All Together Now

Basically, we (Jen, Miguel Chew, Haslinda, Theresa, Pewee) were chatting at Food #03 – BenBino's,

and we were talking about Green Papaya (an independent artist run space in Manila) and given some background information about the art scene in Manila.

One of the interesting thing which was raised in a chatting with pewee (actually, this is probably not spelled like that) was the idea of periodizing collectivism. Basically, there is very little written and understood about art collectives. This happens in Singapore art very often, the idea of collectivism in art is very one dimensional.

Often stories are these collectives are very simplified. Much like the survey exhibition of The Artists Village in Singapore Art Museum (even though I was part of the curatorial team and very much involved in the curatorial process), it does not show much about this 20 year old art collective.

Almost suggesting that this was an art collective, who started it and this is the kind of artworks made by this people. Working on it – made me realised the limitations involved in trying to put this exhibition together. In that sense, I am not discrediting the curatorial team but hey, on hindsight, this could be done better but we were up against the 'dominant ideology' of art in Singapore.

Basically, the budget given was seriously quite difficult and impossible to work with – that means that there was not enough space and resources. This suggests that The Artists Village is not important enough in the eyes of the Singpaore Art Museum. As a result of this and various commitment issues and confusion, we managed put together a 'starter-pack' kind of survey and merely scratched the surface. Much like Zai's installing memory piece. We took it (The Artists Village) out of the box and quickly put it back again. Hopefully, in ten years time, TAV will be worth taking out of the box.

Lastly, back to the point of this post, we need to understand the different forms of collectivity which exists when artists come together. At this moment, every thing about art groups / collectivity in art is seen too simplistic. This is problematic as different ideologies exists in collectivity and different periods creates different forms of collectivity. Even through time, the collective changes and could transform into a different kind of entity. Sadly, this seems like a daunting task that no one wants to attend to now.