Posts on Art

Displacing Singapore

I wrote this essay in 1998, for a volume of photographs by Lucas Jodogne, titled Singapore: Views on the Urban Landscape. Lucas’ photographs were marvelous, a sort of warm version of the New Topographics.

Jan 3, 2023 - 12 min read

Marjorie Doggett - in three histories...

…or four really, since it is also a story of Singapore publishing… this based on a short speech I made at the launch of Marjorie Doggett’s Singapore: a Photographic Record, published by the Photographic Heritage Foundation, Hong Kong, with NUS Press, and supported by the Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation.

May 16, 2022 - 5 min read

the Merlion and other monsters

As an invented symbol, apparently born fully-grown from the head of an ichthyologist, the Merlion is most fully a monster, with its mixed charge of fear and attraction, for Singapore’s poets.

Dec 20, 2020 - 18 min read

The Singapore Public Art Database

A new iteration of the database of public art in Singapore, at PSMedia.Asia/publicartsg One slow-burn project of mine over the last twenty years has been documenting public art in Singapore.

Dec 20, 2020 - 2 min read

modern Buddhist murals

The Isipathanaramaya murals The Isipathanaramaya is a Theravada Buddhist temple in a prosperous early 20th century suburb of the Sri Lankan capital city, Colombo. It was commissioned in 1916, by Colombo merchant D.

Sep 12, 2020 - 5 min read

The 55th Golden Horse Awards

a guest post from Lee Chor Lin, looking at what in retrospect turns out to have been a key turning point in the cultural relations between China and Taiwan - the Taiwan-produced Golden Horse Awards have long been a key marker for the sinophone world. But sometimes the tensions just become too much.

Nov 21, 2018 - 7 min read