Singapore Art Week (SAW) returns from 19 to 28 January 2024. Art Takes Over Singapore with over 130 visual arts experiences across the island, from the heartlands to the urban core. Now in its 12th edition, SAW is the longest-running art week in the region. Art enthusiasts and collectors from around the world are invited to learn about Singapore’s diverse arts scene while discovering new perspectives towards art made in Southeast Asia.

Organised by the National Arts Council (NAC) and supported by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), audiences can look forward to a showcase of Singapore’s visual art all in one place. There is something for everyone, from international art fairs and quality museum exhibitions to world-class private collections and gallery openings, street art, brand activations, and exciting lifestyle and community art activities across the island. SAW 2024 will redefine what the visual arts is and can be for Singapore and the region, bringing people of all ages and backgrounds closer to art and artmaking.

Singapore art takes centre stage

SAW 2024 celebrates Singapore’s art history while illuminating fresh and creative intersections in the arts through its Open Call Projects and presentations by Singapore’s cultural institutions.

The public can look forward to multimodal presentations that seek to address conversations about what it means to live in and be a part of the world today. Highlights include:

● Indonesia-born Singaporean contemporary artist Boedi Widjaja’s Immortal Words designed in collaboration with geneticist Associate Professor Eric Yap playfully illustrates the intricate connections between art and science. Besides new and existing artworks that will be on exhibition, words of oral and written tradition from Southeast Asian languages and beyond will be encoded in DNA, with vials of DNA-encoded ink dispensed through gachapon¹ machines for visitors to take home.

● Open studio sessions where established Singapore artists will showcase new works. Audiences will be given exclusive access to artists that have shaped Singapore’s visual art history, through open studios, presentations and talks. This includes pioneers such as modern artist Teo Eng Seng, poet and calligrapher Tan Swie Hian.

Photo: The New Age Parents

● One of the marquee events of SAW and an annual highlight in the Singapore cultural calendar – Light to Night Singapore 2024 will illuminate the Civic District with a series of immersive projections, art installations, and engaging programmes in response to the theme “Reimagine”. Light to Night Singapore is organised by the National Gallery Singapore, in collaboration with five of the Civic District’s most iconic cultural institutions: Asian Civilisations Museum, The Arts House, Victoria Theatre & Victoria Concert Hall, and Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. Also at National Gallery Singapore, the blockbuster exhibition Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America is the world’s first exhibition to take a comparative approach across both regions, uniquely animated by their struggles against colonialism. Spanning the 20th century, the exhibition will feature over 200 artworks and 70 artists, including iconic artists such as Latiff Mohidin, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and traces how the artists challenged conventions and fostered solidarities.

One or Several Tigers, 2017, synchronized double channel HD projection, automated screen, shadow puppets, 10 channel sound, show-control system
Video-still courtesy of the Ho Tzu Nyen and Kiang Malingue

● Casting a spotlight on Singapore talents, Singapore Art Museum (SAM) will present Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger, the first mid-career survey exhibition of the acclaimed Singaporean artist’s practice, spanning two decades worth of paintings, films, theatrical performances, and video installations. Co-organised with Art Sonje Center, Seoul, the exhibition will feature a new commission, T for Time, a two-channel video installation that reflects on the embodied and heterogeneous experiences of time. SAM will also present Simryn Gill and Charles Lim Yi Yong: The Sea is a Field, featuring a collaboration between SAM curators and artists as they chronicle the space that separates the artists’ homes between Port Dickson and Singapore. All three artists have participated in numerous institutional and international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, with Ho and Lim representing Singapore in 2011 and 2015 respectively.

Arts aficionados can look forward to the unveiling of more private collections during SAW 2024, through showcases such as The Pierre Lorinet Collection and a group exhibition by The Private Museum that features notable Singaporean pioneers such as the late performance artist Lee Wen and contemporary mixed media visual artist Vincent Leow.

Bringing together the best of Southeast Asian visual art

With Singapore as an arts hub in Southeast Asia, SAW 2024 is a pivotal meeting point for Singaporean, regional and international artists, curators, collectors, and audiences. The upcoming edition will feature new programmes and collaborations, as well as the return of international platforms.

Subash Thebe Limbu, Ladhamba Tayem; Future Continuous(2023). Still image. Provided by Hyundai Motor Group VH AWARD

For the first time, NAC is collaborating with the VH AWARD by Hyundai Motor Group to bring the The 5th VH AWARD exhibition to Singapore. The VH AWARD is Asia’s leading award platform that aims to support emerging media artists from Asia since 2016. Curated by Objectifs, the inaugural exhibition in Southeast Asia shines a spotlight on works by international artists and filmmakers engaged with the context of Asia and its future who have pushed beyond the boundaries of art and technology. Visitors can expect to view works by the Grand Prix recipient, Subash Thebe Limbu, and four other finalists Zike He, Riar Rizaldi, zzyw, and Su Hui-Yu. The exhibition will travel to Museum MACAN in Jakarta, Indonesia following its Singapore presentation.

At Gillman Barracks, The Institutum will present Translations: Afro-Asian Poetics curated by Dr Zoé Whitley of London’s Chisenhale Gallery. This is the first-ever exhibition in Singapore that explores works from private collections of prominent modern and contemporary artists from across the African and Asian diasporas. In addition to multidisciplinary Singaporean artist Robert Zhao Renhui, who will represent Singapore at the 60th Biennale Arte, the exhibition features artists such as British Afro-Caribbean artist and educator Sonia Boyce, who won the Golden Lion Prize when she represented Britain at the Biennale Arte 2022 in Venice; and film artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Vietnam) and sculptor and installation artist Do Ho Suh (South Korea), whose works have been presented and acquired all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

ART SG, the leading international art fair for Singapore and Southeast Asia, announces its second edition and return to Singapore from 19 to 21 January 2024, with an exceptional line up of regional and global exhibitors, alongside an ambitious programme of large-scale installations and insightful conversations.

Image courtesy of S.E.A. Focus

S.E.A. Focus, the homegrown leading platform for Southeast Asian contemporary art, will also return for its sixth edition from 20 to 28 January 2024 to showcase the finest established and emerging artistic talents from the region. Commercial galleries across Singapore will be presenting new exhibitions by artists from around the world, and visitors can also look forward to presentations featuring renowned artists at the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands.

For the latest updates, visit here.

¹ Vending machine-dispensed capsule toys that originated in Japan in the 1960s.

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