https://www.scmp.com/rss/14784/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Watches that tell “blurry” time, lamps inspired by puzzle knot toys and contemporary furniture fit for ancient ascetics — just some of the designs to look forward to at Design China Beijing’s second edition. The fair, which opened on Thursday, features more than 200 exhibitors and independent designers, with a focus on sustainability and craft. The South China Morning Post spoke to six Chinese designers participating in the event about cultural heritage, global influence and what sustainability... https://www.scmp.com/business/chinese-designers-find-ready-market-their-wares/article/3026925?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/business/chinese-designers-find-ready-market-their-wares/article/3026925?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 12 Sep 2019 10:58:45 +0000 Watches that tell “blurry” time, lamps inspired by puzzle knot toys and contemporary furniture fit for ancient ascetics – just some of the designs to look forward to at Design China Beijing’s second edition. The fair, which opened on Thursday, features more than 200 exhibitors and independent designers, with a focus on sustainability and craft. We spoke to six Chinese designers participating in the event about cultural heritage, global influence, and what sustainability means for them. Kun Qi,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3026746/when-ikea-no-longer-enough-chinese-designers-inspired?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3026746/when-ikea-no-longer-enough-chinese-designers-inspired?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 12 Sep 2019 04:15:04 +0000 “We won a public tender [for the exhibition design project] by coming up with a concept built around a pilgrimage. It was about encountering journeys, seeking a particular goal and learning about your­self: the calling, the separation from reality, the actual journey, a moment of contemplation, a new lesson and the return to reality. How would one stitch the different spaces and rooms into something powerful enough to immerse somebody?” Interpretation “It was about letting the artworks speak for... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/design-interiors/article/2183306/making-minimalism-designer-national-gallery?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/design-interiors/article/2183306/making-minimalism-designer-national-gallery?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:45:45 +0000 As art biennales go, Singapore was a latecomer. While large-scale international contemporary art exhibitions started popping up throughout Asia in the 1990s – Taipei (1992), Gwangju (1995), Shanghai (1996) and Busan (1998) – the Lion City didn’t have its version until 2006, the year it hosted the International Monetary Fund-World Bank Group annual meetings. A decade on, the Singapore Biennale – its fifth edition opens on October 27 and will run until February 26, 2017 – has done much to catch... https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2039876/singapore-biennale-has-come-long-way-focusing-close-home?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2039876/singapore-biennale-has-come-long-way-focusing-close-home?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 26 Oct 2016 04:00:30 +0000 On stage and in publicity photos, Phil Stanton, a member of the award-winning Blue Man Group, is so slathered in blue greasepaint that no one can recognise him offstage. This anonymity serves the 57-year-old well. “That’s the great thing about this project. I can walk around and live a life like anybody. I say that, but I am anybody,” he says. 10 events to keep Hong Kong schoolchildren entertained over the summer holiday The joys of being everyman is something Stanton often returns to in a... https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/1995608/award-winning-blue-man-group-bringing-physical-theatre-extravaganza?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/1995608/award-winning-blue-man-group-bringing-physical-theatre-extravaganza?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 27 Jul 2016 22:01:58 +0000 When a passenger boarded a Zetta Jet in South Africa a couple of years ago, he ordered champagne and caviar. So far, so first-class, right? Except, the frequent flier wanted a specific caviar only available in Europe. So Zetta Jet sent staff to source and fly in the caviar from Geneva. The total tab for caviar alone? US$150,000. “We can make it happen,” says Geoffrey Cassidy, managing director of the private jet airline which has its headquarts in Singapore. “We do have some weird and wonderful... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-luxury/article/1902316/private-jet-operators-court-chinas-billionaire-travellers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-luxury/article/1902316/private-jet-operators-court-chinas-billionaire-travellers?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 18 Jan 2016 22:03:24 +0000 After two hours chatting with war hero Captain Ho Weng Toh, it's a surprise to hear the nonagenarian describe himself as a freak. "How many 95-year-olds do you know? I'm still able to go around independently at my age. I'm still relatively healthy and active. My mind is still sound, my memory is still good. To me, that's a freak," he insists. The energetic senior citizen is halfway through writing a memoir of his "long and complicated" life, he says, which is an understatement. One of the few... