SAM’s got you covered this month with art-filled activities that guarantee a memorable day out and quality bonding time with your friends and family!
From exhibitions that spotlight the distinct art practices of outstanding Singaporean and Southeast Asian artists, to a blockbuster exhibition by internationally renowned artist Olafur Eliasson, audiences can expect more exciting art experiences that explore contemporary issues in our world today at SAM's anchor venue in Tanjong Pagar Distripark, as well as other locations in Singapore and overseas.
Here’s how you can make the most out of your visit to SAM this month:
Exhibitions In Singapore
SAM Late Nights
Photo Credit: Singapore Art Museum
Venue: SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 5 Jul 2024
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Fee: General admission fees to the exhibition applies
Experience the magic of SAM Late Nights featuring a series of special programmes held in conjunction with Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey, the first major solo exhibition in Southeast Asia by the renowned Icelandic-Danish artist.
Catch a performance by dance artist Jieying Nah, who explores the interplay of breath, shadows, and movement inspired by an installation in the exhibition, capturing the visual wonder of Eliasson's creations. For film enthusiasts, enjoy a special screening of Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, a captivating documentary by Stephen Nomura that delves into the life and journey of Japanese composer and artist Ryuichi Sakamoto, a trailblazer in electronic music genres.
A Weekend with SAM
Venue: SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date & Time:
- 6 Jul 2024: 1pm to 5pm
- 7 Jul 2024: 8.30am to 3pm
Fee: Free programmes | General admission fees to the exhibition apply.
The excitement crescendos over the weekend with diverse programs designed to ignite creativity. Participate in an art-making workshop to unleash your creative spirit and commemorate your museum visit with a unique hand-drawn caricature at Your Curious Podtrait. For those seeking relaxation, indulge in self-care amidst a living moss wall, where gentle yoga poses and introspective journaling prompts explore the connection between movement and breath.
A Weekend with The Everyday Museum
Photo Credit: The Everyday Museum
Venues & Times: Various timings & locations
Date: 27 to 28 Jul & 2 to 4 Aug 2024
Later this month, engage with The Everyday Museum's public art programmes centred on the theme of "Embodied Voices," offering talks, workshops, and performances that provide new perspectives on everyday environments. Participants can join a workshop to craft their own pinhole cameras from household materials and explore light, shadows, and perspective or experience Sekali Theia, an immersive audio journey responding to Sookoon Ang’s Moonlight installation, exploring the coexistence of multiple temporal and spatial layers within Tanglin Halt’s emptied flats and the Rail Corridor’s spectral tracks, and how they influence those who traverse them.
The fruit of deceit by Grace Tan
Photo Credit: Singapore Art Museum
Venue: Level 2, Block 39, Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Corridor, Staircase and Service Balcony facing port
Date: now to 15 Mar 2026
At Block 39 of Tanjong Pagar Distripark, delicate floral garlands, pollination trails and nutmeg fruits embellish an exterior staircase and passageway. Presented as a response to the history of Tanjong Pagar and its evolving identity, the notion of nature as a commodity is foregrounded here against the physical site of the old Keppel Harbour and present-day Tanjong Pagar Distripark—logistical nodes from different eras that facilitate the circulation of materials, goods, ideas, people and capital. Drawing from the artist’s explorations for an earlier commission Sea of flags, The fruit of deceit extends the colour compendium of Tanjong Pagar through the visuals of the nutmeg, alluding to its slighted history in Singapore’s development.
ChildISH
Photo Credit: Singapore Art Museum
Venues & Dates:
- Punggol Regional Library – till 21 July
- Woodlands Regional Library – 24 July to 8 September
- Jurong Regional Library – 11 September to 27 October
- Tampines Regional Library – 30 October to 15 December
Reignite your childhood wonder with a multi-sensorial experience at regional libraries across Singapore. As we gear up for the launch of the Learning Gallery at SAM in July, ChildISH warmly invites you to explore a whimsical world where art and poetry intertwine. This enchanting exhibition features the creative works of five talented local poets, each crafting literary pieces inspired by the Learning Gallery’s artworks. Paired with captivating installation by Tan Zixi, ChildISH offers interactive installations that seamlessly blend poetry and art, creating a unique sensory adventure.
Perfect for families and kids, this showcase promises to ignite curiosity and joy, celebrating the wonder of childhood. For more details, visit this link.
Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey
Photo Credit: Franca Candrian
Venue: Gallery 1 & 3 and The Engine Room, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Road, Singapore 089065
Date: now - 22 Sep 2024
Fee: Purchase tickets here | Free admission for students and children 6 years & below
Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey is the first major solo exhibition in Southeast Asia dedicated to the work of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. The survey exhibition presents a broad range of artworks that employ diverse media to touch on the major themes of his three-decade-long practice – embodiment, experience, perception, as well as the urgency of climate action and more-than-human perspectives.
