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State of the Arts: Oct 31 to Nov 7

SINGAPORE — The National Gallery Singapore, which is set to open on Nov 24, unveiled its two-week opening celebration plans, including an art carnival on the first weekend. Also announcing plans for its next edition in January was art fair Art Stage Singapore, which includes a new Southeast Asia Forum. There were also a slew of awards given out this week. In literature, there was the biennial Golden Point Award for short story and poetry in the four official languages, and the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize was awarded to O Thiam Chin for his novel The Infinite Sea. In visual art, Benjamin F Cruz won the UOB Painting of the Year award, while Indonesian Anggar Prasetyo bagged the overall South-east Asia award. Elsewhere, the inaugural Peranakan Arts Festival kicked off while the Singapore Writers Festival continued, with a slew of events including book launches — such as the Singathology literary anthology — and the launch of new Singapore poetry website Poetry.sg. Another festival, the Malay CultureFest, is scheduled to kick off today, as well. Amid the frenetic series of events was the more sombre news of the passing of gallerist Stephanie Tham of Galerie Steph, a known strong supporter of the local visual arts scene. MAYO MARTIN

SINGAPORE — The National Gallery Singapore, which is set to open on Nov 24, unveiled its two-week opening celebration plans, including an art carnival on the first weekend. Also announcing plans for its next edition in January was art fair Art Stage Singapore, which includes a new Southeast Asia Forum. There were also a slew of awards given out this week. In literature, there was the biennial Golden Point Award for short story and poetry in the four official languages, and the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize was awarded to O Thiam Chin for his novel The Infinite Sea. In visual art, Benjamin F Cruz won the UOB Painting of the Year award, while Indonesian Anggar Prasetyo bagged the overall South-east Asia award. Elsewhere, the inaugural Peranakan Arts Festival kicked off while the Singapore Writers Festival continued, with a slew of events including book launches — such as the Singathology literary anthology — and the launch of new Singapore poetry website Poetry.sg. Another festival, the Malay CultureFest, is scheduled to kick off today, as well. Amid the frenetic series of events was the more sombre news of the passing of gallerist Stephanie Tham of Galerie Steph, a known strong supporter of the local visual arts scene. MAYO MARTIN

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