Oh My Island In the Sun

Oh My Island In the Sun, is an art exhibition which strives to magnify the beauty of the building with vibrant artworks and introduces the students to the local culture. It encompasses a selection of paintings and photographs inspired by and celebrating Singapore’s identity through artists’ eyes. These artworks have in common to transcend ordinary observation into something extraordinary.

Three ink drawings by Eddie Botha welcome the visitors in the lobby of the campus as a joyful introduction to Singapore’s melting pot of various cultures. Titled Singapore, Makan, which means to eat in Malay, and Cultural Interaction, these artworks are composed of intricate scenes filled with a cacophony of small characters. At first glance, these drawings are made to make us smile. However, further contemplation reveals more profound meaning. Indeed, with this playful series the artist represents characteristics which are crucial for Singapore: its multicultural identity, the harmonious interaction between the various communities based on mutual respect, the use of English as lingua franca while Malay, Mandarin Chinese and Tamil are also recognized national languages and, last but not least, the importance of food! Food always reflects the local culture and this is so true that Singapore’s hawker culture was recently added to UNESCO list of intangible heritage.

Eddie Botha is an artist from South Africa who currently lives and works in Australia. He created this series during an artist residency programme in Singapore in 2016.

On the top of the majestic staircase, which leads to the first floor, a huge painting by Andy Yang titled An Encounter With The Ark, expresses the vibrancy and the energy of the city state by its strong and bold brushstrokes while the harmony of the colour palette composed of pink, gold an d grey hues mirror the quality of life in the garden city. With this artwork, the artist tells us that, like Noah who built an Ark to preserve life on earth with all its diversity, we all have to build an ark together for the future. It reminds us that, since its independence in 1965, Singapore has strived to be at the forefront of modernity without losing its soul. However, this is a never-ending fight and the new generations have to follow the example of the pioneers.

Andy Yang is a Singaporean artist who works on the edge of abstraction and figuration. His strong and vivid brushstrokes express emotions and suggest fantastic animals, characters and landscapes. As a multi-disciplinary artist, Andy constantly switches between visual arts and music. When looking at the entangled and intertwining scrolls of paint in Andy’s artworks you may actually feel the vibrations of his bass guitar.

In the coffee and bar area, a selection of 12 black and white photographs are displayed as well as a Chinese Brush painting from The Coffee Shop Series by Gilles Massot.

The Coffee Shop Series was inspired by the Chye Hong coffee shop in Bukit Timah, a now long- gone location which held an interesting summary of Singapore society: a Chinese family, the owners of the coffee shop, sold drinks, a Malay family and a group of Indian men served cooked food, all of them lived and worked harmoniously under one roof. The multi-faceted universe of the Chye Hong coffee shop pushed the artist to use a varying range of mediums and techniques; from charcoal to black and white photographs: from Chinese brush to oil and pastels.

The Coffee Shop Series was inspired by a specific place in Singapore and by Singapore coffee culture. However, we can see it is a celebration of coffee-shops anywhere in the world as a place where people meet-up to share ideas and have a good time.

Gilles is a multidisciplinary artist and academic who studied architecture and photography in Marseille, France, before coming to Singapore in 1981 where he settled and stayed for 40 years. His visual art practice more specifically deals with the theory of photography and its relation to time and space. 

Another artwork by Gilles Massot can be viewed from the balcony going to the office rooms on the first floor. This artwork which represents crumbling walls of a shophouse in Chinatown is in conversation with the beautifully renovated architecture of the building of the EHL Campus building. It addresses the tension between tradition and modernity and the challenges, that Singapore faced in building a modern city while preserving national memories and heritage.
 
It Looked as if it Would Last Forever and The Strange Place My Mind Frequented, two large paintings by Emi Avora, can be viewed from another balcony on the first floor. The subject matter of the former, a table and a few chairs in a lush tropical garden with the remains of a meal but no human being, has become central to Emi’s practice since she moved to Singapore two years ago. The latter, was inspired by a real coffee shop named Nam Kee, which is famous for its traditional buns or Paus. Through the artist’s eyes, the rather sad vision of a coffee shop deserted because of the Covid 19, becomes a colourful and inviting scenery, a joyful anticipation of the vibrancy of the place when business will start again. In Singapore, Emi, who grew up on the island of Corfu in Greece, reconnected with her childhood memory of the strong Mediterranean light that brings clarity and strength to colour. Consequently, colour has become increasingly important in her work inducing her to use a new palette mainly composed of vivid pink and green hues. She creates dream places inspired by the baroque tropical nature, the continuous dense green that never fades, the palm trees and plants.  Empty chairs and tables are an invitation for the viewer to enter as a protagonist and dream in. Her maximalist paintings play with exaggerated colours, warped perspective and changes in scale to create a sense of wonder. However, Emi Avora always strives for an overall balance which offers a sense of tranquility to the viewer.
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Three smaller paintings, titled Phtalo’s Adventures 1 & 2 and Picnic, showcased in the cafeteria invite the viewers to continue the visual journey initiated by the larger artwork. Birds are the only guests in the tropical garden where the artist notices an empty chair, leftovers on a table or on a picnic mat. From these everyday observations the artist creates enchanting baroque sceneries in which the viewers are invited to become the protagonists.     

Emi Avora is a Greek, London trained, and Singapore based, artist. She has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. Solo projects include the National Theatre of Greece Athens, South Square Arts Centre, The Apartment Gallery, Athens, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York and Gallery Truebenbach, Cologne. She has participated in a number of group shows including Studio Voltaire, London, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, The Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki. Her work can be found in private as well as public collections in Europe and the USA

For his part, Christian Lukey chooses a minimalist style to celebrate the beauty of natural elements such as bamboos and pebbles in a photo diptych showcased in the hallway leading to the cafeteria. By zooming on his subject matter the artist creates geometrical patterns at the edge of abstraction suggesting that the symbolic meaning of a landscape can be more important than its mere representation as confirmed by the titles of the artworks Resilience and Core Values.    

Christian Lukey, is the Head of the Singapore chapter of the global EHL alumni association. A successful hotelier and entrepreneur, Christian Lukey is also a talented photographer interested in capturing the intricate beauty of Southeast Asia’s natural environment.

Interestingly, both Emi Avora and Christian Lukey play with shape, composition, and pattern to allow us to transcend an ordinary observation into something extraordinary.

Oh My Island in the Sun, is the title of a song which the students in boarding at Kinloss House liked to sing. It reflected the good time they had as students in Singapore. The ambition of the art exhibition is not only to capture the soul of the place but also to become part of good memories, which the new EHL students will keep from their studies at EHL Campus Singapore.

September 2021