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1876267/remarkable-life-and-times-former-flying-tiger?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1876267/remarkable-life-and-times-former-flying-tiger?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Nov 2015 16:00:00 +0000 On a hot summer day, a group of journalists are waiting politely for it to rain indoors. Standing on a stage set designed to look like a movie backlot, they look expectantly up at the lighting rig. Someone gives the cue, and, suddenly, water - piped in from two storage tanks backstage - gushes down from 16 nozzles overhead. The sight is surreal and splendid. One can hardly resist the urge to stick out a hand to feel the "rain". It is warm to the touch - 23 degrees Celsius, to be precise. "It's... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1855241/singin-rain-make-splash-hong-kong-stage?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1855241/singin-rain-make-splash-hong-kong-stage?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Sep 2015 10:02:10 +0000 Two years ago, Mezame Shashin-ka was a cosplay enthusiast in Singapore, dabbling in photography, and wondering how to make his two hobbies commercially viable. He bought a full-frame digital SLR camera, began experimenting with lights and Photoshop software and eventually became a professional wedding photographer. Now, thanks to a Star Wars-themed photo album for a soon-to-wed couple, the Singaporean lensman's work has gone viral. The pre-wedding pictures - which look like stills from an... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1841492/star-wars-walking-dead-cosplay-wedding-photos?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1841492/star-wars-walking-dead-cosplay-wedding-photos?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 20 Jul 2015 22:30:15 +0000 My nine-year-old son is perched on a stationary bicycle in the middle of an art gallery, pumping his legs furiously as he leans forward to go up an imaginary hill. His effort pays off: kinetic energy is converted into electricity, and, suddenly, wall panels light up with the text: "The energy you generate came from the sun." The room erupts in oohs and aahs from onlookers. Titled Greenroom II: Interstellar Overdrive, the installation is made up of bicycles hooked to generators, which power LED... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1757545/childrens-art-show-goes-interactive-singapore?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1757545/childrens-art-show-goes-interactive-singapore?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 06 Apr 2015 22:08:43 +0000 Bodian Diatta dwarfs the barbecue pit as he tends to the chicken pieces sizzling over charcoal. A sports instructor by day, the Senegalese home chef is making one of his specialities, poulet yassa, a tender chicken marinated with oil, lime, onions and chilli, to welcome me into his home. It is an incongruous sight: this tall, strapping man cooking under the streetlight in a narrow road in suburban Singapore. We communicate in smiles, nods and simple words, and Bodian gestures that the food will... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/1677957/its-airbnb-foodies-plateculture-lets-diners-book-meals?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/1677957/its-airbnb-foodies-plateculture-lets-diners-book-meals?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 Jan 2015 09:45:15 +0000 A curator is in a cage at the Singapore Art Museum. Granted the "cage" is delineated by green laser beams but it effectively prevents visitors from walking right through the "bars". Titled Cage, this is the work of Chinese artist Li Hui, who suggests that people imagine boundaries where there are none, relying on faulty perception rather than material reality. "Light is something we can't touch, but yet it can turn into something that can obstruct," says Li, 37. "An amazing metaphor for how we... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1569199/making-sense-senses?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1569199/making-sense-senses?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Aug 2014 04:46:15 +0000 Of all the clients that software developer Erwan Mace has worked with, the toughest customer might just be his own daughter. Last year, Mace and his seven-year-old, Lia, started working together on an app to help parents keep track of how much time they had spent with their children. "One day, I was putting her to bed and, out of the blue, she said: 'I have an app you can make'," says French-born, Singapore-based Mace, 41, on how their project began. "I was quite shocked." Lia's initial idea had... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1556989/app-developer-learns-few-things-his-seven-year-old?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1556989/app-developer-learns-few-things-his-seven-year-old?