Some new trends in the post-war Singapore art scene

After World War II, the art scene in Singapore and Malaya underwent rapid changes.

The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) under founding principal Lim Hak Tai (1893–1963) had reopened in 1946 and was now attracting students of different nationalities such as British, American, Australian, Czech, Indian and Indonesian for postgraduate studies.

Such a development was what Lim, well-versed in both Chinese and Western art, had wanted for NAFA. In 1955, he reviewed his original objectives for NAFA and expanded them into six guidelines, namely integrating the cultures and customs of the various races, fusion of the art of the East and the West, developing the spirit of science and current social thinking of the 20^th century, expressing the local flavour through art, reflecting popular demands of local people, and emphasising the educational and functions of fine art.

New ideas from abroad

From the 1960s, there emerged a number of second-generation artists such as Teo Eng Seng, Choy Weng Yang, Thomas Yeo, Ng Eng Teng (1934–2001), Goh Beng Kwan and Anthony Poon (1945–2006), who studied in Europe and the United States after completing their basic art education in Singapore. They returned with new ideas, creating works with a significant impact on the art scene in the 1960s and the 1970s. What they stood for somewhat echoed the aspirations of the Modern Art Society, which had a few members who studied abroad.

Apart from Choy, as well as Teo (who attended evening art lessons at the British Council), all of these second-generation artists had either attended NAFA, or studied under a NAFA teacher, before going abroad for further studies. A little later came women artists such as printmaker Chng Seok Tin (1946–2019) who had studied in NAFA in the early 1970s before pursuing art studies in England, France and the US from the late 1970s to 1980s, and sculptor Han Sai Por, who studied in the UK and New Zealand after graduating from NAFA at around the same period.

The art scene in the 1960s also saw various arts groups and associations, many of them visual arts societies, coming together to form the Singapore Arts Federation. Despite their diverse aesthetic directions, their practice was characterised by the primacy of painting, which could be traced back to the 1920s and 1930s.

Cheo Chai Hiang’s Singapore River

This remained unchanged until 1972, when Cheo Chai Hiang, a member of the Modern Art Society who was then studying in England, submitted a proposal for a work to be shown at the Modern Art Society’s annual exhibition that year. Cheo’s proposed work, titled Singapore River, consisted of a set of instructions to draw a 5′ x 5′ square on a wall and the floor. As a piece of conceptual art, it challenged the dominant status accorded to painting in Singapore, especially with the Singapore River as a ubiquitous subject matter for landscape works. Ho Ho Ying (1935–2022), then-president of the Modern Art Society, rejected the work, suggesting in his reply that the artist had not considered how the viewer might respond to it. Ho found Cheo’s submission unconvincing, describing it as “hollow”, “empty” and “monotonous”.¹On the other hand, Cheo in his conceptualist strategies intended to provoke the audience to examine assumptions underlying painting in Singapore, an aim which would have met the ambition of the Society.

Questions, especially those regarding what was art and what was non-art, arose from this exchange over Cheo’s Singapore River. This was a time when younger artists returning from their studies in Europe and the US “began to re-examine notions of place, time and self in relation to specific cultural and social context”.² Although Cheo’s proposal was then unrealised, it sparked much discussion and has come to be regarded by the National Gallery Singapore as one of the preludes to the contemporary practice in Singapore.³

The Artists Village

In the 1980s, especially towards the end of the decade, a number of emerging artists in their late 20s and early 30s, such as Wong Shih Yaw, Vincent Leow, Lim Poh Teck, Amanda Heng, Baet Yeok Kuan, Lee Wen (1957–2019), Ahmad Mashadi and Zai Kuning, initiated practices such as performance and installation art, whose aims differed from those of established art forms. They were drawn to The Artists Village, a contemporary art group founded by Tang Da Wu in 1988 at Lorong Gambas, Sembawang, where exhibitions and performances were held until 1990. Since then, The Artists Village has been operating without a studio or an exhibition space, with only an office at Hindoo Road. It holds most of its events in public places, where it hopes to bring art closer to people.

State support for visual arts

From the late 1970s, a number of major state-supported visual arts initiatives were realised. A formal exhibition space specially for art exhibitions was made available in the National Museum in 1976. This function was later taken over by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), which opened in the restored building of St Joseph’s Institution in Bras Basah Road in 1996. SAM’s main approach was to organise exhibitions from its permanent collection and in collaboration with other organisations. In 1991, the National Arts Council was established, assuming the functions of the National Theatre Trust, Singapore Cultural Foundation, and the Ministry of Community Development’s Cultural Affairs Division. Visual artists and art groups would be able to receive support through schemes such as grants, scholarships, and provision of studio facilities, on top of participating in events such as arts festivals and biennales. In 2015, the National Gallery Singapore, housed in the former City Hall and Supreme Court buildings, was established. The gallery currently holds the world’s largest public collection of Singapore and Southeast Asian art, consisting of more than 8,000 artworks.