Tropical Lab 12 'Sense'
Each year LaSalle College of Arts in Singapore hosts a 2 week art residency for around 25 artists from across the globe. The intensive period of research & art making is called Tropical Lab. This year, 2018, the artists responded to the word 'Sense'. Myself & 23 others embarked on this period of study to make work for a month long exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA Singapore). Several blog posts will follow this with details of elements in Singapore that provided inspiration for my own project & the process of making for my own work.
This short post will show some of the facilities & spaces that allowed the work to happen. Also I will outline some of my own goals heading into the project.
During what is the summer school break in Singapore the tropical lab artists have free reign on the Workshops, Library, Studio & 3 gallery spaces in the school. There were also dedicated members of staff & some students present every day to offer support in whatever request the artists had. We were initially shown around the school, followed by the local art & hardware supply shops & also the best places to get coffee, beer & food.
It seems like Singapore is very switched on to contemporary art, within a half mile radius to LaSalle College of arts were several other art schools & institutions, a plethora of art supply shops, copy shops, print shops & small galleries showing new & emerging artists. In the space of 2 weeks we were invited to many art openings & talks, plus open studio visits. The dialogue in these venues was varied with international artists, art prizes, emerging artists & established artists. Galleries were in converted colonial churches, shipping containers, revamped army barracks, glossy glass fronted buildings, converted apartments & modern extensions to neoclassical galleries.
For my own project around the word Sense I wanted to explore,
- A sense of Space within the City & to activate the vestibular sense that maintains our balance.
- I had an interest in finding common materials, urban waste & exploring forms of expression in the public realm.
- I wanted to see the mechanics & systems that allow such a place to function both visually & practically. How are the humans guided or ushered around the infrastructure & what agency architecture has on influencing daily life.
- I wanted to explore architecture at risk, social housing & state architecture.
I believe each of these points were touched on within my research in Singapore but in 2 weeks the project needed to be narrowed down. The overwhelming topic for my work became, Social Housing, Common Materials, Urban Waste & Systems of Practical Function. All of these things packed neatly into the housing estate that I chose to look at, the Rochor Centre. This building is prepped for demolition & covered up but at the same time can not be hidden as each block is painted a bright colour. Red, Yellow, Blue & Green. Once a bustling, crowded housing complex it now sits as an empty relic in the cityscape as workers take it apart by hand.