ampulets

Friends, go watch The Impossibility of Knowing by Tan Pin Pin at the Singapore Art Museum as part of the Singapore Biennale 2011. It is screened together with another new film by Tan Pin Pin, Snow City and four other films. For all the criticism that the Singapore Biennale seems to be getting in the press and as part of the general reception, the works at 8Q SAM seemed to be pitched just about right in terms of accessibility, criticality and... er, indoor temperature. For me at least, most of the works at 8Q all had this dual quality: one is the aesthetic, peculiarity and assertion of a singular or individual vision; and two, the encounter of a collective or common reality, memory or experience. In some ways, this tension or conversation between the individual and the collective is art's unique value and contribution. But perhaps one should not expect a Biennale platform to always achieve that "just about right". Unlike the public museum or any other instit...

童年真美麗 － I drew the kids, but the idea and eventual layout are by J. The kids, of course, are not ours. They are made by my Bro E and his wife M. The oldest picture book on my shelf is a 1963 reprint of a small, pink cloth-bound book by Joan Walsh Anglund, Love is a Special Way of Feeling . I don't know how it came to be mine or how it is that I still have it with me, but I remember reading it as a child. That and some typical English animals-in-suits stories, plus Lady Bird versions of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales and Aesop's fables. For as long as I have book shelves, I've kept a special shelf (or three) aside for children's picture books. So when J's design studio took on several commissions for children's books, I couldn't be more thrilled - yes, it's all justified now! So when J and I walked out of M and S's lovely store Woods in the Books this weekend with 3 more picture books, I felt no guilt. Finally. No longer an indulgenc...