Affordable Art Fair S’pore reveals details for Nov edition

SINGAPORE — Itching to hang one of those famous street murals you’ve seen in Penang on your walls? Well you can, in a way. Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic’s works will be sold at the second Affordable Art Fair (AAF) edition this year in November.

It won’t be his huge murals, obviously, but spray paint on wood pieces to be sold at Malaysian gallery Art Square, one of the new faces at the fair, which runs from Nov 20 to 23. There will be 101 galleries spread over six paddocks (up from five) at the F1 Pit Building. Works will still be priced between S$100 to S$10,000, with 75 per cent of these under S$7,500.

Other updates: The popular “Under S$1,000 Wall” will be more tightly curated, say organisers; there will be workshops on watercolour, sculpture and photography; and among the special programmes is a live painting performance courtesy of Instinc Gallery, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

The big question, of course, is, with AAF now doing two events a year, with the one held last May, will it be more of the same? Marketing manager Alan Koh assures that November’s will be “fairly different”.

Starting next year, they’ve told returning galleries they can’t repeat artists (and for this year, they can only bring back one). Of the expected 800 artists whose works will be sold in November, 360 will be new.

AAF has proven quite popular in Singapore. Last year’s edition brought in S$4.9m and 17,800 visitors. In May, the fair sold S$3.7m worth of art and drew in 13,300 visitors. And Koh says the group is confident they’ve made the right decision to hold two in a year — and with other art fairs setting up shop as well. “It’s a good indication that things are getting exciting here. It took us four years to decide on doing a second one (in one calendar year) and we’ll now stick to what we do.”

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And the same as last year, there’s a “teaser” exhibition of sorts at ION Art Gallery, with whom the fair is collaborating to showcase of its Young Talent Programme 2013/14 winners.

Developed together with curator Seah Tzi-Yan, the show features the works of Hilmi Johandi, Noor Iskandar and Lennard Ong, all of whom present interesting uses of technology and playful experimentations with their media of choice.

Hilmi’s Framing Camellia: Fragmentation Of Frames is a painting-meets-video installation that’s an extension/distillation of his Dusk To Dawn solo at OCBC Centre last June. Mixing the aesthetic language of painting and movies, it begins with a triptych that appropriates visual elements from old P Ramlee movies, an old travel documentary and Chua Mia Tee’s National Language Class to present a narrative revolving around an enigmatic woman named Camellia, who “moves” from frame to frame in the painting — before the tale comes alive in a series of “animated paintings” that evoke an atmosphere informed by Hilmi’s love of French New Wave cinema and affection for his parents’ era.

Meanwhile, Iskandar plays with the medium of photography, Islamic tropes and the idea of death in his installation Paradie. It takes off from responses from the public on what their ideas of Paradise are, as well as on how they would like to die. These are written on pristine Polaroid films and pieces of white cloth cut from a funeral shroud, respectively. These frame a prayer rug (flipped) — on which a prayer/poem by a famous female Sufi mystic is printed — which extends through the length of the room, ending in a poem written by Iskandar. On both sides are the artist’s photographs printed on the reverse side of photo paper, his interpretations of the respondents’ ideas of Paradise, which seemingly melt away, Iskandar’s idea of a “dying image”.

In contrast to Paradie’s contemplative melancholy and Camellia’s moody mystery is Ong’s quirky Filament Forest.

Imagine squeezing toothpaste to create shapes and lines — then imagine it’s plastic instead of toothpaste. That’s what the architecture-trained Ong’s sculptures — on huge pieces of tree bark — look like. Using a self-made computer machine (nicknamed “V-bot” and also on display), he experiments with various materials — in this case, primarily plastic made of the same grade as the ones used for Lego bricks — to tease (and squeeze) out various drawing-as-sculpture possibilities. This playful exploratory process could, he says, be the starting point for something architecturally bigger, as seen in a video.

It’s a show that’s just as interesting as last year’s, which featured works by Vellachi Ganesan, Lavender Chang and Alecia Neo, the latter two having gone on to bigger things: Chang was one of this year’s finalists at the Icon de Martell Cordon Bleu and also has a work at SAM’s Sensorium 360° together with Neo.

Affordable Art Fair is from Nov 20 to 23 at the F1 Pit Building, 1 Republic Boulevard. Tickets from S$12 at SISTIC. For more information, visit http://www.affordableartfair.com/singapore.

The Young Talent Programme 2013/14 Winners exhibition runs until Sept 23 at ION Art Gallery. Free admission. Applications for the next YTP batch is ongoing until Sept 15. For details, visit http://affordableartfair.com/singapore/at-the-fair/young-talent-programme/