Wei-Ling Gallery is proud to announce their participation at Art Stage Singapore in January 2016 at Marina Bay Sands Exhibition Centre Singapore.

The gallery returns to Art Stage with two levels of participation this year where they will be presenting a booth in the main section of the fair as well as with a solo project at the SEA platform.

For the general booth (booth number H14), the gallery will be presenting a curated selection of works by the gallery’s artists who represent a cross-section of the contemporary Malaysian art scene today and reflects on the gallery’s rotating program. This includes both old and new pieces to demonstrate the development of the artists over the years. The focus will be on major works by each respective artist. Participating artists: Amin Gulgee, Chin Kong Yee, Chen Wei Meng, Choy Chun Wei, Ivan Lam, Michal Macku, Stewart Macfarlane and Yau Bee Ling

Chong Kim Chiew represents Malaysia at Art Stage Singapore’s curated section, Southeast Asia Forum

SEISMOGRAPH: Sensing the City – Art in the Urban Age
With a brand new installation entitled Badminton Court.
The work consists of a life-sized badminton court where a high fence has been used to replace the original net dividing the court. The court is divided into two spaces where the audience can play the game, but the shuttle-cock will be hard-pressed to cross the fence to the other side.

In an urban context, there are a variety of fences used to protect and isolate us from the dangers that we encounter in our daily lives, we live in an urbanscape that is full of fences and divisions. The relationship that exists between the artist and the audience, the artist and the nation, is akin to a sports game where they strive to communicate with each other, but the high fence between them makes the relationship tense and difficult for the message to be transmitted accurately.
Chong Kim Chiew’s Badminton Court is an interactive installation that encourages audience participation.

The work will be situated at location number 8 in the South East Asia platform section and is presented by Wei-Ling Gallery from Malaysia.

“Southeast Asia Forum” is a new programme situated within Art Stage on two tenets: (1) the idea of ‘agora’ as, in ancient Greece, a public square where people not only gathered to trade but also to listen to and discuss ideas on civic society; and, (2) the artist’s role as a ‘seismograph’ of society. Southeast Asia Forum will have two components: a programme of discussion panels and talks and, an adjoining exhibition.

The theme selected for 2016 is urbanisation. The aim of the inaugural edition of the forum is to make the case for art to be regarded as part of the urban DNA, in the same vein that designers and planners build and shape cities. It emphasises the role of artists and intellectuals as seismographs of society’s pulses, and, the inimitable importance of the humanities and social sciences in the global era. Bringing together architects, urbanists, social scientists, men and women of letters, and of course, artists, the forum will examine, through their different perspectives, the challenges of urbanisation and how cities can be re-imagined through different ways of seeing, learning and cooperation. In creating encounters between observers, thinkers and planners in these different fields, the forum seeks to bring about more inter-disciplinary understanding and collaboration in shaping the underpinnings of cities as they continue to evolve as localities in parallel to shared global conditions.

The forum will also turn attention onto our immediate region, Southeast Asia. There will be an adjoining exhibition surveying the role of artists as seismographs of society across Southeast Asia. The exhibition is centred on artists who relate to issues and sentiments of extremely rapid urbanisation in their own cities, towns, developing localities within the Southeast Asian region and context. The selection will be limited to 12 artists whose works are strong and leave an imprint on the mind. It would be necessary for works in the exhibition to be related to this scope, e.g. impacts of urbanisation on communities and individual outlook, sentiments towards how this has affected the environment and rural areas/populations, how do artists create ‘maps’ and ‘scapes’ of their localities through their practice, how do artists treat urban space, public space.