Arts...Travels...Writing

I am a museum person, to the consternation of my husband and daughter. I make it a point to check out a museum exhibit whenever I visit a new place, and naturally I would drag my family with me when we travel together :-) In terms of richness and expansiveness of collection, The Met, MOMA, Rijks, Musee d'Orsay, and the Vatican/Sistine are at the top of my list; the Louvre too, but to a lesser extent - it was too crowded when we got there, and the pushing and rushing probably clouded my impression that I don't remember my visit with so much fondness. In terms of location, feel and the atmosphere of laid-backness though, I do like the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice, Miro in Barcelona, and the Getty in LA. Long before I became a resident of Singapore, I would go to the Singapore Art Museum and the Asian Civilisation Museum whenever I came to visit - I remember seeing my first Rodin exhibit at SAM. For some reason though, I had never stopped by the National Museum, until recently. ...

My daughter and I checked out the Art Stage at the Marina Bay Sands Expo today. It was a huge fair with around 150 galleries from around the globe participating. As such, we could not really explore all the galleries (a bit overwhelming for one afternoon), so what we did was take a quick tour, and lingered only on those that caught our interest more. There was a bunch of European galleries that represented the established (Chagall, Miro, Picasso, etc), but even without my prompting, little girl preferred to stick around longer in the contemporary art exhibits and the visual/digital/3D installations --- in between her main preoccupation that afternoon, i.e., collecting business/calling cards from the galleries.  Below are some of the stand outs: Mark Justiniani's Echopraxia: Reflective media, light fixtures, and objects encased in black iron structure My daughter describes the above as magic because it is endless, and seems to go on and on! Such is the magic of Just...

I've always wanted to check out what's brewing at Gillman Barracks after having read a few articles about the place and yesterday I was glad of the opportunity - an artist/painter relative is in town and where better to take her than the latest artist colony in the Red Dot! Gillman Barracks is made up of a cluster of galleries spread all over the compound that cuts across Lock Road and Malan Road near Alexandra. As of yesterday, 13 of them have already opened, with a few more coming up early next year. We started our gallery trek with Block No. 5 which houses the Drawing Room and the Sundaram Tagore Gallery.  Here's a sampler of the things I saw: Framed Art at the Drawing Room  Block No. 6 as seen from Block No. 5 Hiroshi Senju's Waterfall at Tagore. Natural Pigments on Japanese Mulberry Paper Still at Tagore Block 5 as seen from Block 6  Across the block from Tagore is a modernist gallery (Miucciaccia) which consists mai...

Two years ago, Taatu started talking about saving and greening the planet earth. I was quite impressed that her school started inculcating this consciousness that early (she was in nursery at that time - never too early to start I would say!). Every now and then, she would talk about recycling and making use of throw-away objects - which she does in her own little way, like making use of old boxes and papers and creating what-nots from them, though many times in the process, she would generate more recyclables, leaving behind a mound of mess in the drawing room! (She happily claims she belongs to the messy team in the house, while I, on the other hand, belong to the clean-up brigade).  When I told her that I'd be going to an exhibit of artworks from recycled items, she excitedly said she would go along. So off we went on a wet Saturday afternoon to Ronald Ventura's Recyclables at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute. We managed to catch the latter part of the opening day...