Art review: The UOB Art Collection

SINGAPORE — As a showcase of a collection with deep pockets and a long association with the arts, it goes without saying that The UOB Art Collection: Drawing From Our Past, Framing The Future features a veritable who’s who of art in Singapore, with Cultural Medallion winners metaphorically rubbing shoulders with a profusion of other renowned artists, spanning a period of time from the pioneering Nanyang artists such as of Liu Kang and Georgette Cheng to the present day.

Given the bank’s particular association with painting via their 34-year-old UOB Painting of the Year Award, it comes as no surprise that the exhibition leans heavily towards paintings and other two-dimensional art forms. The exhibition’s four sculptures — small works by Ng Eng Teng, Vincent Leow, and an Italian sculptor — come across as accents, or afterthoughts, to the show as a whole.

Regardless of one’s particular tastes in art, there are visual stunners aplenty, ranging from various modes of abstraction, nostalgia-dappled views of the city, formal experimentation and social commentary from a number of angles, such as Erzan bin Adam’s It’s Hip 2 B Square, the 2001 prize-winner which marries the multicultural textile heritage of Singapore with bitumen, a substance familiar through its application on our roads. Some other standouts in this regard are the relentless yet serene geometric grids of Anthony Poon’s Square Forma II, and the lavishly rendered, explosively kinetic Boom #8 by Boo Sze Yang.

Despite the eclectically abundant visual smorgasbord, it is not all sunshine and roses. For instance, regardless of your stance on abstract paintings of the Singapore River, Tay Bak Koi’s eponymous painting suffers somewhat behind a pane of textured glass, with the result being that it looks more like an inkjet print of itself. Scattered throughout the exhibition are a number of inspirational, art-related quotes from the likes of Albert Einstein, Paul Cezanne and S Rajaratnam, the end result of which is a vaguely saccharine atmosphere, tinged with a touch of nationalism.

In a sense, the strength of the show in bringing together all of these meritorious artworks and artists also becomes a liability of sorts, in curatorial terms — what is it which links these works to one another? Do they relate and interact on a level beyond cursorily ticking off checkboxes for meeting some standard of excellence and being related to Singapore?

Rising gamely to the challenge, the exhibition loosely ties the individual works together in a narrative of economic development in the region, parallel to the bank’s own growth over the past eight decades, with the inclusion of a number of non-Singaporean artworks being a nod to the bank’s own expansion beyond Singapore’s shores. Marking the 80th anniversary of the venerable financial institution, it is an exhibition that is as much about the bank as it is about its collection of art, attested to in part by Chua Mia Tee’s UOI Building, muscling out its neighbouring shop houses in the background. And while Quek Jing Cheng’s Singapore Idols #2 is avowedly a celebration of the oft-overlooked foreign construction worker, there is a degree of kitsch to it, which wavers between sincere tribute and unthinking exploitation. Bruce Quek

The UOB Art Collection: Drawing From Our Past, Framing The Future runs until Nov 18 at Galleries 1 and 2, NAFA, 11am to 7pm, Mondays to Sundays. Closed on Nov 10.