2024 was so topsy-turvy I honestly haven’t really put my mind to reflecting on what I have achieved or experienced this year. To celebrate the end of 2024, new beginnings, and 10 years of Wording Art, I should acknowledge my major milestone of 2024, which was completing my PhD in art history!

I have shared at different points about my experience pursuing a PhD at NTU Singapore. It’s funny how time flies and I graduated in July 2024. Yet with all of the strange feels of post-submission, post-defence, and post-graduation, and moving on to a new chapter in life, it felt like I needed more time to finally share about being PhDone.

| Cover picture: Me staring at the wonderful shelves of books on British Art in Hatchards, Piccadilly, London |

My PhD Research on Angelica Kauffman: The Last Stages

Over the last 5 years, I have spent many hours thinking, researching, and writing about the Swiss-Austrian artist Angelica Kauffman. My PhD research focused on Kauffman’s self-portraits from her London period (1766–1781), considering how these images tell us about the ways she viewed herself as a professional female artist in late eighteenth-century London. That’s the one-line summary!

Writing up my dissertation in 2022-23 was both enlightening and frustrating. But that, to me, is really what writing is all about. Figuring out how to structure my chapters, subheadings, flow, which images should go where, titles… There was a lot to learn and experiment with, and I’m so glad I had an entire year all to myself just to focus on writing. It’s a rare experience to have dedicated time for writing, and to be given feedback on my dissertation by supervisors and a panel of examiners alike.

2024 started with me working on revisions on my dissertation, before prepping for an oral defence. I had to condense years of research and hundreds of pages into a 30-minute presentation, before fielding questions by the examiners. I think the word ‘defence’ is especially apt here, because at points it did feel like I had to ‘defend’ my arguments and ideas. My defence was held online, which I did not expect! It’s funny how so many events can now be held online in a post-covid world…

Two weeks after my defence, I flew to London to see the Angelica Kauffman exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, which you can also read more about in my blog post. It felt like the most fitting way to bring my PhD chapter to a close! Other than at the Royal Academy, I saw more of Kauffman’s works at the Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920 exhibition at Tate Britain. I also visited the gorgeous, revamped National Portrait Gallery to view what is probably Kauffman’s most famous self-portrait from her London period.

Graduation and Moving On…

Luckily things went well, and I made it for graduation! It really was the best day~~

I think with the completion of the PhD, there’s a strange feeling of finding my footing again. After months of tracking my hours of writing every day, it felt like I needed to reset and find a new routine again. I’ve seen only a few people online acknowledge this post-PhD limbo — and it’s so real! At this point of writing, I’m so glad to have moved through this stage, and I have now started a new job. Perhaps a bit shockingly, it’s bittersweet to me that I might miss a bit of PhD life in some ways.

Guest Post & Podcast Episode

With that, I’m happy to bring my PhD chapter to a proper close in 2024. While I haven’t shared much of my actual research on this blog, I have had the opportunity to share about it on other platforms!

In June 2024, I wrote a guest post on Art Herstory about Angelica Kauffman and her works centred on art, music and poetry. In this post, I explore some of my new, personal favourites among Kauffman’s artworks. I didn’t discuss most of these images in my dissertation, so it was nice to have another platform to write about a different aspect of Kauffman’s oeuvre. I would love it if you go here to read my guest post Angelica Kauffman: Art, Music and Poetry.

In November 2024, I spoke on a podcast episode with High Impact Thesis, a platform that hosts a diverse selection of researchers from NTU Singapore. In this one-hour long episode, I talk about my research on Angelica Kauffman’s London self-portraits, as well as:
🏛 What led me into art history and my research topic on Kauffman
🎨 Kauffman’s motivations in moving to London in her twenties
👩‍🎨 Women artists in eighteenth-century London and how they were perceived then and now
🗽 Allegory, Muses, and the art of imitation
🖼 Kauffman’s practice of imitation in her self-portraits (like the one at the National Portrait Gallery pictured below), and the particular influence of Raphael

I would love it if you would like to listen to my podcast episode on Spotify at this link!

Certainly though, it’s not yet the end of the road for me and my research on Kauffman! After spending years reading, thinking, writing, and discussing her artworks, my interest and passion about Kauffman is still as strong as ever. Maybe this is the true sign of having completed a PhD — that you don’t really get tired of talking about a specialised subject again and again… And the best part is that I can now officially say that I’m a bona fide art historian! 😉

The post PhDone | My Research on Angelica Kauffman appeared first on Wording Art.

Perhaps the one-line summary is this: Doing a PhD is always going to be difficult, and doing anything in a pandemic makes everything more difficult still — but I recognise how incredibly blessed I’ve been with all the people, opportunities and support I’ve been surrounded with, and I truly value all of these.

