Singapore's ambition to establish itself as a regional arts centre continues to grow apace with the much-anticipated 23 July opening of Bui Gallery.
Western art galleries are still something of a novelty in Singapore, but Bui is an encouraging sign of the island-state's growing awareness of -- not to mention affection for -- the greater art world.
Founder and owner Betty Bui parlays her French-Vietnamese heritage and training at Christies to curate a sophisticated mix of established and budding artists from the region. Though just 32, she opened her flagship gallery last year in Hanoi, and after Singapore, she brings Bui Gallery Nomade, a roving gallery, to London in October.
For the moment, her focus is on Singapore with an ongoing remit to nurture an engaging blend of photography, videos, sculptures and installations. 'I feel there is so much energy here in the region to be explored,' she says. 'Established artists alongside new and exciting talents make up today's multiplicity of voices, developments, places and media and it is all happening here in Asia.'
The Singaporean gallery will open with an exhibition of surrealistic watercolours by the French artist Béatrice Cussol, with exhibitions by Ha Manh Thang, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Chen Man and the late Louise Bourgeois to follow in the coming year.
The show is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the USA. Pictured: installation view
The show’s centrepiece, Project for door (After Gaetano Pesce), comprises a man’s backside, hands clutching each half of his gluteus maximus, set into a brick wall; Hamilton has channelled Pesce by using a human subject for the piece – a well-known graphic designer whose identity the artist is reluctant to reveal
Hamilton’s work is informed by product and avante garde design, and notions of fandom – inspirations embodied in works that verge on the absurd. Pictured: installation view
Rice Cakes, 2015
Venice, The Kabuki Version, 2013
Brick Suit, 2010
INFORMATION
Website
‘Lichen! Libido! Chastity!’ on view until 4 January 2016
Photography: Kyle Knodell, courtesy the artist
ADDRESS
Sculpture Center
44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
-
All hail the arrival of true autonomy? On Tesla’s proposed Robotaxi and techno-insecurityTesla’s new marketing push predicts a future of robot cabs, automated buses and autonomous home androids. We already want to get off
-
Discothèque perfumes evoke the scent of Tokyo in the year 2000As Discothèque gets ready to launch its first perfume collection, Mary Cleary catches up with the brand’s founders
-
This unassuming London house is a radical rethinking of the suburban homeStation Lodge by architect Andrei Saltykov in South West London offers a radical subversion to regional residential architecture
-
Frieze Sculpture takes over Regent’s ParkTwenty-two international artists turn the English gardens into a dream-like landscape and remind us of our inextricable connection to the natural world
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next DoorThe Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New YorkViolet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American WestThe artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
-
Dark, glamorous and hedonistic: a photography book captures New York in the 1990sNew York: High Life, Low Life, by Dafydd Jones, goes behind the scenes of New York society
-
Derrick Alexis Coard’s portraits are a sensitive, positive testimony to Black menThe late artist Derrick Alexis Coard’s retrospective ‘I Am That I Am’, at New York’s Salon 94, honours his ‘symbolic expression for possible change for the African-American male community’
-
Intimacy, violence and the uncanny: Joanna Piotrowska in PhiladelphiaArtist and photographer Joanna Piotrowska stages surreal scenes at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
