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430 light years away from the planet Earth, a star, the brightest of its kind, burns in the skies
above the north pole. This star is Polaris - commonly know as Northern Star or Pole Star.
Like the brightest star in the oceanic sky, the theme for Republic Polytechnic's annual visual
art programme (under the umbrella of REFLECTIONS’ 2009 – Republic Polytechnic’s Community
Arts Festival from 29th October to 30th January 09) suggest a confluence of ideas and multiple
POLARIS. Art, New Media & Technology addresses these variant forms, positions,
influences, messages and the pleasure of viewing Art, by presenting the plethora of use and tehe
value of Art framed by ideas and practices in new media and technology.
To reach out to art communities, Republic Polytechnic's The Republic Cultural Centre
(TRCC) & Singapore Contemporary Young Artists (SCYA) organised a series of Young Artists
Talks focusing on issues related to the process of Art-making, ideas and presentation of the Artist's
These talks, conducted by a diverse range of young & bright artists, provide an inside
Aiman Hakim, a painter, started the series on the 29 th of October in a quiet Art Studio at The
Republic Cultural Centre with a mix of students and members of the public listening attentively to
his presentation and after, presented a short video clip of the Young Artist's sketches before a
major solo show. Aiman shared his views on his decision to become an Artist after enrolling himself
in an Art School and also later tried a job employment with Singapore Airlines. In his paintings,
Aiman suggest a link to the relationship between his personal experience and the craft of painting
with an interest of comic book collecting. He conveys that Art can be shared and experienced so
Aiman Hakim, artwork from “For ages 4 and up', Oil on Canvas
Hazel Lim's art has an interactive element in her approach. She looks at fusing memories,
colours, perception and ideas like a chemist working in the laboratory to form new meanings & new
objects. She encourages participation in her art-making process by having audiences pick certain
words to form new words with new meanings. Hazel then constructs their artworks into tiny little
palm size books which are then shelved into a periodic table, as though commenting on an
Billy Soh, Maxine Chionh and Lim Shengen presented Photography in a much different
light.
Billy introduced to the audience, a thematic system of looking at photography with classical
music by studying the musical overlays, subject and composition matter. He approaches
Maxine on the other hand, shared a playful way of exploring the print of the photography by
erasing or making a physical mark on the paper itself. Her work suggests a deconstruction of the
Shengen shared his interest in photograph as social practice with his works from his solo
show 'Being Lost, Being Found.' From his landscape images of places he had travelled to hidden
urban societies.
Another artist who uses photography in her work is Sha Najak. Sha incorporates the
studies of human psychology into her artwork by channelling an intuitive, natural process of
expressing human emotion, having her audiences make the artworks for themselves which she
later documents and makes observation notes and points accompanying.
A young ceramicist, Jacqui Rae had the audiences on the edge of their seats for her works
intrigue ideas pertaining to process and outcome. She provided an insight into questioning
materials, objectives and ideas of sculpture to the notion that there is no such thing as a mistake,
only an extension of learning and exploration. Jacqui's sculptural works tend to be presented in a
grey area of tangibility and impermanence. Completely fascinated with the emptiness of space and
with stretching the properties of ceramics, she links these two subjects and creates beautiful
installation pieces of ceramic works which sometimes are not able to last longer than a few days
Susan Olij also takes on the form on material intangibility in her ink paintings and
observations of cultures and philosophies through self-contemplation in her visual language. In her
talk, Susan also attempted to answer questions about the role and potential of artists in the world
today when it comes to a profession that poses many unknowns and unpredictability. How does
one navigate in the art world, with it's highly unregulated economy.
dollar value in the Art Market but it is a form of art that has been used actively by many artists in
In the Artist Talk, Natasha Sophia Wei shares her work as a Performance Artist challenging
different social interactions, spaces, time and cultures. Simply a presentation of her work has to go
beyond talking, to reacting and perhaps conducting a performance during the session because
Ending off the month long programme in November is a film screening of Shopping and
Consumerism; The Story of Stuff by the folks from UnderneathTheRadar, a collective interested in
sharing and educating cause and effects of globalisation and the progress of humankind in the 21 st
discussion on society's needs, wants, behaviours and choices questions the role of ownership,
responsibilities and decisions in creating an environment for the preservation of our home and
land. It is in this contemporary time that it is even more so for Art & social realities to come
together, reaching out to communities to engage creativity, expressively, for a culturally sensitive,
responsible society.
~ Jacklyn Soo
Curator, SCYA
To visit TRCC: http://trcc.rp.sg/