Now let’s rewind to October 2020: I’d shared that I’d passed my Qualifying Exam for my art history research master’s at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in early September that year. That was only the beginning of the gruelling process that was converting my master’s to a PhD. I’m not sure if this practice exists in other educational systems, but I’d also think that it’s not usual or easy at all. I didn’t share about any of this earlier, because there were just so many moving pieces hanging in the balance and I didn’t want to jinx anything LOL!

In October 2020, I then sat for my conversion exercise (yet another report and presentation), prepared a PhD research proposal and had an interview in November 2020 (similar to what I did when applying for my masters!), and then waited… The news came through in mid-January 2021 that my conversion was successful, and a week later, the news that I was given a NTU scholarship sent me over the moon! Took a deep breath to take it all in, before finding out that I was going to have to dash for yet another qualifying exam in April 2021. Went into a happy daze (just briefly, the PhD life waits for no one) when I was confirmed as a PhD candidate in late April!

Luckily, the timing worked out well as all of these happened when the Covid situation was doing much better, and it was a lot easier to go into campus to get my writing done. Things got more cautious from May, and flitting around many different things — classes, conference applications, assignments — to the background of restless Covid definitely takes its mental toil. I love that canvas print of Which step have you reached today, which I saw at Chapter 55 (restaurant in Tiong Bahru), up above in the cover picture. Almost every day, I go from ‘I won’t do it’ to ‘I’ll try’…

But! I’m now heading into my final fourth year of my postgraduate studies, and what a time to celebrate the good things and the breakthrough days when I get to the top three steps of that ‘do it’ staircase.

So, I think one thing I wanted to put in words (so I can remember it for posterity) is why I decided to go for a PhD and a conversion. I don’t think anyone has asked me about this in an official capacity, and what I really appreciate about postgrad interviews is that they keep the focus on research. The seed of this conversion idea was planted early on in my first semester (thanks to my professors’ foresight), and it was really in May 2020 that I fully committed to the the plan and went full-out to fulfil the crazy schedule outlined above.

Funnily enough, my main two reasons for doing the PhD conversion remained within the same two ‘categories’ that also made up my decision to take up my master’s at NTU. The first, primary reason is related to my own research: I knew I was — and still am! — in the right place to do the research I want to do (Angelica Kauffman’s self-portraits + eighteenth-century British art) as I seriously do have the best supervisor and advisory committee, and I’m comfortable in this environment and NTU’s fantastic facilities. You could say that the UK would perhaps be more fitting because the art and the archives that I need to see are located there, but the unexpected twist in the story with Covid meant that museums and archival centres had to close, and many things shifted online… And as it became more apparent that the pandemic was going to go on for longer than anyone could have expected, I was feeling uncertain about expecting to finish my MA in mid-2021.

And on my research, it only seemed that I was getting more engrossed in it all the time — and this is probably the most important factor to me in doing a PhD and sticking it out. I’d kept to the same topic throughout the MA and in converting to the PhD, but the research kept growing in many interesting ways and I wanted to keep the momentum and take my topic further by upscaling it into a PhD. I have mentioned before that there is often the initial feel to build a super-broad topic for the research proposal and the feedback you get is always to narrow, narrow it down! And then when you get accepted into the MA/PhD program and work on it further, the topic grows and changes in ways unknown yet again… It doesn’t seem to make sense, but it’s definitely what I’ve experienced!

Another thing I’ve noticed is that my research seems to be getting increasingly personal — the appeal of working on Kauffman and eighteenth-century London in the first place was that there seemed to be no relation to my actual twenty-first-century life in Singapore/Hong Kong and it was refreshing to be working on a clean slate. Yet I realise that my interest in looking at Kauffman’s London self-portraits and my approach in doing so reflects my own thoughts and feelings… I’m not too sure how to explain this, but maybe it will become clear to me when I’m finally done writing the dissertation in mid-2023?

The second main reason, on unavoidable, pragmatic terms, is related to costs and financial matters. Any postgraduate degree is pricey in one way or another (plus opportunity costs), and I was hoping to leverage on ‘saving’ a year in completing a PhD by converting my MA. In any case, receiving the news of my scholarship made it the best night of my life and it’s really been life-changing, and I don’t take it for granted at all. So, so thankful.

Now that I’m doing a PhD — which still feels surreal — what other highlights then? Turning things online has been so helpful in opening up access to hearing more talks, participating in events, etc. across the world for free — although I openly profess I’m still a Zoom noob (I like MS Teams more).

The biggest highlight of 2022 would definitely be finally making it to London to get my hands on the archives in May! I’m also (slowly) sharing more of all the art and museums I saw and visited during my time there on the blog, which was just such an immersive experience.

