Never would i have thought that i will go to a museum on my own accord because i never really enjoyed the ones my school brought me, because most of the museum would only tell me about history of singapore and nothing else, and nothing related to Art. I didn't know what to do a week into my post As already since ive done most of the things i wanted to do in singapore, so i've decided to drag Jana to SAM and explore because i've never been there before. I can honestly say im pretty impressed even though im not someone that appreciate Art a lot. In this post im going to give you my very honest opinion about everything and from a non-artsy person POV because it was an unguided tour.
This is what someone did previously on the board
This is mine. I know it doesnt make sense. HAHA
There are many books with local artists who drew their artwork and compile them into books which you can browse through them. You can see the different kind of art work on my vlog which will be up real soon! Here is one of the many images.
and from this photo i can see the stars forming. Its just amazing.
And this gives me an overview of the ocean at the side with fine details in the centre.
I really love how they played around the various kinds of ways that they can play a video and its amazing how they can cordinate all three screens like that.
After that, we came upon these paintings, wait. Sketchings. These three art are being drawn entirely with different shades of pencil. With a little help of a little water the artist is able to create an art.
I couldnt really quite understand this in the beginning as i thought it was just another 3D potrait of a person. Jana pointed it out that the entire sculpture is being placed together with different pictures captured through various parts of a person's body to place it together. She also told me this just shows how inaccurate photography is because humans are atually imperfect in photos as seen from the different shades of skintone on the legs, or what people would normally call it; pixelated.
Different shade of colors.
I find this very disturbing because its just purely made up of hair and its so huge. The meaning behind this is because its a trendy looking kind of hair style called shaggy back in the days and it emphasizes on how women places great importance on how they look i.e. Vain.
These are meant to be tables and books. The books have blank pages because it shows that in this modern society people are always re-learning and re-reading new things therefore every new page is a fresh blank page to be filled with new knowledge.
I didnt know how water level would align when being tiled at an angle. I was never this observant.
This is an art made by purely red paint being splashed all over. Gives the creeps because it looks so hellish.
Image of NS men protecting our country. There are also potraits of maids and the older generation (x generation) as well. This shows the different groups of people who made Singapore who she is today through protecting the country, helping out domestically as well as working together as a generation to bring Singapore to greater heights for us. ( the Y generation )
I dont know why but this is my favourite. Reason being its relatable and i liked how this piece of art is being done up. This is made up by johnson's baby no more tears shampoo bottle cap. Using 8000 pieces of them, it made up the potrait of Lee Kuan Yew by just leaving some caps open and some caps closed. HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?! I was so blown away because of how he came about doing this art and using johnson's baby no more tears shampoo bottle caps to bring out the message. Remember we learnt that lee kuan yew cried because of the separation from Malaysia in 1965 in our social studies? The artist is trying to a convey a message to tell mr lee kuan yee not to cry anymore, thus the "no more tears" shampoo caps. THIS IS SO AWESOME. I cant even. This artist is a genius.
This shows the typical HDB flat that most singaporeans own.
And this potrays how our typical MAMA shop has everything that we ever want to buy, ranging from house equipment like mops, pails, broom to food like bread, different drinks, tibbits as well as our essentials like towel, shampoo, soap. This really brings back a lot of memories. I remember how i always went to buy a drink or biscuit from the mama shop as i wait for my bus to come in primary school at my house downstairs.
This is what your typical grandpa or grandma would wear.
There is this pile of stickers that you are able to design your own HDB and so Jana and I made them.
This was mine; liking it simple and plain.
We didnt have to pay any admission fee because we are students (yay for student perks), we went into the museum and went into this dark room to watch a short flim. It was really disturbing because of the sound effects and all. Forgotten to take photo there :(
We walked down the museum and we saw these tiny whiteboards with words being cut out and decided to form random words with it.
And Jana's! I dont understand it though.
We entered an exhibition abouts books. These are 2D and 3D images of books. I dont really get the meaning behind the art of it(sorry not an art student), but i was really impressed by how they framed the pictures with this very pretty golden frame and it really caught my eye. The 3D books are made up of styrofoam to potray how books are like on shelves. They are so detailed that you wouldnt even feel that its made up of styrofoam.
Next we went to this dark room where there are many different kinds of sculpture. I really liked this raindrop structure, kind of reminds me of the kinetic rain in terminal 1. Its amazing how so many little golden raindrops can make into such an interesting sculpture. When i was there, there were a bunch of caucasian little kids with their teachers and they had to draw this sculpture on their sketchbook. The teacher was telling them to go around the sculpture to have a different view of the sculpture from different angles. I walked around and its amazing how the patterns u see on the giant crystal ball changes, just like the one in this photo where you can see little crosses forming in the sculpture.
We went into this room with only 3 large screens. They showed a clip " House of opaque water" about how an island in India was being washed away by the waves and being submerged forever, displacing thousands of people from their home. I really liked how the three screens showed different view at once. Like this widened the scope of the stairs that one can capture through the video.
This is a sculpture made by rattan and wire as we go up the stairs.
We finished the special exhibition and head down to learning gallery 1 and 2 to learn more about singapore. (yes, singapore again)
To my surprise it wasnt that boring because these learning galleries summarizes how singapore progresses through paintings and images rather than lengthy explainations. In fact, there wasnt any explainations printed on the wall as compared to the special exhibition as seen above. Im very curious about this picture because i couldnt quite figure it out. If you all do tell me ok? (sorry my chinese sucks)
And this is Jana's!
And that concluded our trip to SAM. I didnt really take much photos because i recorded most of them in my videos so stay tuned!
Honestly, i feel that its a place worth visiting especially if you havent visit this place before if you are a singaporean, even if you are a not an artsy person like me. You will be drawn into beautiful paintings and sculptures just like how i was. Its free and 10mins walk from cityhall or bugis so why not? I will definitely explore other museums as well. My first trip to a museum was definitely fulfilling as i get to see so many different kind of art produced, both locally and internationally as well as how videography can also be made into an art.
With that said, im ending the post here. Will upload the video soon:)
