering that all communication between the two parties is via Skype; they have yet to meet and discuss the project face-to-face. In fact, it is probable that the Swiss watch company won't see the fruits of their labour until the exhibition's unveiling to the public on June 24th. Like many at the NMS, the exhibition will be made extremely accessible to the public through interactivity. In this case, not only with the aid of touch-screen technology and mock-up environments but for the first two days there will be watchmakers working live, and simultaneously being filmed and projected onto the exhibition walls. In the picture above are replicas of the work tables used in the workshops which have been altered to serve as display cases for the artefacts.

Monday 13th June: Assisting the installation of the Abbas retrospective at the National Museum of Singapore

Abbas is an Iranian photographer whose 45-year career has documented the world with a political outlook. Now with Magnum Photos since the early eighties, this first retrospective of his work opens this Friday at the National Museum of Singapore. Over one-hundred black and white photographs shed light on diverse realities and histories: the Iranian Revolution in the late seventies to the iconic boxing event, The Rumble in the Jungle, between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974. More recent work reveals a personal and inward side to Abbas's oeuvre through the documentation of his grandchildren in an unfinished series entitled 'Grandad'.  I had a the honour of meeting Abbas today, who flew in from India yesterday. He was very involved with the curation of the exhibition, having both an intuitive and pragmatic judgement in the hanging of his work. The space has been installed with projection and audio pods to enrich the visitors' experience and understanding of the show. The series 'In Whose Name' of Muslim societies around the world, for example, is  accompanied by Beethoven's symphonies. As a curatorial decision made my Abbas himself, it adds a personal touch to the exhibition as well as raising the controversial question of how objective documentary photography really is.