Ah, so now it’s a matter of writing and completing the dissertation, putting my thoughts together… Let’s see what other thoughts I’ll have about the writing process in the coming academic year!

The post PhD in a Pandemic appeared first on Wording Art.

Going to London in May 2022 was such perfect timing as there were so many special exhibitions (and some still ongoing) that I was particularly interested to see! At The National Gallery, there’s the phenomenal Raphael exhibition — running until 31 July 2022. There was also the historic, once-in-a-century exhibition of Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy which ended on May 15th and I managed to see it in its final week!

| Cover image: Detail of John Constable’s The Hay Wain (1821) |

Raphael

I don’t think I really need to review the Raphael show and tell you how good it is, since it’s already gotten plenty of 5-star reviews from the British newspapers. There’s an incredible showing of artworks on loan, including the the Louvre, National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Prado Museum, Uffizi Museum and the Vatican Museum. I was also amazed that the exhibition pamphlet contained all the wall text and didactics in the show, so you could focus on viewing the pictures and reading up on each of them at a later time. Also very much appreciated since the ticket price is steep — I paid £24 to see it on a Monday morning.

I was super excited to go after viewing the exhibition trailer (so epic) and the photo highlights, which you can view on the National Gallery’s website here. I loved how they have blown up the portrait of Bindo Altoviti as the ‘star’ image, and it was fun seeing him on ads on buses and on billboards across the city!

I also loved seeing many of Raphael’s masterpieces of Madonnas, which was like a Renaissance art history class come to life! Love the colours, they’re so vivid.

But the absolute stunner of the show (spoiler alert?) to me is hands down, the final piece in the exhibition in the last portraits room: Portrait of a Woman (‘La Fornarina’).

I’ve actually been researching La Fornarina to include in my PhD, and I was so surprised and excited to find out that this was included in the Raphael exhibition! It is so much more beautiful and incredible than I’d ever expected in person. The Guardian says that ‘This great show is like falling in love again’, but I honestly just fell in love with this painting, it is so wonderful.

The sitter in question (La Fornarina, meaning the Baker’s Daughter) is not known, although she was purportedly Raphael’s lover. I would think she really was, as the entire painting is done with such intimacy and affection and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen. My favourite part is her face and her blue and gold turban — I was literally admiring the blue colour.

Gainsborough’s Blue Boy

I might have a thing for blues so it was also perfect timing to see The Blue Boy by the British artist Thomas Gainsborough. The epic story behind The Blue Boy goes that it was sold to an American collector and sailed away from British shores 100 years ago, and now resides in the collection of The Huntington in San Marino, California. The painting goes on loan to The National Gallery for the first time ever, and 100 years later to the day (!) opens to the British public again on January 25, 2022.

There’s a fantastic article from ARTnews that shares more about the history behind The Blue Boy, which you can read here. Coincidentally, a few days ago, I also find out about The Pink Boy supposed to be a counterpart to The Blue Boy at the Waddesdon Manor!

I love the regal pose of The Blue Boy — who is now thought to be modelled by Gainsborough’s nephew Gainsborough Dupont — and the lovely blue shimmer to his clothes!

The Blue Boy was shown alongside a few of Gainsborough’s portraits as well as Antony van Dyck’s portraits, like the double portrait of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687), and Lord Francis Villiers (1629–1648) below, which inspired The Blue Boy.

The Collection and British Art

The National Gallery, London consists of a collection of paintings in Western art ranging from the 13th century to the early 20th century, going from the medieval, Renaissance, early modern to the modern era. I spent the whole day taking in as much as I could, but my favourite room was the one devoted to British art from the 18th and 19th centuries!

More Favourites from the Collection

Going to the museum feels like an excellent lesson in Western art history, but at the end, I realised how devoid the collection is of women artists. I only saw works by Berthe Morisot, and a self-portrait by Gwen John (that’s on loan from the National Portrait Gallery which is currently closed for redevelopment).

The National Gallery also has fantastic self-portraits by Artemisia Gentileschi and Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, but they are both out on loan to overseas exhibitions, so I was sad to miss them!!

Still, based on my bias, the National Gallery is one of my favourite museums in London!

The post London Art | The National Gallery: Raphael, Gainsborough and British Art appeared first on Wording Art.

And what a time to be there, while London prepped its streets for the epic Platinum Jubilee (and I left just one week before the holiday!). I was also so excited to see the gorgeous Big Ben, which has been freshly restored and the clock dials are now back to their original

blue colour!

I took hundreds of photos every day and the memories are still fresh in my mind. So I wanted to write all about it on my blog to relive all of the days! I will be sharing about my itinerary my style which is basically: art, museums and bookstores (plus libraries and archives).

