Modern art in Singapore began on a trip to the shores of another tropical island.

The Bali trip in 1952 by Liu Kang, Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi is regarded as a milestone event contributing to the birth of the Nanyang art style — an important juncture in Singapore’s art history, Mr Seng Yu Jin said. He is senior curator at the National Gallery Singapore.

The Singapore art world has changed tremendously since the time of the Nanyang artists, but interaction with international and regional influences persists throughout the decades.

The late 1980s saw the pioneering contemporary artists introduce new forms of artistic practices gleaned from their overseas experiences. Artists such as Tang Da Wu brought installation and performance art to the public here, affirming its place in Singapore’s collective artistic imagination. The ’90s witnessed a shift in institutional support towards the arts, culminating in Singapore’s participation on international platforms such as the Venice Biennale in 2001.

Most recently, 2015 marked the first time that Singapore’s national pavilion was housed within the historic Arsenale, one of two main sites at the Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition. Singapore’s National Arts Council (NAC) managed to secure this venue on a 20-year lease for homegrown artists to showcase their work.

Singapore has always aimed to establish itself as a centre for the visual arts in the region by initiating platforms with global and regional intentions. In 2013, the Singapore Biennale took on an unprecedented curatorial structure by bringing 27 curators from across the South-east Asian region to work with 82 artists from Singapore and around the world. This year, the Singapore Biennale, which kicks off on October 28, will retain the same collaborative framework with associate curators from India, Malaysia, China and Singapore.

Even smaller, private arts organisations such as Objectifs, centre for photography and film, have found themselves collaborating with international partners. The centre is hosting a multi-disciplinary exhibition, Ghost on the Wire #2, showcasing 18 works by Singapore-based and British artists. The first edition of this exhibition held in London in 2014 had garnered a good response.

SINGAPOREAN ART AT HOME IN THE WORLD

Mr Seng, who recently launched Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Contemporary Art, an anthology of writings on Singapore art since the 1970s, said: “The extent of overseas influence on Singapore’s art history has always been a mediation and negotiation between the local, regional and global.

“Singapore artists, regardless of whether they are modern or contemporary, have constantly drawn from external and internal cultural sources in their works that relate back to Singapore as a site where cultural confluences take place, due to Singapore’s geographical position and its multiculturalism.”

For young artists and curators here, it is the “new normal” to take part in exhibitions and residencies overseas, and to collaborate with overseas artists and curators.

A history of overseas influences in our modern and contemporary art works speaks for itself, but what do Singapore art practitioners bring to the global arts scene?

Mr Venka Purushothaman, provost at Lasalle College of the Arts, said: “As participants from a very young nation, Singaporean artists, curators and administrators bring a global and cosmopolitan perspective. But it is not just any perspective. It is one that is deeply rooted in South-east Asia and what it means to see the world from where we stand. This distinguishes us and often invites international enquiry about emerging South-east Asia, and this is particularly seminal in a highly disruptive world today.”

Recent exhibitions such as Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s, organised by the Queens Museum of Art (2000) and The World Goes Pop by the Tate Modern (2015), are indicative that there is a desire by global art museums to examine the art histories of the world, with the local cultures of other countries becoming more important in this narrative of global art histories.

Mr Seng said: “Within this context, Singapore’s artists, curators and institutions can play an important role in mediating the translation of local cultures with the global, to construct a more diverse global art history that... embraces its plurality.”

THE PEOPLE FACTOR

The recent appointment of Singaporeans working in established cultural organisations overseas has also highlighted the country’s talent pool.

Ms June Yap, formerly deputy director and curator of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore at Lasalle, was picked by a committee of five experts in South and South-east Asian art to be the first curator for the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative from 2012 to 2014 in New York. Mr Tan Boon Hui, former assistant chief executive officer of National Heritage Board, was appointed as vice-president of global arts and cultural programmes and director of the Asia Society Museum in New York last year.

Singaporean curator Khairuddin Hori, fresh from his stint as deputy programming director at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, one of Europe’s foremost centres of contemporary art, told TODAY: “Before my post in Palais de Tokyo, I worked on various projects and collaborations overseas, mainly in South-east Asia, and one thing I kept bringing to those projects was a certain ‘order’ in doing things. I guess this comes from the exposure and ways of thinking and working in Singapore that could be quite fixed. It dawned on me that I was trying to ‘correct’ local cultures and thinking. I have since stopped trying to influence ‘correctness’ and shifted to understand the ‘disorders’ and work with them cohesively.”

WHAT’S AHEAD?

What is crucial for the future of Singapore’s art scene is the level of openness and ability to engage different national and cultural elements, as Mr Khairuddin illustrated. This is needed to attract young artists from the region. Celebrated Singapore architect William Lim said: “Singapore needs to become a place where young artistic people from the region are able to live and carry out their art practices here... to explore their talents and evolve, (but they cannot do that) unless they have a job here or are well-known.”

Mr Lim added that this openness is necessary in order to become a city where art thrives, like in New York and Paris. “Many of the people in the arts scene there are from all over the world, including Asian countries. (Singapore needs this) internal energy to supplement the external vitality of arts here.”