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 22 Jul 2014 02:39:15 +0000 Few art galleries can boast of having the 10 Courts of Hell as neighbours, but a temporary creative space in Singapore has staked that claim. Housed in a building within Haw Par Villa, the storied kitschy park filled with sculptures and dioramas built by the late Tiger Balm tycoons Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par, weeks-old contemporary art venue Latent Spaces is a stone's throw away from the gardens' best-known attraction: the gruesome 10 Courts, depicting what happens to bad folk after they... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1496734/hell-gets-new-neighbour-contemporary-art-venue?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1496734/hell-gets-new-neighbour-contemporary-art-venue?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 Apr 2014 09:49:22 +0000 Mention to Monica Lim that her debut novel, The Good, the Bad and the PSLE, seems to be perpetually out at Singapore's public libraries, especially in middle-class neighbourhoods, and she replies, without missing a beat: "Maybe the people who've borrowed the book will return it very quickly." In a country where parents are often obsessed about academic excellence and acing the seemingly all-important Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), the title is bound to appeal. Hong Kong parents... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1445360/singaporean-author-crusade-against-asian-education-system?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1445360/singaporean-author-crusade-against-asian-education-system?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 11 Mar 2014 02:14:29 +0000 Seven years ago, robotics researcher Dr John-John Cabibihan was babysitting his 15-month-old daughter Marie, when, on a whim, he decided to see how she would react if he plonked a robot in front of her. Even though Marie didn't have any developmental issues, he watched as she interacted curiously with the robot. Cabibihan's thoughts turned to using robots as a tool for working with children who do have developmental issues, specifically autism spectrum disorders (ASD). People with ASD often have... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1434179/robotics-could-be-big-step-autism-therapy-stumbling?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1434179/robotics-could-be-big-step-autism-therapy-stumbling?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 25 Feb 2014 03:32:19 +0000 A few years ago, a Facebook note posted by Pamela Lim went viral in Singapore. In the post, the businesswoman turned stay-at-home mum recounted her struggles with Singapore's mainstream education system after a principal and teachers branded her son a troublemaker, and school therapists misdiagnosed him with autism. He was suspended from school for almost two years for misbehaviour. It turned out there was nothing wrong with him: he was merely gifted. When she took him out of the conventional... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1419935/singaporean-mother-sets-online-high-school-gifted-children?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1419935/singaporean-mother-sets-online-high-school-gifted-children?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 04 Feb 2014 01:37:31 +0000 Ask Art Stage Singapore's Lorenzo Rudolf how the contemporary art fair he founded, co-owns and directs has managed to stay in the game, despite competition in the region, and he'll reply with a mischievous answer: who are these rivals that people speak of? "I don't see so many players," he retorts. One could, of course, reel off names such as the India Art Fair in New Delhi, the Affordable Art Fair in Singapore, SH Contemporary in Shanghai and Art Basel Hong Kong, to name but a few. We are not... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1396743/art-stage-singapore-puts-regions-art-global-spotlight?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1396743/art-stage-singapore-puts-regions-art-global-spotlight?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Jan 2014 08:15:15 +0000 Behind the baroque facade of the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), at the foot of a chandelier-lit curving stairway, sits a traditional Malaccan fishing boat. Heaped into this wooden vessel are a thousand glass bottles, each bearing a message from a male inmate from the island republic's Changi Prison. The words, written on white labels affixed on the bottles, reflect the aspirations of each prisoner, spelling out what they hope to achieve after they are released. The hope is that the public can see... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1350768/change-better?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1350768/change-better?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Nov 2013 09:17:19 +0000 In a climate of cross-cultural "big-ism" - where German-named giant robots and Japanese-inspired monsters rule in summer blockbuster Pacific Rim - the latest theatre event to hit Singapore is similarly gargantuan. 3 Titans of Theatre is a series of three plays by three world-renowned theatre directors, smartly packaged together by the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) and the durian-spiked Esplanade performing arts venue. Shun-Kin, a sadomasochistic love story involving a blind shamisen player,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1304850/three-times-party?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1304850/three-times-party?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 An independent arts festival in Singapore is pairing up artists from different genres this week, creating strange bedfellows and reaping new multidisciplinary works. Lit Up, running from Friday to next Sunday, will see performances, workshops and talks by 50 artists at the new Aliwal Arts Centre, a former school building converted by the National Arts Council to house arts groups and individuals. Among the offerings are "She Walks Like a Free Country", a series of solo, duet and group... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1281027/singapores-lit-festival-restates-art?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1281027/singapores-lit-festival-restates-art?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Jul 2013 16:00:00 +0000 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 -... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1255659/singapores-scale-models?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1255659/singapores-scale-models?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Jun 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Midway through the interview with Marc Quinn, this writer commits a faux pas. "Are you wearing a Damien Hirst T-shirt?" I ask, pointing at his lime-green top with a circular print of swirling colours, reminiscent of Hirst's splatter paintings. "No, I am wearing a Marc Quinn T-shirt," he replies, his placid and friendly manner frosting over. This British artist, after all, had launched a fashion range with Selfridges in 2011 that was favourably reviewed in British Vogue. Thankfully, our chat... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1197122/no-time-future-says-british-artist-marc-quinn?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1197122/no-time-future-says-british-artist-marc-quinn?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000 With new art museums, galeries, biennales, fairs, prizes and auction houses mushrooming at an accelerated rate across the region during the past few years, Asia - with a growing army of contemporary artists - is now a force to be reckoned with on the international art scene. Art Stage Singapore closed in thunderous applause at the end of last month after recording more than 40,000 visitors over the five-day event, while Manila has just staged its inaugural Art Fair Philippines and India its... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1156191/asian-artists-watch-2013?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1156191/asian-artists-watch-2013?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Feb 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Two months ago, He Yunni started dreaming about something that has gripped working mothers from Margaret Oliphant to J.K. Rowling: how to write a series of stories so successful that she could quit her day job. 'At this point, I'm still trying to figure out how to develop an angle,' says He, 35, a Singaporean lawyer, who has started working on a children's picture book with her seven-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn. Help is at hand for aspiring writers like He this week, as Singapore stages its third... https://www.scmp.com/article/1002085/something-write-home-about?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1002085/something-write-home-about?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Not too long ago, the Singapore Arts Festival pulled in record-busting audience numbers with big-budget, high-profile foreign acts. Over the past decade, its roster boasted names such as Chinese composer Tan Dun, British pianist-composer Michael Nyman, Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato and Compania Nacional de Danza, and France-based theatre force Peter Brook. Prestigious inter-festival co-productions also seemed the way to go, and mammoth productions - a Mahler symphony in 2004, for instance,... https://www.scmp.com/article/1000214/can-smaller-be-better?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1000214/can-smaller-be-better?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Moment and Eternity Third Floor, Singapore At first sight, Japanese artist Shinji Ohmaki's latest work is like a delicate floral mandala, or a colourful tattoo blooming on pristine white skin. Yet, beneath the motifs - inspired by traditional kimono patterns - are intimations of death and destruction. A kaleidoscope of ground-glass pigments painstakingly applied with stencils to the white, felt-carpeted floor, the installation Moment and Eternity is on at Hermes' Third Floor gallery in Singapore... https://www.scmp.com/article/999543/moment-and-eternity?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/999543/moment-and-eternity?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Singapore's latest lotus-shaped addition to its skyline and museum scene is unabashed about its mission to entertain. 'We want people to come here and have a good time,' says Tom Zaller, director of the ArtScience Museum. The Moshe Safdie-designed, privately funded museum at Marina Bay Sands officially opened the doors to its total of 50,000 sq ft of galleries last month - to great fanfare. And as part of its inauguration, it has lined up four exhibitions, including one on Genghis Khan,... https://www.scmp.com/article/740260/crossing-their-arts?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/740260/crossing-their-arts?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:00:00 +0000 If Genghis Khan were alive, what would he make of being the star of a show in an integrated resort with casino? 'I think he wouldn't like it at all,' says Don Lessem, the creator of Genghis Khan: The Exhibition, now on at Marina Bay Sands ArtScience Museum. 'For one thing, he had no taste for partying or being in a luxurious situation. For another, he didn't like attention on himself.' More than 200 artefacts related to the man and his reign (1206-1227) will be on display in the touring... https://www.scmp.com/article/740259/relics-bygone-age?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/740259/relics-bygone-age?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:00:00 +0000 At a recent Singapore Art Museum exhibition, visitors were invited to pick up little glass jars filled with dubious-looking liquids and give them a quick sniff - just as you would do with perfume bottles at a cosmetics counter. But in this case, the experience was not always pleasant. 'Cheeseburger,' said a docent, gleefully, as the pong of someone's salty feet assailed a tester's nostrils. The olfactory mystery was all part of Japanese artist Maki Ueda's work, Aromascape of Singapore, in which... https://www.scmp.com/article/737647/nasal-gazing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/737647/nasal-gazing?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:00:00 +0000 It's not every day you're encouraged to make a spectacle of yourself in an art museum. And in a phone booth, no less. At Trans-Cool Tokyo, a travelling show of 44 works by contemporary Japanese artists - on at the 8Q wing of the Singapore Art Museum until February next year - you can step into a mobile one-man disco housed in a phone booth and dance your heart out for 20 minutes. The booth is equipped with a disco ball, flashing lights, and a pair of headphones to deliver house music straight... https://www.scmp.com/article/731816/be-star-show?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/731816/be-star-show?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Pink Man is in trauma after going through the deadly riots in Bangkok in May. He doesn't know what to do next. So says Thai artist-photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom, the creator of Pink Man - a portly mustachioed 'uncle' type, flashily dressed in a cheap, shiny pink suit, tie, and often carrying a pink suitcase or pushing a matching shocking-hued shopping trolley. A staged figure who appears in modern Thai settings in Sriwanichpoom's glossy C-prints, the Pink Man (who is brought to life in... https://www.scmp.com/article/727727/manit-pink?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/727727/manit-pink?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Contemporary art has a soft spot for quirky double-acts: Gilbert & George, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the Chapman brothers, the Singh twins. Even John and Yoko. New Delhi-based duo Thukral & Tagra - better known as T&T - certainly fit the bill. They live together in the same house - a cheaply rented baroque architecture house - with their respective wives. They wear retro suits in eye-popping colours and crazy patterns, like Punjabi versions of Austin Powers, to support their local tailor who... https://www.scmp.com/article/725787/double-vision?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/725787/double-vision?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Charred skeletons lie heaped against the austere white gallery walls while golden crows perch and pick on them. Hanging near this grim scene are monochrome images - of glazed-looking boys and a weird, glaring man - painted with oil colours mixed with melatonin pills. But for its title, this art exhibition seems made of dark material. Illuminance, which is being held at the National University of Singapore Museum (NUS Museum) until November 14, is a collaboration of sorts between Indonesian... https://www.scmp.com/article/723876/their-dark-materials?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/723876/their-dark-materials?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000 The death of a pet dog is, for most people, the stuff of private tragedy; a footnote or whole chapter in one's maudlin imaginary memoir. For Singaporean artist Vincent Leow, however, it was the impetus for a series of new works musing on death, memory and monumentality - leading, fortuitously, to a mid-career museum retrospective. The artist's first solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum, now on until October 17, is a showcase of more than 50 works drawn from a prolific two-decade career,... https://www.scmp.com/article/721813/love-dog?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/721813/love-dog?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000 At 35, Chicago the musical is like a woman in her sexual prime: knowing, mature and smokin' hot. Since its Broadway debut, the show has been seen by about 18 million people in 17,000 performances worldwide - it premiered in Hong Kong a decade ago - but its style and relevance remain undiminished. Set in Prohibition-era Chicago, it combines vaudeville song-and-dance with the scandalous tale of two murderesses vying for supremacy in the cell block and the media. Next Thursday, the show... https://www.scmp.com/article/713983/alive-and-kickin?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/713983/alive-and-kickin?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 10 May 2010 16:00:00 +0000 For four days in Venice last year, Singaporean artist Ming Wong either ambled around dressed as an elderly gentleman in a three-piece white suit and panama hat, or masqueraded as a mincing, seductive teenaged boy in a blond wig and sailor suit. The results of his eccentric, costumed posturing can be seen in his latest video installation, Life and Death in Venice. A re-visitation of Luchino Visconti's classic 1971 film, Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann's novel, it has Wong playing both... https://www.scmp.com/article/711694/comedy-errors?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/711694/comedy-errors?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Pretty' can be something of a dirty word in contemporary art. But Malaysia-born, Singapore-bred artist Eric Chan is set on flying in the face of fashion to produce paintings that are unabashed in their pure need to be easy on the eye. Submissions to Beauty, the latest of Chan's dozen or so solo exhibitions, now on at the Amelia Johnson Contemporary gallery until April 24, is made up of nine large works that juxtapose monochrome, reverse-negative figures with bright blooming flora and... https://www.scmp.com/article/710065/pretty-personal?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/710065/pretty-personal?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Qing dynasty scholar meets vixen spirit in comely maiden form. Scholar falls for vixen spirit. Scholar woos vixen spirit... with a power ballad? That's the kind of surreal juxtaposition in an experimental take on the Chinese literary classic, Liao Zhai (Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio), in Singapore. Billed as 'a romantic rock musical of supernatural proportions', the East-meets-West production from stage company The Theatre Practice features music by Singaporean composer-producer Eric Ng... https://www.scmp.com/article/709339/shock-opera?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/709339/shock-opera?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000 It's every ice show organiser's nightmare and Tony Mercer is living it on opening day. On the Singapore leg of its two-year, 22-country world tour, his latest brainchild, Cinderella on Ice, has run into an unexpected glitch. The shed-sized chilling machine that helps produce the 14 tonnes of ice needed to turn the Esplanade theatre's stage into a temporary ice rink has gone on the blink. A backup machine has also failed to work, and the problem is traced to contaminated glycol (anti-freeze).... https://www.scmp.com/article/691808/go-floe?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/691808/go-floe?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000 The burly Sikh guarding the Valley Wing of Singapore's Shangri-La Hotel doesn't seem like a likely follower of Chinese cinema - then again, it doesn't take a cinephile to know who Zhang Ziyi is. And he does: when I approach him and explain why I should be granted entry, he whispers: 'She's very beautiful. Very simple.' To describe Zhang as simple may raise a few eyebrows these days, but she has been channelling the word of late. A decade into her sparkling career, having notched up an impressive... https://www.scmp.com/article/691624/funny-thing-happened?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/691624/funny-thing-happened?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000 As an art student, Singaporean painter Ian Woo just didn't 'get' representational painting. 'I had problems transferring what I saw onto the canvas,' he says. With mounting frustration and a niggling sense that he was not among the best in his cohort, he then experimented with colours and 'nothingness'. The resulting canvas won a prize in an art competition held by his alma mater, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, in 1990. Since then Woo hasn't looked back. These days the 42-year-old is... https://www.scmp.com/article/682258/woo-factor?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/682258/woo-factor?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:00:00 +0000 These modern productions are all very well', proclaims a ratty, old tom named Asparagus with disdain, midway through the musical Cats. 'But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell, that moment of mystery when I made history.' He may have been singing about his own past glories as Gus, the theatre cat. But the refrain seems especially apt when heard during a touring production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running, 28-year-old creation, which returns to the Lyric Theatre at the... https://www.scmp.com/article/678908/brand-mew-day?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/678908/brand-mew-day?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 On the cusp of last month's Oscar madness, feted director Sam Mendes is doing something mundane: he is taking his five-year-old son Joe to and from the doctor. Mendes has a lot on his plate. His film Revolutionary Road - starring his real-life wife Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio - has been nominated for several Oscars, and there is another film on its way, the comedy Farlanders, about a couple searching for an ideal place to raise their unborn child. Then there is a producer credit on... https://www.scmp.com/article/671588/bard-attitude?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/671588/bard-attitude?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000 It's an initiative that will turn the curators of Hong Kong's private museums green with envy. Late last year the National Heritage Board in Singapore officially launched its Heritage Industry Incentive Programme, a scheme that will subsidise the development costs of private heritage and museum projects by up to 50 per cent. Dubbed HI2P, the scheme will dole out S$8 million (HK$41.5 million) over the next five years, with a cap of S$100,000 per application. The money will be used to... https://www.scmp.com/article/669458/open-season?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/669458/open-season?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Not many people find it easy to remain friends with their ex-lovers. Fewer still go on to partner up in kooky art projects devoted to collecting and preserving the orphaned objects from broken relationships. But that's just what Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic have done. After ending their four-year romance in 2002, the Zagreb-based pair decided to put together an installation of items culled from failed relationships - partly as therapy to cope with the pain, and also as a kind of... https://www.scmp.com/article/668077/artbreak-hotel?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/668077/artbreak-hotel?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Soprano Nancy Yuen knows there is the potential for disaster playing the tragic geisha Cio-Cio San in Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly. It comes in the form of very young co-stars. She remembers one show in which she cradled a cute three-year-old boy - who played her son - as he cried and screamed through her final heart-rending aria. 'He cried all the way home,' recalls the internationally noted singer, who now insists that her stage-children must be five years or older. 'That kind of... https://www.scmp.com/article/664763/float-butterfly?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/664763/float-butterfly?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000 The Asian contemporary art bubble has deflated a little, as shown by tepid sales of top Chinese and Indian lots at Christie's Hong Kong last month, so it's little wonder an off-the-beaten-track group exhibition by Indonesian, South Korean and Singaporean artists has turned introspective. With a title that seems to protest art's limitations while affirming the resilience of the art market, the show We are Contemporary Art features 12 works by nine artists. It takes place until Tuesday at... https://www.scmp.com/article/664510/growing-pains?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/664510/growing-pains?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000 An artist is a professional traveller. So declares Beijing-based artist Qiu Zhijie, who is mostly on the road or jetting about, accumulating stamps in his passport. 'It's the only thing my wife and I fight about - my being away so often,' says the artist, who once walked 800km of a 1,100km journey to map Tibet with shackles on his legs as part of his Railway From Lhasa to Kathmandu project. 'Normal people spend their lives working and going on holidays or visiting museums occasionally for... https://www.scmp.com/article/653687/upwardly-mobile?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/653687/upwardly-mobile?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:00:00 +0000 As an art space converted from a former factory in Shek Kip Mei prepares for its official opening this month, a similar, but perhaps more focused and ambitious project has got off the ground in Singapore. Q8, short for 8 Queen Street, once housed the Catholic High Primary School, and later a church. It is now the new wing of the Singapore Art Museum (SAM). The 3,500-square metre space has four levels, two food and beverage outlets, a retail space, a children's gallery, and two function rooms.... https://www.scmp.com/article/652601/islands-young-find-sanctuary?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/652601/islands-young-find-sanctuary?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:00:00 +0000