What makes a city metropolis? Is it by remaking Singapore into a Renaissance City? How do you adapt a foreign model into a local environment?
, curator of the exhibition says “ is my straightforward response to my last trip here. Stripes are both the metaphor and visual intervention to urban issues.”
The invited artists approach the city with diverse mediums and modes. uses selected photographs of public housing taken from their extensive research project Mapping HK. photography displays a surreal sense of the extreme reality of Hong Kong urban situation.
gives an alternative view to wandering in the city. walks along a random or directional straight line drawn on the map across roads and buildings. Sometimes she walks through a building. Sometimes she detours around to continue. A struggle between deviant and conformist. A story of adventurer, stranger, jaywalker. The dialogue continues.
is a 5 min video of snaps in motion created in editing with a play on the Chinese character (Cantonese literally means “not up”). A collage of text and life scenes, is a visual poetry of chance combinations, recalling an intimate urban sensibility in a fast moving world.
’s stripe painting parodies the nature of commodity in today’s art. embraces the urban material culture and uses it as the perfect setting for his art. Paintings used for picnic, table even and towel. It is art reincarnated.
“Where is the glamour when the metropolis is striped? It is something about the stripes but not exactly, something about Hong Kong but not exactly, and also something about Singapore but not exactly…” concluded.
is the first phase of a bilateral exchange between . Both Para Site Art Space and The Substation have always sought, in our respective local arenas, to privilege the relationships and processes involved in artmaking rather than the exhibition of products. Our common purpose for this project is to establish a long-term partnership between the two organisations, where The Substation and Para Site Art Space collaborate on a project every year. In this way, we hope to sustain the dialogues between the arts spaces as well as with the many artists, curators and writers who work with us.
