Passion Is Volcanic: 5 works to see at National Gallery Singapore’s first R18 show

SINGAPORE – The National Gallery Singapore (NGS) opens its first R18 exhibition Passion Is Volcanic: Desire In Southeast Asian Art.

With about 60 per cent of works drawn from the national collection – many shown for the first time – and the others comprising regional loans, here are five works to see in the show.

1. Vajradhara and Prajnaparamita

Two buddhas kiss in this gilded copper sculpture gifted by Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple to the Asian Civilisations Museum and loaned to NGS.

Co-curators Adele Tan and Kathleen Ditzig have chosen to contextualise the exhibition with the pre-modern, to show that artists’ interest in the body, desire and sex is an enduring one in Asia.

This more unconventional palm-size tantric Buddhist object was created around the 14th and 15th centuries. The larger male figure is that of compassion and the smaller female straddling him is that of wisdom.

More restrained portrayals might have them gazing into each other’s eyes. Here, the sculptor puts them in a tight, mutual embrace, melded into a perfect whole.

2. TV For Everyone by Tan Peng

Mention Tan Peng and even those steeped in Singapore’s art history will likely draw a blank. The artist holds the informal title of being the first local artist to come out publicly as gay in 1993.

The Straits Times documented this with an article headlined Out Of The Closet on the occasion of his now-forgotten landmark exhibition, Flowing Forest, Burning Hearts, at the now-defunct The Substation, in which the artist writes: “Being gay, as a viewer in art exhibitions, I am tired of drawing meaning from works which ignore my existence.”

His pastel-on-paper painting, TV For Everyone, questions the taboo of homosexuality in media, with two men embracing behind a television set frozen on a still of a man kissing a woman.

This, along with two other of his paintings, are being exhibited for the first time since they were added to the national collection in 1995.

Rumour has it that Tan is now a monk in Thailand. Co-curator Adele Tan says: “This is also to remember a time when The Substation was doing a lot of edgy stuff, the public arenas we once had in the 1990s. Let that not go unmentioned.”

3. Liu Kang’s Scene In Bali

Nanyang pioneer artist Liu Kang’s essay during a trip to Bali, in which he likens the passion of Balinese women to volcanoes, is the jumping-off point for the title of the exhibition.

Scene In Bali, painted in 1953, shows just what Liu meant, detailing a fantasy of women bathing in the valleys of Indonesia, complete with landmark pagodas, mountains and rice terraces.

This desire is a central plank of the male Nanyang artists’ paintings that have generally been so blase that it often goes uninterrogated.

In the context of this exhibition, it becomes the point.

Liu wrote: “Someone has said that it is most enjoyable to be a Balinese man. If he can afford it, he can have many wives and concubines because the population is predominantly female.

“When the time is ripe and passion flames in all directions, one will not be able to flee and will have nowhere to hide, and will immediately become their obedient slave.”

4. Lavender Chang’s Dissolving Into The Same Breath

In a room, couples having sex are abstracted by long exposure photography. What is left in bed and on couches are mists of their former presence and activity, ephemeral and lovely.

This series by Singapore-based photographer Lavender Chang was initially commissioned by Ogilvy Shanghai for an advertising campaign for Viagra. Discreetly hidden from view, Chang captured three couples who had not been intimate for a while rediscovering each other’s bodies.

The works sparked a wider conversation on intimacy and desire in China. Chang searched for, but was unable to find, willing and suitable candidates in Singapore.

5. Grace Quek, or Annabel Chong

In 1995, Singaporean Grace Quek participated in the film The World’s Biggest Gang Bang, adopting the performance persona of Annabel Chong.

It granted her instant notoriety, leading to talk-show appearances, a documentary that premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and a 2007 play by Singaporean writer Ng Yi-Sheng.

The exhibition here dedicates a corner to her, restoring some of the agency of her gender-challenging act – she wanted to be the stud – and positioning it more directly in the mode of performance art.

Between 1994 and 2001, as a practising performance artist in Los Angeles, Quek took on other personas, such as a chicken and a pair of pink stiletto heels.

Artefacts from the 1995 film assembled in the exhibition include the shoes and sequin dress worn by her character, and the T-shirts given to crew members.