In his art practice, Eliasson has been driven by the desire to make the ungraspable tangible. Artworks like Beauty (1993), Symbiotic seeing (2020), Ventilator (1997); and Adrift compass (2019) use ephemeral materials, such as light, wind, fog, and water, to conjure evanescent phenomena – shimmering rainbows, swirling mists, the split-second sculptural form of a spouting fountain –or make invisible elements of our surroundings like air or magnetic fields experienceable. Other works, like The cubic structural evolution project (2004), invite visitors to collaborate on creating shared experiences, building shared worlds.
Visit Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey for more information.
Singapore Art Museum Learning Gallery
Photo Credit: Singapore Art Museum
Venue: Gallery 2, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 20 Jul 2024 onwards
Childhood is a universal milestone of human experience. It is an age of passionate curiosities, imaginative play, spontaneity, and an uninhibited relationship with the world allowing children to view issues in a fundamentally different manner from adults.
The new Learning Gallery at Singapore Art Museum seeks to enhance learning of contemporary art through the lens of a child and childhood, recognising the creative potential inherent in a child’s approach to and experience of both art and life.
In the lead up to its opening in July, SAM is presenting ChildISH at the regional libraries, an interactive exhibition that features evocative poems by five local poets responding to the artworks that will be featured in the Learning Gallery. Paired with captivating illustrations by artist Tan Zixi and pupils from Ang Mo Kio Primary School, ChildISH reminds us of the profound impact that childhood has on our lives. The exhibition kicks off at Punggol, before travelling to Woodlands, Jurong and Tampines till December 2024.
Rhapsody in Yellow – A Lecture Performance with Two Pianos by Ming Wong (Singapore/Germany)
Photo Credit: Sebastian Reiser
Venue: Singtel Waterfront Theatre, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay
Date: 16 to 17 Aug 2024
At a time of rising tensions between the United States and China, artist Ming Wong presents a musical lecture performance that traces the journey of Sino-American “ping-pong” diplomacy, starting with President Richard Nixon’s historic state visit to communist China and his meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong 50 years ago. Evoking an international piano competition and a table tennis match, two classical pianists collaborate on and improvise a performative unification of the sonic regimes of the US and China.
In a ping-pong double concerto accompanied by archival moving images and spoken word, they explore the role of European classical music, modernism and myth-making in the rise of these two nations in the 20th century. From table tennis and television to tanks and trade wars, Rhapsody in Yellow – A Lecture Performance with Two Pianos charts the changing balance of power between the two nations, in a duet of discord and harmony, chaos and serendipity, humour and pathos.
Jointly presented by Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay and Singapore Art Museum, as part of The Studios 2024.
Singapore Art Museum Collection Exhibition
Photo Credit: Tehching Hsieh
Venue: Level 3, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 6 Sep 2024 to 20 Jul 2025
This exhibition is the inaugural exhibition in Tanjong Pagar Distripark’s new gallery and marks the beginning of a dedicated space devoted to the SAM collection. The exhibition will reflect the expanding scope of the museum’s collection, encompassing various media, geographies, and subjects. Notably, this exhibition will feature recent donations, underscoring SAM’s active engagement with donors in expanding its collection in recent years. Scheduled to run for approximately nine months, the exhibition will be complemented by a variety of programmes aimed at facilitating diverse conversations around the collection with the public.
Lost & Found: Embodied Archive
Photo Credit: Paul Salveson
Venue: Gallery 3, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 25 Oct to 24 Nov 2024
Lost & Found: Embodied Archive is the second pillar of Lost & Found, a multi-phased curatorial project exploring the significance of archival documentation and records through artistic practices. By studying how artists collect what seems uncollectable, assemble that which resists assembly, and present that which defies visibility, Lost & Found engages with questions concerning the authoritative voice of archives and history.
With an emphasis on the process-driven and durational aspects of the participating artists, Lost & Found: Embodied Archive is a month-long unfolding that will examine the intersections between the body and memory. By inhabiting the gallery space, artists will be activating their work and engaging with audiences throughout the exhibition period.
Yee I-Lann: Mansau-Ansau
Photo Credit: Yee I-Lann
Venue: Gallery 1, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 6 Dec 2024 to 23 Mar 2025
Mansau-Ansau in Dusun – the language of the Dusun and Kadazan of Sabah – means to journey without a specific destination or to walk and walk without knowing where one is headed. It is also the name given to a weave created by the Sabahan artist, Yee I-Lann, and her collaborators, weavers Julitah Kulinting, Lili Naming and Shahrizan Bin Juin. It is a pattern with no pattern. A pattern that follows its own rhythm.
The exhibition takes us on a journey through two decades of Yee’s practice, examining the nature of politics, the administration of power and body, navigating domains of knowledge old and new, as well as the fluidity and possibilities across boundaries. Here the horizon line teases, mats become bridges and pathways of knowledge, and the mountain is as much a compass as it is a place for remembering. Following the presentation at SAM, the exhibition travels to Kunstmuseum Thun (Switzerland).
