Colours of Singapore -
Emi Avora, Catherine Delmas-Lett, Chloë Manasseh
at EHL Campus, Singapore
Colour of Singapore is a group exhibition by Emi Avora (Greece), Catherine Delmas- Lett (France), and Chloë Manasseh (UK-Israel).
These three women artists are based in Singapore and inspired by their everyday observations of Singapore’ s tropical setting. Their colourful paintings have in common to convey energy and vitality.
Catherine Delmas Lett's canvases offer a dreamlike window into Singapore's colonial-era architecture. Her skillful play of light and shadow imbues the partially hidden houses, nestled amidst luxuriant foliage, with a sense of both welcoming warmth and intriguing mystery. For her part, the composition of Emi Avora exudes a serene elegance. Her masterful use of monochromatic palettes creates a visual language that resonates with the viewer, inviting contemplation and connection. Finally, Chloe Manasseh's paintings burst with joyful exuberance, her bold brushstrokes and vivid hues capturing the artist's own inner emotional landscape. These vibrant, energetic works beckon the viewer to immerse themselves in the pure, uninhibited spirit of the tropical environment. United by their deep fascination with the natural world around them, these three artists have crafted a captivating exhibition that celebrates the multifaceted beauty, tranquility, and dynamic energy of the city they call home.
These three women artists are based in Singapore and inspired by their everyday observations of Singapore’ s tropical setting. Their colourful paintings have in common to convey energy and vitality.
Catherine Delmas Lett's canvases offer a dreamlike window into Singapore's colonial-era architecture. Her skillful play of light and shadow imbues the partially hidden houses, nestled amidst luxuriant foliage, with a sense of both welcoming warmth and intriguing mystery. For her part, the composition of Emi Avora exudes a serene elegance. Her masterful use of monochromatic palettes creates a visual language that resonates with the viewer, inviting contemplation and connection. Finally, Chloe Manasseh's paintings burst with joyful exuberance, her bold brushstrokes and vivid hues capturing the artist's own inner emotional landscape. These vibrant, energetic works beckon the viewer to immerse themselves in the pure, uninhibited spirit of the tropical environment. United by their deep fascination with the natural world around them, these three artists have crafted a captivating exhibition that celebrates the multifaceted beauty, tranquility, and dynamic energy of the city they call home.
Black & White series by Catherine Delmas-Lett
This series depicts three neighboring houses, each imbued with its own unique, almost magical ambiance, as if they belonged in a fairytale. They reveal themselves at different times of day, telling their silent stories.
In Normal Day morning unfolds in its ordinary way. Children have abandoned a tricycle in the middle of the path, evidence of their haste. Behind the walls, a family stirs with the tumult of waking. The sun, already high in the sky, illuminates the city's early hours, while hornbills leave a temporary calm in their wake. As afternoon wanes, sunlight grazes the treetops, casting intense light through the upper-floor windows. In Mysterious Light a surreal atmosphere pervades the scene, reminiscent of Halloween's aftermath. The slow, continuous song of cicadas envelops the atmosphere, blending mystery with nostalgia. Eventually, under silver moonlight, it's the poets' hour. A strange night, tinged with magic and mystery, comes alive. Carnival echoes resonate until dawn, giving way to a sweet and enchanting melancholy.
Unbearable Truth by Emi Avora
Concerned with climate change, the artist was drawn to the resilience of succulent plants growing along beach corners and street edges in her native Greece.
Unbearable Truth, 115 x 170 cm, Acrylic & Oil en Canvas, 2024
Emi Avora enjoys observing and reconciling the differences between her current home and her origins, as shown in this painting that combines elements from drawings made in the Peloponnese region of southern Greece with aspects of her life in Singapore, such as the coffee table, chairs, and tiles. In this reimagined landscape, succulent plants have taken over, offering comfort in an increasingly overheated world. The strong light at the canvas's center can be seen as either a place of unbearable heat or a portal of optimism and energy – the interpretation is left to us.
A recurring motif in Emi Avora's work is the basic plastic chair, commonly found throughout Asia and in Greece where she grew up. Evoking both absence and presence, it symbolizes cheap, mass-produced and consumed basic furniture that often ends up abandoned in various corners of our landscapes. The intersection between noble and common elements is evident in both El Mondo Magico and Everyday Relics. The latter painting also reflects the artist's fascination with overgrown and abandoned gardens, particularly in the tropics where plants proliferate rapidly and take over. Old bicycles, abandoned traffic cones, tires, and potted plants on plastic stools coexist with ancient Greek pottery, an artist's easel, and a tropical bird. Half-collapsed low fence lines provide the main structural elements for this mix of everyday relics, while broken tiles lead us toward an unspecified path beyond the canvas.
Motherhood by Chloë Manasseh
Motherhood explores the complex emotions surrounding the artist's transition to motherhood. The work questions what it means to be a mother in an increasingly uncertain world – a vessel, a protector, a source of nourishment.
Vessel 1 , 180 x 100 cm, 2022
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Vessel 3, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 90 cm, 2023
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The artist's dynamic canvases capture the profound physical and psychological metamorphosis of becoming a mother, using fields of vibrant color and gestural marks that seem to expand and contract like the body itself during pregnancy. Through her abstract vocabulary. Through her abstract vocabulary, Manasseh explores the multiplicity of maternal identity: the body as a nurturing vessel, the primal instinct of protection, and the intimate bond of nursing.
Night Swimmers by Chloë Manasseh
Night Swimmers emerges from the solitude of the pandemic era, capturing that ethereal moment when body meets water under a moonlit sky. The painting explores the profound sensation of weightlessness – that magical instant when boundaries between self and sea dissolve, where solitude transforms into liberation.
Night Swimmers 1 &2, Oil on Canvas, 300 x 150 cm, 2022
Vast expanses of midnight blue dominate the canvas, evoking the mysterious depths of a nocturnal ocean. Yet through this darkness, a luminous shoreline appears – a ribbon of vivid color where palm trees sway and their reflections dance on the water's surface, creating an enchanted border between land and sea. As the artist herself reveals about this imaginary landscape: "What I appreciate most about my own works is that there is space within them to allow people to attribute their imaginative values."