Naughty, funny works by pioneer sculptor Ng Eng Teng in a teaser exhibition

The Evocative Head: Fragmentation As Language In Ng Eng Teng’s Works

No one teases out the jocularity of the human body quite like the late grandfather of Singapore sculpture Ng Eng Teng.

Consider Ng’s headless nude Torso-to-Face (1997), where the male pectorals are rendered as a bulbous pair of eyes, belly folds are warped into a corpulent nose and the male member is a lolling tongue flanked by an overgrown moustache.

The humorous coloured pencil drawing is on show at the NUS Museum’s new show The Evocative Head: Fragmentation As Language In Ng Eng Teng’s Works, which opened to the public on May 19.

Artgoers will recall Ng’s more classical and stoic back-facing nude Jim (1992) in the National Gallery Singapore’s first R18 show Passion Is Volcanic: Desire In Southeast Asian Art, but the drawing in the NUS Museum is naughtier and funnier. Also, no one will stop you from snapping a photograph.

As the NUS Museum prepares its long-term exhibition Ng Eng Teng: 1+1=1 for its first major revamp since it opened in 2016, visitors can consider this show a modest appetiser for the main course to come. Curated by trained sculptor Ling Jia Le, the exhibition proposes a way of looking at Ng through the lens of fragmentation and is aptly placed within the Archaeology Library housing pottery shards.

And so there is Ng’s giant burgundy head with a little bundle of clay plopping out playfully titled Red Ponytail (1994). There is also a possibly unusable 1962 pink teapot shaped like a head and with its elongated white tongue of a spout – on it balances what looks like a raspberry – emerging from pouty lips. Then there is Blue Violet (1973), a leaf with a face as if petrified by Medusa.

It is a fruitful tour of what Ng has done to queer the human form, creating a vocabulary for bodily desire beyond its usual physical forms.

There are surprises, too, from an undated campy portrait painting of a woman as a flame of the forest tree to a decorated plate with a photo-lithograph of a friend from Spain that the curator says harks back to Ng’s training in industrial ceramics.

If you have not yet seen the current iteration of the permanent exhibition, the time to make the trek to the National University of Singapore to see both shows is now.

The current show will close by the end of 2026 at a yet-to-be-decided date. NUS Museum has a collection of over 1,200 of Ng’s works, of which more than 300 are on display – so see it before the next rotation, which will be up by early 2027.

Where: NUS Museum, 50 Kent Ridge Crescent
MRT: Clementi/Kent Ridge
When: Till May 29, 2027; 10am to 6pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays)
Admission: Free
Info: str.sg/ByCg

Flipside 2026

Esplanade’s annual playful arts festival is back from May 29 to June 7 and spans the whole gamut of fun from plain daft to downright absurd.

Lovers of acrobatic stunts will want to catch A Simple Space by Australia’s Gravity & Other Myths from May 29 to 31. Since premiering at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2013, the thrilling circus company has taken its stripped-down circus of handstands and backflips to 34 countries. It is no frills, all thrills for kids (six and above) and adults.

For the board-game lover, Singaporean actor Dwayne Lau stages his first full-length work – a 90-minute storytelling, music and game show in Snakes And Ladders! (May 29 to 31) in which the audience rolls a die and tries to get Lau to the number 100 on the board game.

To satisfy your appetite for the destructive, go for Der Lauf (The Way Things Go), in which a juggler and his double compete in absurdist experiments while the audience keeps throwing balls and shouting at them. Der Lauf plays on June 6 and 7 and is performed by Belgian duo Guy Waerenburgh and Baptiste Bizien.

There are also free programmes – four tap dancers come together as a “very serious” orchestra in Chaos In Rhythm (May 29 to 31); theatremaker Miriam Cheong stages a trivia night (May 30 and 31); and theatre collective Patch And Punnet spit rhymes about Shakespeare (May 30 and 31).

If unadulterated spectacle is what you crave, multidisciplinary flow artist Lai Yee from Hong Kong will perform four mesmerising night shows of water spinning and fire dance (June 4 to 7).

Where: Various venues around Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, 1 Esplanade Drive
MRT: City Hall/Esplanade
When: May 29 to June 7, various timings
Admission: Free and ticketed
Info: str.sg/Gnp5

The Table: Taste, Memory, Residue by Michael Cu Fua

Can the kitchen be a kind of creative studio and the artist studio a place to cook up dishes? A new art exhibition by Michael Cu Fua held within contemporary dining and social space Wildcard says yes.

They are not just metaphors – the exhibition features artworks created with pigments extracted from edible ingredients such as dragon fruit, blueberry, turmeric, butterfly pea flower, green tea and mint. Depending on how you look at them, Cu Fua’s circular marks resemble sauce stains, lovely puree and even avant-garde plating.

The Philippine-born, Singapore-based artist says in a press statement: “I’m intrigued by how materials transform over time, and by the residues they leave behind. The same ingredient can exist in two forms: as nourishment and as a mark, as flavour and as memory.”

The artworks are best appreciated, of course, mid-meal. Check out Wildcard’s After Hours jazz evenings and Sunday Test Kitchen series, in which guest chefs concoct a special one-day-only menu.

Where: Wildcard, 01-03 Furama RiverFront, 405 Havelock Road
MRT: Havelock
When: May 24 to July 24, 4 to midnight (Wednesdays to Fridays), 11am to midnight (weekends)
Admission: Free, but the exhibition is presented within a restaurant space
Info: wildcardsg.com