Constructed Landscapes: Singapore in Southeast Asia

[Image:Lim Xiu Xiang, Singapore River, Batik painting on cotton, 1969]

Date: 28 Dec 2008 - 3 Dec 2009
Venue: NUS Museum

The University Art Museum (predecessor of NUS Museum) was inaugurated in 1955 at the then University of Malaya in Singapore. The collection formed a base for the teaching and study of Art History. Its holding of paintings, ceramics, fabrics and sculptures served as a vital archive and resource to interpret landscapes and themes in Singapore and Southeast Asia.This exhibition of Southeast Asian art is the third annual installment since 2006. Drawn primarily from the museum’s South and Southeast Asian collection and incorporating borrowed works from Singaporean artists and collectors, it focuses on Singapore and its connections to Southeast Asia. “Engagement”, “Memory” and “Imagination” mark themes for the show, comprising works by artists who paint with Singaporean settings / subjects.  Personal and collective memories, imagination, relationships with physical spaces, may all be discerned in the works.

Curator: Karen Lim

Guest Curator: A/P Lai Chee Kien

And the Difference is

[Gallery impression, And the Difference is, NUS Museum, 2008]

Date: 11 December 2008
Venue: NUS MUSEUM

As a collaborative exhibition between NUS Museum and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, And the Difference is will explore how interpersonal engagement can activate and galvanise aspirational contractual gestures, making true connections and encouraging real reciprocity between two cultures. The works in this exhibition will focus on personal interpretations of place and self, examining the potential for cultural difference to be reviewed through emphasizing our shared compulsion to imagine, mythologise and create.