In 3 weeks I went to these museums for my art and history side:

• The Courtauld Gallery
• The British Museum
• The National Gallery, London
• Royal Academy of Arts
• The Wallace Collection
• Tate Modern
• Kenwood House
• V&A Victoria and Albert Museum
• Tate Britain
• Imperial War Museum
• Natural History Museum

And these libraries & bookstores for my bookish side:

• The British Library
• Waterstones
• London Review Bookshop
• Daunt Books Marylebone
• The Notting Hill Bookshop

That’s a preview of what’s to come! I also very importantly, saw artworks by the artist that I’m researching, Angelica Kauffman, for the first time in person and they were absolutely beautiful. I can’t emphasise enough now how important it is to see art in person.

In the words of Wonder Woman in WW84: “It’s all art.” And that certainly applies to London. ❤️

Find more posts from my London Art Series at this tag!

The post London Spring 2022 | Art, Museums and Bookstores appeared first on Wording Art.

On that cover picture: I was finalising edits of my QE report at the very lovely Little House of Dreams café in Tiong Bahru post-circuit breaker, when I could finally work outside of home! That’s the title page on my laptop, and I’d definitely like to share more about my research soon!

So what is this Qualifying Examination? Different programmes might have another term for it, but the purpose of this exam is similar across the board. For MA (Research) / PhD programmes, the qualifying examination is held after the completion of courses. There’s a written component in the form of a report, and an oral component in the form of a presentation. It’s a means for determining your progress in your research, or just to determine if you are fit enough to keep going — like ‘passing probation’, if you will! At NTU, where I’m doing my MA (Research) programme in Art History at ADM, the Qualifying Examination is held a year in. That’s what was happening with me in early September.

I have to say — writing the report was hard. It appears straightforward: it includes a listing of your literature review, aims and objectives, methodologies, chapter outline, bibliography, etc. (to sum up the main sections). Sometimes I feel like I can envision my actual, final thesis — certain points I want to make; specific images and comparisons I want to look at. But suddenly, when I was forced to think about my methodology and chapter titles, I realised that I hadn’t given a thought to it at all! I suppose in research, you always feel the initial need to build up a big, wide topic to show that you have something important to study, then you begin working on it and have to break it down again to the specifics. I struggled with writing my literature review, methodology and outline of chapters — which pretty much makes up the whole report! After multiple drafts and lots of random googling (like what’s the difference between aims and objectives??), things somehow miraculously came together. I’m now glad I have a working structure of how the whole thesis is going to look like!

In a normal world, the presentation of the QE is always held in person. With this ‘new normal’ though, I had my exam over Microsoft Teams — which I was not expecting! Funny to think that I didn’t even know how to use Teams until May this year, and it’s now become somewhat familiar (I prefer it to Zoom).

I’ve seen so many articles and posts where people say that they hate having virtual meetings, and I’m definitely in that group of people who dislike meeting virtually, much less for an exam! While presenting, it felt like I was talking to myself (especially as everyone else had turned off their cameras), and I had to keep reminding myself that people were still watching and listening! It feels strange not to see people’s reactions as you’re presenting — your education has trained you to present in front of people, but when that’s taken away in a virtual space, it feels like a whole other ball game.

Though on the flip side, the advantage of presenting virtually is having more privacy — after all, everyone only sees your head and shoulders on screen, and I could have my notes scattered everywhere around me without anyone seeing it, haha! I could hang up on my Teams call after my presentation and immediately slump over and breathe a big sigh of relief.

In any case, I’m happy to say that I passed! Now, having had time to process what has happened, I’m glad to have had this experience. It’s a good opportunity to present my research, a clear way to see how my research has developed, and to hear the ideas, feedback, or perspectives that others (i.e. the examiners) bring to the table. It’s also a major milestone to clear, and completing it comes with a sense of accomplishment. These little moments are really much needed along the path of graduate school, especially when things get busy, difficult and overwhelming. Yet at the same time, I’m realising that I’m becoming more of a nerd, and I’m enjoying my research! All the work though — it’s time to get back to it…

The post I Passed My Qualifying Exam! | Master’s Updates appeared first on Wording Art.

I chose this cover picture above of Roses (1893) by Peder Severin Krøyer, which I discovered from reading Women Who Read Are Dangerous, as I thought it’s a great illustration of the home-ly, sheltered lives we have been living in now — lucky for you if you have a gorgeous rose garden like the one pictured! I’ve had this image as my desktop wallpaper since I got my new computer last August, and I love it for its calm peacefulness. In the same way, I wanted to share some art content that I have been checking out recently that has brought both entertainment and reprieve during these times!

