On show at Singapore Art Week 2023: Art about play

SINGAPORE – For 10 days in January, organisers of the Singapore Art Week (SAW) 2023 will be turning the island into a playground for art.

Play is the theme of the festival, which runs from Jan 6 to 15. The National Arts Council (NAC) will present more than 130 programmes and exhibitions that it hopes will spark creativity, curiosity and a desire to think differently.

“A sense of play will lead to these, and art can nurture it,” Mr Low Eng Teong, deputy chief executive for sector development at NAC, tells The Straits Times at a SAW 2023 media event on Tuesday.

Some of the programmes will allow the public to create art.

For instance, artist and producer Hong Shu-ying’s multi-venue work, Process: Roving Ideas, involves more than 37 artists who will instruct participants in making art at locations such as a park, supermarket and cemetery.

Hong believes that art is everywhere and anyone can be an artist. Spreading it around Singapore, she says, it is “one of the best ways to encounter new audiences”.

Another playful offering is Let’s Play Ball – Art That Fits In Your Palm by the Knuckles & Notch, a Risograph (stencil and ink duplication) publishing and print studio.

Gachapon toy vending machines will dispense limited-edition, handmade works by 10 artists. Knuckles & Notch founder Goh Yun Jin says one objective is “to preserve the analogue way of art-making”.

Two major art fairs – S.E.A Focus and ART SG – will also take place during SAW.

Commissioned by NAC, S.E.A. Focus is an anchor event of the festival and will feature selected works from 25 galleries and more than 50 artists from around the world. 

Ms Emi Eu, executive director of STPI Creative Workshop & Gallery and project director of S.E.A. Focus, says in an e-mail that five galleries will be showing here for the first time, including de Sarthe (Hong Kong and the United States), Mono8 (Philippines) and TKG+ (Taiwan).

TZ Apac, the adoption entity for the Tezos blockchain in Asia, will also present a specially curated Asia-centric non-fungible token (NFT) and digital art showcase at S.E.A. Focus – marking the second year that digital art will be presented at the event.

“Digital art is a new medium which has been on the rise and which cannot be ignored,” says Ms Eu.

There will also be an event at SAW called after/party, which is inspired by the nightlife of big cities, at two independent spaces in Tagore Lane. Two exhibitions, Nighthawks and There Are Flowers In The Morning Mist – held at interior design studio Supper House and art event and exhibition space Starch respectively – will feature activities for visitors to engage in.

In Woodlands, the Sculpture Society (Singapore) and art space Sculpture 2052 will present Shoebox Sculpture Biennale 2023 – Sightseeing Sculpture: The Sky, The Land, And The Sea. On display are shoebox-size sculptures by more than 80 Singapore artists including Han Sai Por, Teo Eng Seng and Vincent Liew.

While the event has been billed as a biennale, sculptor and Sculpture 2052 founder Yeo Chee Kiong says it will be a humble affair. “We are not trying to be an international event.”

For the first time, SAW 2023 will also collaborate with the People’s Association (PA) and Community Arts and Culture Clubs to bring art to five neighbourhoods. 

Ms Tan Swee Leng, director of the arts and culture division at PA, says 40 to 70 volunteers, residents and artists from each neighbourhood will be involved. In Pasir Ris, for example, artist Justin Loke will present Block Party: Our Neighbourhood Furniture Tetris, where participants are invited to co-create a sculptural work from second-hand furniture. 

Those involved in the project, Ms Tan adds, are proud to be a part of it. “What is important is the storytelling that is part of the process.”

Singapore Art Week 2023

Where: Various locations across Singapore
When: Jan 6 to 15
Info: