2017 UNTAPPED DISCOVERY
2017 UNTAPPED DISCOVERY
Group exhibition featuring: Bryan Tan, Che Xinwei, Ernest Wu, Fiona Seow, Joshua Gomes, Lim Zeharn, Ng Wu Gang and Ong Lijie
Exhibition Design by Bradley Foisset.
Exhibition Dates: 9 – 22 December 2017
Opening Night: Saturday, 9 December, 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Open House: Saturday, 9 December 2017, 11 AM – 7 PM
Sunday, 10 December 2017, 2 – 5 PM & Sunday, 17 December 2017, 2 – 5 PM
The Visual Arts Development Association of Singapore (VADA) is proud to present UNTAPPED DISCOVERY. This exhibition features eight up-and-coming, Singapore-based artists. Hand-picked by the UNTAPPED Advisory Committee, these eight artists present work in a notably diverse selection of media.
2016 UNTAPPED DISCOVERY will take place at SHOPHOUSE 5 located at 5 Lorong 24A in Geylang. The exhibition opening will be held on Saturday 9 December from 7:00 - 9:00 PM. There will be an Open House also on 9 December at 7:00 PM prior to the Opening Night event. For enquires or to arrange a private viewing outside of these times please call +65 6338 6192.
About the 2017 UNTAPPED Series
UNTAPPED invites visual artists to apply to participate in one of two group shows to be held each year at SHOPHOUSE 5, an art space located in the Geylang area of Singapore. The goal of the series is to establish support networks and offer practical experience for local artists at this crucial early stage in their career. UNTAPPED does this by presenting two annual juried group exhibitions and by connecting artists directly with arts patrons.
UNTAPPED EMERGING exhibits new work by up to 10 artists with 2-4 years of professional practice. An Open Call for 2017 UNTAPPED EMERGING will take place in January 2017.
UNTAPPED DISCOVERY features new work by up to 15 artists between the ages of 16-35 within the first 2 years of professional practice.
The feature that sets UNTAPPED apart from other emerging artist programmes is its close collaboration with arts patrons. Local patrons provide the up-front funding for the project. In return, each patron is able to collect one artwork from each exhibition. This means that over a third of the artworks shown by these young artists will automatically be acquired by established art patrons. This goes beyond general exposure and connects artists directly with individuals who are actively supporting the visual arts in Singapore.
The Advisory Committee Members who judged and selected the artists were Boo Sze Yang (Artist), Martin Constable (Professor, The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Vietnam) and Adeline Kueh (Senior Lecturer, at LASALLE College of the Arts).
About VADA
The Visual Arts Development Association (Singapore) (VADA) was conceived in response to the growing need for an independent, not-for-profit arts organisation to service the needs of the burgeoning Singapore visual arts industry. VADA's in-built capability allows it to take the lead in developing platforms and opportunities for those individuals who will represent Singapore nationally and internationally in the visual arts.
VADA programmes are intended as “incubator initiatives” designed to identify and cultivate artistic and curatorial talent by providing developing arts practitioners both the exposure and practical experience required to establish sustainable careers in the arts. All programmes include presentation and sharing components, from exhibition and blogs, to publications and talks, artists and curators have opportunities to present their work to private and industry audiences as well as the community-at-large. For more information on VADA or UNTAPPED visit: www.vada.org.sg.
About the Artists
Bryan Tan (b. 1990, Singapore) graduated with a Diploma and BA (Hons) in Fine Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, in partnership with Goldsmiths University of London.
Through his drawings and installations, his works examine hidden energy in forms and space. He seeks to examine how these forms can merge with the space as a singular work, in both a physical and emotional dimension, bringing the viewer into a continuous reflection on space and the interaction of the material and our self with it.
Xinwei Che (b.1992, China) is a sculptor and a site-specific installation artist. She was raised in Singapore and received her BFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 2015. After graduating, she worked as an installation artist for Anthropologie, while building her own art practice. She is now based in Singapore and creates sculptures and installation work in her Tai Seng studio. She has exhibited internationally in Singapore, USA and the Netherlands.
Ernest Wu (b.1991, Singapore) studied film at Ngee Ann Polytechnic from 2008 to 2011 and is currently a final year student at Nanyang Technological University, School of Art, Design and Media pursuing a BFA in Photography and Digital Imaging. He has exhibited at Auckland Photo Festival, a group exhibition at The Private Museum and was recently part of Singapore International Photography Festival’s “NOMAD’ residency program in China.
Fiona Seow (b.1992, Singapore) graduated from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts with a Diploma in Fine Art (Sculpture) in 2015. With a background in Interior Design and an interest in space, geometry and numbers, Fiona’s works are usually an abstraction of the elements she encounter in the physical environment, primarily driven by an obsession with perfection and order, coupled with a compulsion to repeat. Her works are the by-product of various processes that she engages in to achieve a meditative state or a sense of pleasure.
Joshua Gomes (b.1993, Malaysia) graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2017, where he studied under the Tuition Grant for Art Institutions, awarded by the Ministry of Education, Singapore. His practice primarily engage themes of space, such as the nature of it and how an artwork functions within or affects said space, as well as the act of mark-making and leaving traces. His practice draws inspiration from his environment and the act of rationalizing or recontextualizing it. Joshua has participated in multiple local and international exhibitions: the two most recent being Talking Textiles #2 at One East Asia Gallery, Singapore, and the 3rd Taiwan International Miniature Sculpture Exhibition at the National Dr Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei. He has also completed multiple mural commissions in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. He is also a recipient of the Cheong Kam Hee Art Prize.
Lim Zeharn (b.1999, Singapore) is a recent graduate from the International Baccalaureate Career-Related Programme (IBCP) at the School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA), where he was conferred the Best in Visual Arts at the SOTA Awards Day ceremony in 2015. His works range from designed objects to kinetic and video installations. He employs wit and absurdity to focus on universal aspects of human experience such as time, consciousness and monotony. Zeharn has participated in many group exhibitions including ‘In An Echo We Remember’ (2017) and most recently, ‘Modern Panic VIII’ (2017), in London. He has also served as curator and organiser for several independent arts-related projects since 2015.
Ng Wu Gang (b.1988, Singapore) is a visual artist and a photographer from Singapore. His works are mainly documentary-based that narrates a story through his images. He graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts.Since 2015, Wu Gang has been documenting artworks for visual artists like Shubigi Rao, Jeremy Sharma and Sai Hua Kuan, as well as galleries like Sullivan + Strumpf Singapore and the National Gallery Singapore, where he assisted the curators of the museum to archive most of its permanent exhibitions. He has also participated in various group shows with his peers such as the Noise Festival (2015), and was the recipient of the Winston Oh Travel Award (2015).
Ong Lijie (b.1993, Singapore) received her BA(Hons) in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts and Diploma of Fine Arts (Printmaking) from Nanyang Academy Of Fine Arts. She is interested in themes of the consciousness, corporeality and anxieties. Her work features narratives in which the notion of body is explored as a tool to depict the consequences of anxieties, desires and their interdictions. Her practice reflects and investigates on the framing and nature of relations between the individual and the collective other. The making of her works combines various printmaking methods, drawing elements and metaphors. Her recent exhibitions include Malti’ at One East Asia Gallery and Art Square by ART STAGE Jakarta.