One great thing that has emerged during the global slowdown / lockdown has been seeing how art continues to engage and uplift people. I’m very appreciative of all the museums and their staff that have been working hard to deliver more digital content online, which has been great in allowing me to access more exhibitions and content which I might not been able to before. Also a big thank you to all readers who have been visiting Wording Art here for a dose of art! :)

Here goes a list of exhibition tours, films and talks that I have been enjoying lately. You may notice that many are from British institutions, but they have been my interest lately…

1. Royal Academy of Arts & Exhibition On Screen

Royal Academy of Arts has very generously released three Exhibition On Screen films on their Youtube channel and Facebook page featuring their previous exhibitions. Exhibition On Screen specialises in making films focusing on artists or exhibitions, and you can buy, download, or stream their great number of art films at their website (linked here)!

The three films featuring the Royal Academy of Arts’ exhibitions are:

David Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts: A Bigger Picture 2012 & 82 Portraits and One Still Life 2016

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse

Manet: Portraying Life

I will link to the RA’s Youtube and Facebook here (as they have disallowed playback on other websites), but be sure to click over to view these films featuring these great exhibitions! I think it’s such a great way to (re)discover exhibitions, and they’re also done in a documentary style, so you get further insights from the curators and art experts on the works.

2. Picasso on Paper at the Royal Academy of Arts

The RA also shared a virtual tour of their most recent exhibition Picasso on Paper, which had to close when the UK went into lockdown. A super interesting exhibition featuring an aspect of Picasso’s work that is not often discussed: his work with paper, in the form of sketches, prints, collages and even three-dimensional pieces.

I liked how the virtual tour zoomed in close on the details of the individual works and even spanned across the didactics and wall panels at a slower pace to allow you to read them! All set to the tune of peaceful music, no voices this time. :) Again, here are the links to the RA’s Youtube and Facebook, where you can check out the tour.

3. Titian: Love, Desire, Death at The National Gallery

Here is a brilliant curator tour of the exhibition Titian: Love, Desire, Death at The National Gallery, London that was also cut short thanks to the lockdown. It seems like this exhibition will be extended, but that’s really depending on when museums in the UK can reopen.

This exhibition features Titian’s six paintings depicting mythological scenes from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Though it’s a small one, the exhibition is hugely remarkable as it marks the first time the series of paintings was brought together in one space in over four centuries! Here is also a link to a post on The National Gallery’s website explaining and describing each of the six paintings in more detail.

4. Young Rembrandt at the Ashmolean Museum

Young Rembrandt is yet another exhibition that was abruptly closed, but has now gone online! Young Rembrandt tracks the artistic development of Rembrandt, and the virtual exhibition follows the same pattern with its neat sectioning into five parts.

Unlike the other exhibition formats share above, Young Rembrandt is being shared on Ashmolean’s website linked here through the ‘old-school’ way of text and images, coupled with some supplementary videos along the way.

5. Open Courtauld Hour with the Courtauld Institute

While the arts content I’ve shared above are on exhibitions, I’ve also been enjoying listening to talks on art history online. Art history seminars used to be only presented and heard in-person, and it’s very interesting how going online means that they are made free and accessible despite distance and time difference!

The Courtauld Institute has recently concluded their Open Courtauld Hour event, a series of four talks that focused on the themes of (in the following order): Art in Isolation, Art and Wellbeing, The Future of Art History and Women Artists. Each talk invites a few speakers to present on the set topic, and ends with a reading by a poet every time.

All of the talks are available to watch on their Youtube channel (linked here). Out of all the talks, I have yet to complete watching the final one of Women Artists, which I have linked below:

I’m sure that the topic of Women Artists is probably going to be the most popular, and I’m also really interested in this one because this is what my research is about! More on that later…

6. Talks at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center

Final recommendation: The art history seminar Rome and her Legacy: Classical Art in the 21st Century presented by Susanna McFadden from the Fine Arts Department of the University of Hong Kong, organised by the Asia Society Hong Kong Center. Here is the link to watch the seminar on Asia Society Hong Kong Center’s Facebook page!

I pretty much like learning about any aspects of Western / European art, and this was a really interesting talk about classical Roman wall paintings. I also loved having this chance to connect with my alma mater!

And that’s a wrap! I hope you will enjoy checking out these talks, tours, videos, and films — if you hadn’t seen them yet! Of course, if you also have any recommendations to share, please let me know too!

The post Turning to (More) Art Online appeared first on Wording Art.

I first conceived of this idea of an art print business back in the summer of 2015, which was actually a few months after I opened this blog! It went on the back burner though, after the holidays ended and I went back to my classes at university – then suddenly it’s graduation – then work… Funnily enough, this little window of free time came along (while waiting to start my postgraduate studies!!), and so, I finally came up with Wording Art Prints, now available to shop on Etsy!

