I can’t believe it’s already the end of 2016! It’s always surreal and exciting to jump into a new year. Just less than two weeks ago, I finally crawled out of my End of Semester writing hole that I had wormed my way into and very quickly found myself heading to Singapore for a holiday in time for Christmas! It’s been three years since the last time I was back in town for Christmas, and I have to say that this year’s decorations in Singapore are absolutely gorgeous!
I’ve recently made it my mission to read more art books. I’ve always been an avid reader, and currently, I’ve been wanting to try reading new genres beyond fiction. The China: Through the Looking Glass catalogue was my first step into that!
China: Through the Looking Glass was a huge blockbuster exhibition happening at the Met Museum in New York last year and I really really really really wanted to go. I didn’t, but the gorgeous catalogue offers a very nice consolation with a few essays on the theme behind the exhibition, and pictures of (most of) the exhibits. More pictures of a few of my favorite exhibits from the catalogue below. Also: you can follow along with what I’m reading on goodreads – it’s on my Reading Art widget in the sidebar. :D
National Gallery Singapore opened late November last year, and I was of course eager to check it out during my summer in Singapore! It’s at the site where the former Supreme Court building and City Hall used to be, which have now been restored and combined to form Singapore’s newest art museum. The architecture is gorgeous (but I will save that for another post), and there’s a slew of galleries with many exhibitions ongoing at the same time.
The standout exhibition to me (when I went) was Wu Guanzhong: Beauty Beyond Form located at the Wu Guanzhong Gallery that boasts to be the biggest exhibition of Wu’s work ever done. It’s being held through 25th September 2016. I wonder if the Wu Guanzhong Gallery will only contain Wu’s works? We’ll have to see about that, for now, more on Wu Guanzhong: Beauty Beyond Form!
Time for some catching up with the places I visited during my summer trip to Singapore! The first thing on my itinerary was to visit Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. I’d driven past it a number of times but never thought much of it other than that it was an old abandoned railway station.
While looking up Annie Leibovitz’s recent exhibition Women: New Portraits in Hong Kong, I realized it toured Singapore before coming to Hong Kong. It exhibited at an interesting choice of location – Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. I had absolutely no idea that the railway station was even in use at all!
Turns out that the station has been open to visitors on Singapore’s public holidays since February last year, so I decided to check it out on Hari Raya Puasa (July 6th) just a few days after I landed in Singapore.