S.E.A. FOCUS 2020

S.E.A. FOCUS 2020
FOST Gallery Booth, Singapore
January 16-19, 2020

In this body of new works, Tan presents various schemes of arrangement, exploring the intrinsic relationship between the displayed objects and the display structures. She investigates how objects can come together to form a meaningful collection and how the format of the collection shapes the way the objects are perceived.

These works are extensions of an earlier work, n. 355 – natural progression that was commissioned for the exhibition, Raffles In Southeast Asia: Revisiting The Scholar and The Statesman at the Asian Civilisations Museum where Tan examined the concepts of order and progression and the blurring between the natural and artifice in the context of colonial botanical science.

The removal of materials from their original or “natural” environments inevitably transforms them into cultural artefacts. In the case of these works, the banal, mould-made tag pins and cable ties are transformed into individual unique objects. And when organised into a collection, these discrete entities come together to form relationships with one another that lead to the creation of a new autonomous “cosmos”. While these works reference various aspects associated with scientific collecting, they suggest the process and system of collecting as a reflection of the culture (and the individual) that produced them. Essentially, the collecting and curating of the objects for display is itself a tool to construct.

Stamp Collecting
2020
Wall-mounted stainless steel and acrylic structure with LED light and objects made from polyamide and polypropylene tag pins and nickel-plated brass tubes
H94 x W73 x D16 cm

Mechanism of Change
2020
Wall-mounted stainless steel and acrylic structure with LED light and objects made from green polyamide ties
H105 x W41 x D12.5 cm

Exotic Trophies
2020
Free-standing stainless steel and acrylic stacked structure with LED light and objects made from polyamide and polypropylene tag pins and nickel-plated brass tubes
H54 x W40 x D40 cm

Diversity and Variation
2020
Wall-mounted stainless steel and acrylic structure with LED light and objects made from polyamide and polypropylene tag pins and nickel-plated brass tubes
H81 x W132 x D8.5 cm

Photography by Jing Wei