All of Wording Art Prints are based off of original paintings by in-house artist Elly Cheng, and I’m very happy to be able to share her art in this format! We are based in Singapore, and I’m proud to say that all prints are made and printed in Singapore. Currently, there are four art prints available, which you can see in more detail below!

Light through the Darkness

Light through the Darkness captures subtle light coming through the leaves and foliage, and I have to say I love how the reds and yellows of this painting really pop on the art print!

Sizes available: 30cm (H) x 40cm (W), 40cm x 50cm, and 50cm x 70cm. Go here to shop Light through the Darkness.

Maturity

Maturity is a close-up ‘portrait’ that observes the delicateness and intricacies of a rose in full bloom.

Sizes available: 30cm (H) x 30cm (W), 40cm x 40cm, and 50cm x 50cm. Go here to shop Maturity.

Night by the Esplanade

Of course we had to have an art print of our home city Singapore! Night by the Esplanade was inspired by an evening stroll along the walkway outside of the Esplanade by the river, which remains one of my favourite walking spots in Singapore.

Sizes available: 20cm (H) x 40cm (W), and 25cm x 50cm. Go here to shop Night by the Esplanade.

Hello, Sunshine

Hello, Sunshine basically sums how I would ideally like to live life! ;) Like a cat, in a field of flowers, enjoying the skies and sunshine. A very fun and pastel-y art print!

Sizes available: 30cm (H) x 21cm (W), and 40cm x 30cm. Go here to shop Hello, Sunshine.

I am genuinely a fan of all of these art prints, and I’m so happy that they can now be collected and viewed by every one of you! If you would like to get one, head over to my Etsy shop WordingArtPrints, or also click any of the links above for each print. More details on sizing, material, and shipping are provided on my Etsy shop!

Stay tuned for updates, as I work on getting more options available and as Elly Cheng creates more beautiful artworks!

The post Introducing Wording Art Prints | Shop Now on Etsy! appeared first on Wording Art.

I remember thinking before, that I noticed the lack of paintings that featured people reading, specifically women and girls reading. Books and reading are my first love – how I like to say it! – and I wanted to see how books and art go together in artworks. I’m so glad to chance on this fantastic book by Stefan Bollmann (translated from German by Christine Shuttleworth) that led me to discover all of these paintings!

I have not seen most of the artworks in the book before, in fact, most of the artists featured in the book are also unfamiliar to me. Maybe the (more famous) artists that I know of didn’t choose to depict this sort of everyday, mundane act so much, but I’m happy to discover all of these artists too.

While we might associate reading as something ordinary and commonplace now, the title of the book refers to the long period of time when women did not have free access to books and readings. The foreword by Karen Joy Fowler and introduction go into more detail of how the public (or men) were afraid to give women the power to read.

For me, books have been great sources of entertainment, sites of fantasy and imagination, and bearers of knowledge. They make up a very important aspect of my life and I try to maintain my reading as much as I can!

It’s really nice to see then how these artists showed the women in their lives reading all kinds of books and letters – leisurely, seriously, emotionally, attentively, and more. I have to point out though, that most of the paintings are by male artists, and all of my favourite paintings featured in this post are by male artists too. But I suppose, I would touch on women artists at another point.

After reading this book, I now want to buy a copy to keep all of these paintings within easy reach! For this International Women’s Day, I want to reiterate how happy I am that we women can easily go to libraries and bookstores and start reading all kinds of books.

With that, I would also like to read and review more art books! Go here to see my last review of the exhibition catalogue for China: Through the Looking Glass at the Met Museum.

The post Women Who Read Are Dangerous | Book Review appeared first on Wording Art.

Before I get into these events, I have to first say that the pre-opening act of Singapore Art Week (SAW) 2019 was the sudden cancellation of Art Stage Singapore. I’d always missed going to Art Stage – especially during my uni years when I would be in Hong Kong in January – but I’d intended to visit for the first time this year. Well, that didn’t happen, and the news of their cancellation caused such a big hoo-ha!

S.E.A. Focus

At least, there was the new boutique art fair S.E.A. Focus, which I was pretty interested in checking out. As the name suggests, the fair focuses on showing art from Southeast Asian artists – and it’s also nice to see stronger representation of Singaporean artists. I’ve heard so many Singaporeans complain that Singaporean artists aren’t more visible in Singapore itself, so it’s good to see more focus placed on them, too.

Of course, this gold coated Singapore-style dustbin was the first thing that caught my eye! For context, they’re usually green in colour and placed along the streets. I wish I knew the artist who made this, but there were no wall labels in this gallery’s booth. In fact, many booths didn’t have wall labels, some just hand-wrote the artists’ names on the wall – why, I wonder?

