Singapore's scale models
Singapore's high property prices have made artists rethink their methods and scale of their work, writes Clara Chow
Singaporean artist Frayn Yong's recent work can fit into a few plastic containers, no bigger than a standard document box. It's not that he's a laggard. It's because his works - painstakingly fashioned out of pencil lead - are small and delicate.
Assembled in his room in the five-room public housing flat Yong shares with his parents, the lead sculptures look nerve-rackingly fragile: one clumsy move and whole cities - essentially slim scaffolding glued together from this stationery-store staple - are crushed.
Exhibited at an art walkabout, named OH! (short for "Open House!"), in the skyscraper-bound Marina Bay district earlier this year, the architecturally inspired sculptures are a delicate echo of the soaring Singapore skyline, hinting at the impermanence of all that is man-made in the face of eternity.
Yong, 29, had been sketching with a mechanical pencil when he realised the thin graphite lead could itself be the artwork. "I was experimenting with the material itself, dealing with the concept of death and materialism," he says. "After all, carbon - of which graphite is a form - is the primary material of life. It is in our bones."
The artist, who also runs the UNDR interior design firm, adds: "I would love to do bigger work, but they would be a problem to store in Singapore." Still, he dreams about one day redoing his sculptures in a different, larger format. Perhaps "a whole landscape" of these works, if he can find suitable studio space to work in.
In Singapore, where soaring property prices over the past few years have made it tough for young people to buy their own homes, the lack of affordable residential and commercial space is also being felt by artists. This is a familiar story in Hong Kong, where space is equally precious and expensive. But in Hong Kong, artists can still find and share space in the numerous industrial buildings (thanks to the city's past as a manufacturing powerhouse) scattered in the more remote, and less costly, areas such as Fo Tan, Chai Wan and Kwun Tong.