Pratchaya Phinthong: Free Fall
Photo Credit: Pratchaya Phinthong
Venue: Gallery 1, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 6 Dec 2024 to 23 Mar 2025
Free Fall, the first solo exhibition of Bangkok-based artist Pratchaya Phinthong in Singapore considers ideas of self-determination and objects as avatars of chance. The works of Pratchaya Phinthong marks a critical strand of conceptual practices in Thai contemporary art. Much of the artist’s conceptually driven practice is premised on collaborative processes, modes of exchange and the transference of artistic agency that redefine the value and significance of art.
Translating research, scientific discoveries, economic theories, and even rumours into experiential forms and gestures, the exhibition presents major explorations underpinning Phinthong’s two decades of practice that reflects his modes of conceptual thinking and research.
Tours
Docent Tour of Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey with SAM Docents
Photo Credit: Singapore Art Museum
Venue: Gallery 1, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Road, #01-02, Singapore 089065
Date: Every Thu to Sun
Time: 2 pm - 3 pm
Fee: Free (Admission fees to the exhibition apply)
Explore Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey alongside our SAM docents as they lead you on a guided tour.
Exhibitions Abroad
Seeing Forest by Singapore Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia
Photo Credit: Robert Zhao Renhui
Venue: Arsenale’s Sale d’Armi, Venice
Date: now to 24 Nov 2024
The observation of the ultimately unknowable in the natural world is a hallmark of artist Robert Zhao Renhui’s praxis. Since 1998, under the auspices of his own semi-fictional Institute of Critical Zoologists, Zhao’s many and varied projects have served as lenses that highlight the resilience of nature and the various interactions that occur when such resilience overlaps with human life and society.
Notably, over the last seven years, he has been focusing on secondary forests in Singapore — forests regrown from deforested land due to human intervention such as development and plantation — and the new ecosystems that have developed within it. For the Singapore Pavilion, decades of Zhao’s accumulated observations are condensed and organised into an intensive installation that complements the scale and condition of the Singapore Pavilion in Arsenale.
Through this exhibition, we see how the island of Singapore has evolved to arrive at the present day, revealing some of the ways in which human urban design can shape the natural world itself, resulting in an ecosystem of migrant species that echoes the trajectories and makeup of the city’s human population. At the same time, Seeing Forest also highlights phenomena that are universally relatable to those living in any urban environment.
Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger
Photo Credit: Singapore Art Museum
Venues & Dates:
- Art Sonje Center, Seoul: now to 4 Aug 2024
- Hessel Museum of Art, New York: now to 1 Dec 2024
- MUDAM, Luxembourg: 7 Feb to 31 Aug 2025
Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger is a mid-career survey exhibition of the artist’s practice that spans two decades worth of paintings, films, theatrical performances, and video installations. Ho’s works often draw from historical events, documentary footage, art history, music videos and mythical stories to investigate the construction of history, the narrative of myths, and the plurality of identities. The exhibition also features a new commission that reflects on the embodied and heterogeneous experiences of time.
Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger is co-organised between Singapore Art Museum and Art Sonje Center (ASJC). Following the presentation at SAM, the exhibition travels to ASJC in Seoul from 4 June to 4 August 2024, and Hessel Museum of Art in New York from 22 June to 1 December 2024.
Presentation of the Benesse Prize Artists' Works in collaboration with Singapore Art Museum
Photo Credit: Benesse House Museum
Venues & Dates:
- Benesse House Museum, Naoshima, Japan: now to 6 Jan 2025
-
Matabe, Naoshima, Japan: now to 14 Jun 2027
The works by the winning artists of the Benesse Prize awarded at the last three editions of the Singapore Biennale (2016, 2019, 2022) will be presented at Benesse House Museum on Naoshima island, Japan, in collaboration with SAM. The award-winning works include installations by 2016 prize winners Pannaphan Yodmanee (Thailand) and Zul Mahmod (Singapore), and new works by 2019 prize winner Amanda Heng (Singapore), specially conceived for this occasion. The most recent recipient of the Benesse Prize, Haegue Yang (South Korea), will also unveil a new site-specific installation in collaboration with Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand) at Matabe, a traditional Japanese house located in the residential area of the island.
《珍珠—南方視野的女性藝術》Ocean in Us: Southern Visions of Women Artists
Photo Credit: Anne Samat
Venue: Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, South+ Special Collection Galleries
Date: 5 Oct 2024 to 16 Mar 2025
Ocean in Us: Southern Visions of Women Artists is a collaborative exhibition between the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, National Gallery Singapore, and the Singapore Art Museum. Drawing from the female artists' collections of the three institutions, the exhibition explores various aspects of contemporary women's art along the following themes: The Landscape of the Body, Ways of Healing, Migration and Settlement, and Non-human and Ecologies – foregrounding international interdisciplinary connections while revealing the multifaceted and flourishing landscape of contemporary women's artistic expressions. Ocean in Us also marks the 30th anniversary of KMFA and the third exhibition of the museum's "Constructing Historical Pluralism" series – focused on presenting narratives from the peripheries.