My favourites from STPI’s showing of Cheong Soo Pieng’s artworks. Not sure if these are part of STPI’s current exhibition on Cheong, but I must make the time to visit soon!

Light to Night Festival

Moving on to Light to Night Festival – there were two editions this year, firstly for Singapore Art Week with the theme ‘Traces and Echoes’ and the second for the Bicentennial (which ends tonight!).

I’m actually glad there were two versions of the festival, extending it from just a week to a whole month! I’d been so busy for the whole of January with work and life and yada yada, so I decided to check out the Bicentennial edition in February, which I thought would be more interesting.

Sticks is a light installation that keeps changing colours, and it’s inspired by the childhood game “pick-up sticks” and bakau piling, an old technique for constructing scaffolding. My sister tells me that she had played the sticks game during her primary school years, but I don’t seem to remember playing it too? Ah, a few years can already mean generation differences.

My favourite art skin was the one projected on the facade of The Arts House, about stories of the people who worked along the Singapore River. I like how the illustrations of the people projected on the columns remind me of Classical Greco-Roman sculptures!

There’s also this cute Alice in Wonderland-inspired installation, Open Books, situated outside The Arts House!

I really liked this quote! There were a few of these neon signs as part of the food bazaar outside National Gallery Singapore.

Yet another emphasis on Singapore Art… Though there’s still a ways to go.

I always love to capture National Gallery Singapore – the Supreme Court wing from this angle, and this is the most colourful I’ve seen it!

National Gallery Singapore’s art skin recounted the story of Singapore’s former Supreme Court and Civic District. I especially liked the bright colours projected on the Supreme Court wing, talking about how the building has been repurposed into an art museum, and the photographs of modern-day Singapore projected across the long stretch of the City Hall wing.

On the Bicentennial…

I had opted to only see the Bicentennial edition of Light to Night, due to lack of time and to see some light projections and installations that featured different narratives from the usual fare. As you can tell, the themes celebrate Singapore’s history and how far we have come.

While I did enjoy seeing these narratives, I’m not sure how the Bicentennial holds much significance in these festivals. The Bicentennial marks the 200th anniversary of Sir Stamford Raffles’ founding of modern Singapore in 1819. While this fact has never, in my opinion, held much negative connotation in the public eye, the focus on the Bicentennial this year seems to have tapped into issues of colonialism and post-colonialism vs. nationalism and nation-building that I feel has not been much discussed in Singapore before.

I think the problem here is: Should we celebrate a colonial past, for all its good and bad, or should we be celebrating Singapore’s own history since 1819? Or even pre-1819? Note that 7 Stories from 700 Years talks about a longer history of Singapore beyond the supposed Bicentennial mark.

Some say this uncovering of a longer history is a move to ‘decolonise’ Singapore, but I’m don’t think that’s effective when the Bicentennial term is used everywhere. It appears that the creation of a special Bicentennial that doesn’t even seem to be too sure of what it’s celebrating / commemorating has led to confusion and some ruffled feathers.

I feel that the public stir has also been triggered by the Raffles in Southeast Asia: Revisiting the Scholar and Statesman exhibition currently ongoing at Asian Civilisations Museum, in collaboration with the British Museum. I wasn’t initially all that interested to visit – I was put off by the steep price! But after reading news about visitors’ disgruntled comments about it, I want to see it for myself now… Probably on ACM’s programme days when tickets to the exhibition are at a $5 discounted rate.

In any case, I find ACM’s exhibitions hit and miss, and Raffles in Southeast Asia is probably going to be a miss. If you’ll like to see an exhibition on colonialism that is more sensitively done, check out my review of Artist and Empire at National Gallery Singapore in collaboration with Tate Britain here.

The post Singapore Art Week | On the Bicentennial appeared first on Wording Art.

I currently find myself in a spot of free time that inadvertently came along unplanned, which leaves me feeling a little unsettled since I always want to know what direction I’m moving in. But, for now, I am enjoying this break, and I’m trying to make time to pursue my interests, and it feels nice to have this pause to think back on the past year.

But to go back to what ‘Prospect and Refuge’ is in the first place, it is a theory coined by the geographer and academic Jay Appleton in 1975 relating to architecture and how we perceive our spaces by looking to fulfil two desires of prospect (opportunity) and refuge (safety). A simple idea is like how I like to hang out in cosy cafe corners yet have a view of the outdoors while I blog, right about now!

Under the giant awning at South Beach.

Thinking further on it, I just thought it was a perfect way to sum up the feeling of having big dreams and wanting to keep moving forward but also wanting to stay comfortable. Last June, it felt really difficult to move away from Hong Kong because it was letting go of an amazing experience that I didn’t feel ready to move on from, though it is necessary for practicalities to come first (sometimes).

