Art review: In A Cowboy Town...人在江湖.....

SINGAPORE — Given that it is the latest solo exhibition by Cheo Chai-Hiang, who is widely regarded as the pioneer of conceptual art in Singapore, all may not be what it seems at the ongoing show at Michael Janssen Gallery titled In A Cowboy Town ... 人在江湖 .....

To begin with, upon entering the gallery, you are greeted, quite literally, by 50 Good Morning Wishes, which consists of 50 of the iconic Good Morning towels hung on cloth hooks. Given the iconic towel’s status as part of Singapore’s recent craze for “heritage” and nostalgia — with nostalgia-mongers even selling gussied-up versions at predictable prices — the link to SG50 stands out, though not in the usual sense.

In response to the critical mass of rose-tinted reminisces this year, it might be that Cheo’s response is not to avoid it, but to beat it at its own game, taking it super-critical in a process akin to semantic satiation. Additionally, in the wake of the recent election, the red-on-white (with blue borders) of the towels could be simple coincidence, or it might also be read as a reference to Singapore’s experience of democracy.

Wordplay and allusion might seem the stuff of refined, delicate sensibilities, but Cheo’s use of these techniques observes no such boundaries, with an energetic yet wry sense of amusement that verges on the scatological. For instance, a workaday wooden barrel featuring gilded calligraphy engraved onto its surface might seem little more than a marriage between the humble and the refined, but it goes further if you happen to know that the characters spell out the work’s title — Half A Bucket Of Shit — and it is a self-portrait.

Another marker of Singapore-that-was that finds ample expression in Cheo’s exhibition is the humble wooden clog, once a mainstay of inexpensive durability and now largely relegated to a token of nostalgia. Fittingly enough, the clogs in his work find themselves mutated into all manner of improbably impractical shapes, from a lightning bolt in Lightning Clog to lengths of several feet in Three Long and Two Short Clogs — the latter of which, for those who enjoy the risk of reading too deeply into things, could reference a formal nautical salute, just the number eight in Morse code, or something else entirely.

The wealth of possible interpretations in Cheo’s show is perhaps exemplified in its title, which seems a touch opaque when applied to the works therein. Much seems to hinge on it, but given the abundance of nostalgic elements turned on their head, it seems fair to think of the “cowboy town” in terms of a salt of the earth, up by the bootstraps myth of America-that-was, relative to the violence that pervaded actual cowboy towns. Likewise, the Chinese characters, which means Person In Jiang Hu, refer to the romanticised code of honour among thieves, which papers over the brutal realities of organised crime — particularly in the 2007 film of the same name. Put together, it would seem that Cheo’s taking a long, hard look at the much-celebrated kampung spirit to which so much recent nostalgia-mania turns.

In A Cowboy Town ...人在江湖 ..... runs until Oct 25, noon to 7pm, Michael Janssen Gallery, Gillman Barracks, #02-21 9 Lock Road. Free admission. Closed on Mondays and public holidays.