No S'pore at next year's Venice Biennale!

If Singapore wants to get into the rah-rah mode at next year’s Venice Biennale, it would probably have to link arms with Malaysia—and head over to the Australian Pavilion. That's where Singapore-born, Malaysia/Australia-based artist Simryn Gill will be as she represents the Land Down Under. After much speculation—that probably equals the cliffhanger final episode of the second season of Sherlock—the National Arts Council has finally confirmed that there won’t be any pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Here’s the official statement from NAC.

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“As part of the National Arts Council (NAC)’s ongoing review of all its platforms, we have decided not to stage a country pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. NAC intends to critically re-assess Singapore’s long-term participation at this event to ensure optimal benefits to visual arts development. “Says Mr Khor Kok Wah, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, NAC, “NAC will review our Venice participation and consult our visual arts advisors and members of the arts community.  We will re-examine the relevance of participating in future Venice Biennales, before deciding if we should continue our participation in 2015. If so, our aim will be to ensure that our future presentations will contribute more systematically and effectively towards visual arts development in Singapore.” “In re-examining out future participation in the Venice Biennale, NAC aims to provide more commissioning and internationalization opportunities to our artists.   In addition, NAC also hopes to involve non-public sector arts organizations to become active stakeholders and partners for Singapore’s participation at international platforms. This will help build a pool of artistic talent, curatorial capabilities and related skills for artists and these supporting organizations. “In the meantime, we continue to invest in our visual arts development, which includes grant and rental assistance of at least $7.3M for the visual arts and support for the upcoming Singapore Biennale (a 10% increase from the previous year). This year, we also partnered NUS Museums to start a new curatorial programme that will help groom a pool of 16 young curators, and will work with Singapore galleries, the museums, and arts centres like the Substation to present and nurture young and emerging artists.  We will also look to supporting new arts intermediaries under our newly launched Seed Grant. “Specifically to support our artists and curators in gaining international exposure, NAC will continue to extend our travel and international collaboration grant, and to support international arts exchanges and international residency programmes. For example, NAC continually looks for and supports our artists to take part in new and diverse platforms, such as Biennales in Liverpool Sydney, Gwangju,  Istanbul and other international showcases such as Documenta and Asia Pacific Triennale, which have attracted considerable traffic and attention from the art world over the years. In addition, NAC will support Singapore artists who are invited by Venice Biennale curators to participate in the curated sections* of the Venice Biennale. (*This is different from pavilions presented and paid for by national agencies for national presentations.)”

*** So basically, it’s looking to be like the Singapore Arts Festival all over again, as they review the rationale and feasibility of the participation. We can only assume the reasons behind it, but judging from the lengthy bits that followed—about involving “non-public sector arts organisations to become active stakeholders and partners for Singapore’s participation at international platforms”, the S$7.3m for the visual arts and the Singapore Biennale (is the 10% increase because there’s the SB?), and basically everything else they’ve normally been doing anyway—one could hazard a guess that it’s because it’s expensive and they’d rather spend the moolah on something else, and also get the private sector involved. You could probably summarise the statement as: We’re still supporting artists, we’ve got new schemes, we’ll still be there in case they get a shot at all these biennales and stuff (including Venice)—but to a point. But I, for one, am rather disheartened by this bit of news. Sure, there’s no guidebook that says there must be a Singapore Pavilion at Venice and this review doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be one in the future. But I think they’ve not so much dropped a bomb as dropped the ball. Singapore’s participation has been turning out to be a nice run—with the last two showcases by Ming Wong and Ho Tzu Nyen getting critical acclaim and firmly putting Singapore on the international art map. To put a halt to it just when there was a kind of momentum is rather baffling. Those among us who think in dollars and cents won’t think much of the news—it is after all, darn expensive to put up one in a place very few of us would likely get to go to (although not necessarily to see—because Wong’s has been exhibited in SAM and Ho’s has been travelling and SAM has acquired the work). There is, on the surface, no obvious financial return of “investment.” But if it wants to be seen as a serious player in the contemporary art scene, it has to be there. If it wants to be taken seriously as a regional art market power player, it needs to show that it takes its own artists seriously enough to believe it's right up there with, in theory, the best of the best. (And of course, it helps that there's a certain prestige attached to the Venice Biennale that any artist or country can leverage on.) I’m still trying to piece the puzzle together, but here are a few thoughts running through my still bewildered head. This year, Singapore also took a step back from Cannes’ Film Market (presumably of course, because it already had a ScreenSingapore—although going by its critics, it still has to prove itself). (And as a few readers have also pointed out as a reminder: the Singapore International Film Festival's in limbo and of course, the subsuming of "arts" into culture as part of changes in ministries. Oh, and lest we forget, no Arts Fest next year.) Also, in a couple of weeks, Gillman Barracks and its slew of international galleries (and a homegrown one in FOST) is about to open. The perfect art market partner for Art Stage Singapore—which, incidentally, has also recently announced that it will be setting up a big-ass Indonesian Pavilion with a “Galleries” section. Which kinda seems like a dry run of sorts because, for the first time, Indonesia is setting up its own Pavilion... at the Venice Biennale next year! So you’ve got a flagship arts space and a flagship art fair that are both international in flavour (and with the latter falling head over heels with Indonesia) and hungrily aiming to bring in prospective art buyers—and yet, even after we’ve realised that we’ve got the homegrown talent that has got the international art scene curious at the very least, we’ve gotten coy about flying the Singapore flag overseas. Hmmm. By the way, if it really is a question of funds, what if they got the People's Association on board for a community art event. Didn't Ai Wei Wei once bring 1,000 of his countrymen from all walks of life to Documenta?