Though, of course, moving back to Singapore isn’t a bad thing at all! I spent a lot of time at first wandering around this sparkling, beautiful city.

Made my first stop of my exploring at the Apple Store which opened last May in Knightsbridge Mall (what a fancy name). I’m so grateful for it now because I sent my very precious Macbook there for repair when it broke down last month and the service was so good!! Just sharing my appreciation. :D

I also caught art exhibitions – like the massive Yayoi Kusama exhibition at National Gallery Singapore that I completely forgot to share on any platform whatsoever – that I plan to share here later as a way of catching up with everything over the last year. Art museums here are mostly housed in old, grand, colonial buildings with a touch of contemporary glass and chrome elements which Singapore is so good at at adding to old buildings.

When the polka dot phenomenon took over Singapore last summer.

A good mix of old and new in the National Museum of Singapore.

But geez, that transition between graduation and full-on ‘adulting’ is a tricky one! Despite all the well-meaning ‘advice’ you hear, you don’t really know what to expect until you start the job application grind, and thankfully, land your first interview and then the job (!!) after months of seemingly unending waiting time. But that’s if you decide to enter the workforce – making the decision to continue in postgraduate studies or to go out to work was even tricker to me.

Oh, the dilemma.

Revisited this gem The Thinker by Rodin at OUE Bayfront except it’s now politely barricaded. And I’ve got a much better-working phone camera with me now compared to the last time I captured this in Sculptures on the Street which I worked on 3 years ago now and I’m still so proud of!

Also saw this crazy hyperrealistic figure of a security guard by Marc Sijan at OUE Bayfront. Almost thought ‘he’ was real but it’s on a podium so it’s a piece of art, see!

I always took my (tertiary) education seriously, so I wouldn’t want to pursue postgraduate studies only for the purpose of ‘escaping reality’, but really to expand my knowledge and pursue my academic interest in a specific field (art history, of course!). That’s all and well, but then also comes the deciding factors of where I wanted to enter, funding matters, and the unavoidable point of your age matched to your amount of work experience (hi, real job, what internship?).

Another new photo of an old favourite: Sky Mirror by Anish Kapoor outside Artscience Museum.

In my final year of undergraduate studies, I asked a few professors about choosing between work and studies and I realised that there wasn’t one answer that could solve it all for me. After choosing to work first, when talking to colleagues about postgraduate studies, everyone also has varying ideas about how many years you should work first before studying further.

So, to anyone who happens to be stuck in this dilemma, weighing the pros and cons, considering the weight of what you might be losing out on or gaining in return, all I can say is: funnily enough, the quite unpleasant application process would help clear up whether or not you are ready for it, so plan ahead and give it a shot if you really want to do it!

Open call-out to SMU: please add a didactic next to this! It’s Bright Idea by Sir Michael Craig-Martin, isn’t it? I think it fits this university campus setting much better than the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, doesn’t it?

With that said, going out to work was great in propelling me out of my ‘refuge’ zone and in seeing what my prospects are. Identifying those prospects also gave me goals to look toward, one such as the ideal yet probably not very reachable ‘work-life balance’ (hahaha, in Singapore/Hong Kong, the ultimate dream).

Stopped for a photo break while cycling from East Coast Park to the Marina Bay area on a sweltering hot day last June.

Half-joking aside, work gave me a literal case of expectations vs. reality. For many of us art history students, the career goal is always to become a curator. Same goes for me! We might get student curating projects, and some people might remind students that to become an curator at the point of actually curating exhibitions takes a long time.

Side note: it’s funny and ridiculous how everything is ‘curated’ these days. Let me give an example: Reader, you are currently on Wording Art, a blog of curated art posts! Okay, but enough of that – curating is way far more than putting objects together in an exhibition and writing about it. It was only after beginning work in the field that I realised how wide the job of being a curator really is, which I think is great for managing my expectations of the job and seeing how I would like to keep moving forward in work.

Loving these boards for a store that is coming soon at Wisma Atria… What is it?? A fantastically themed cafe or retail concept? I’m just dying to know!

I suppose I’m writing this to ground myself somehow in my current stage of in-between-ness. The very wise words by Lewis Carroll couldn’t be more fitting for what I’m thinking about right now. And right now, I’m also really glad to have this little digital space of my own here that in one way, I see as a record of all the art things I’d seen and where I was at, and in the same way, this post serves the same purpose too.

Looking down from the 8th floor of the Central Public Library, where I discovered their fantastic reference section of art history books!

With all that said, here’s to new opportunities and good things ahead! And to more posts overcrowded with pretty pictures, as per usual, hahaha!

The post Prospect and Refuge | In Architecture, Art and in Life appeared first on Wording Art.