SINGAPORE – An impromptu journey on a ferry down the Straits of Malacca inspired an unlikely pair of artists to collaborate on an exhibition that responds to the region’s unique tropical environment.
The artist’s “natural habitat” could not have looked more different. Simling Gil’s family home in Port Dickson faces a mangrove forest, and Charles Lim Ei Yong grew up in his ikan on the Singapore coast in Kampung Mata, where his grandmother lived. He picked up a seashell.
These experiences influenced their art and their respective presentations at the Venice Biennale.
Gill, 65, zooms in on land plants in Here Art Grows On Trees (2013) at the Australia Pavilion, while Lim, 50, a former Olympic sailor, takes to the Sea State’s lifelong open seas at the Singapore Pavilion. I took advantage of my admiration. (2015).
However, as the two presented joint works at shows such as the 2022 Istanbul Biennale, they realized that their perspectives were complementary rather than contradictory.
As the two inaugural Fellows of the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Gill and Lim are teaming up to present an ongoing exhibition aptly titled ‘The Sea Is A Field’. It will open on January 12 in a temporary space adjacent to the SAM office building at 37 Keppel Road, Tanjong Pagar Distripark.
The video and text-based work is the result of an expedition undertaken by the duo and curators Selene Yap and Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol in August 2023, along Indonesia’s coastline from Port Dickson to Dumai, Sekupang and Batam. I went through the port to the Singapore harbourfront. .
The exhibition unit has been kept intact and partially exposed to the elements, but physically and symbolically open to the port on one side and the railway on the other.