From Lorong Gambas to Ninmanheamin 2012
By Zai Kuning
Saturday 4 February 2012, 4pm-8pm
The Substation Random Room
Admission: Free
This is an OpenHouse event 

This is a pop-up exhibition of drawings from Zai Kuning’s latest exhibition, From Lorong Gambas to Ninmanheamin 2012. All works will be on sale, with prices ranging from $200-$500. For more information about the original exhibition, read TODAY journalist Mayo Martin’s review here: http://blogs.todayonline.com/forartssake/2012/02/01/the-stateless-affairs-of-zai-kuning/

SubMarket
Sunday 11 March 2012, 12-8pm
The Substation Gallery
This is an InHouse event 

Please contact info@blackcarpetclothing.com / 6737 3114 to book a table and register as a seller

SubMarket is a quarterly flea market held every in The Substation Gallery. Stalls selling everything from art, fashion and design, to books, music and crafts. For the latest updates please visit the SubMarket Facebook page: http://facebook.com/submarket

Hantaran Buat Mangsa Lupa (Offerings for the Victims of Amnesia)
By Teater Ekamatra
Thursday 16 – Satuday 18 February 2012, 8pm
Satuday 18 February, 3pm
Admission: $19 available from SISTIC, contact 6348 5555 / www.sistic.com
Performed in Malay with English surtitles
This is an InHouse Event 

This event is part of the M1 Fringe Festival 2012: Art & Faith

Hantaran Buat Mangsa Lupa is a trilogy of plays inspired by the three main events leading to the establishment of Islam. Paired with the severely poetic nature of the Malay language, Hantaran offers a dimension that faith excludes and questions. The first two plays – Genap 40 and W.C. – were previously staged to small audiences, and this presentation marks the completion of the trilogy with the premiere of 94:05 alongside the other two. Performed by three talented theatre and TV actors, Sani Hussin, Mastura Ahmad and newcomer Rian Asrudi, Hantaran is a performance not to be missed.

“Expectations of fate and faith are tussled with in language that was both sophisticated in its intellectual curiosity and dramatically poetic.”
- The Straits Times Life! on Genap 40

Photo credits:
Irfan Kasban

Teater Ekamatra

Teater Ekamatra is a non-profit theatre company that is dedicated to developing and producing socially relevant plays that reflect the contemporary Singaporean vernacular. Teater Ekamatra believes in integrating the arts, social services and the different cultures as a vehicle for entertainment, education, tolerance and affecting social change. The company believes that theatre must be seen as an integral part of Singapore’s artistic evolution. To renew itself, theatre must constantly reassess its role in society and address what role it may play in the future.

In existence since 1988, Teater Ekamatra is recognised for its dedication and commitment to developing and expanding definitions and forms of Malay Theatre, and is a recipient of the National Arts Council Annual Arts Grant. Teater Ekamatra does not define nor restrict Malay Theatre to performances in the Malay language, but seek to give voice and visibility to the Malay condition and experience with regards to contemporary local and global climate. Ultimately, Teater Ekamatra is about individual equality, cultural pluralism and artistic excellence.

Irfan Kasban
Playwright / Director

Irfan’s first theatre piece CLASSIFIED: Projek Congkak won Best Script and the Challenge Trophy at Teater Ekamatra’s 2006 inter-tertiary theatre competition. He then wrote and directed Genap 40, which received rave reviews in 2007. He was commissioned by M1 Singapore Fringe Festival to stage his debut full-length English play We Live in a Box in 2009. Aside from showcasing at the Singapore Arts Festival 2010, his most recent work is W.C., exploring comfort and boundaries.

Zizi Azah
Lighting Designer

Zizi Azah is the Artistic Director of Teater Ekamatra. A graduate of the National University of Singapore in Philosophy and Sociology, Zizi Azah is a playwright, theatre director and lighting designer. She has helmed numerous theatre productions performed in English, Malay and Baba Malay. Aside from her work as a theatre artist, Zizi lectures at the LASALLE College of The Arts. She is the published author of Fatimah and Her Magic Socks, a children’s book illustrated by her husband Izmir Ickbal.

Mastura Ahmad
Actor

No stranger to the Malay television scene, Mastura’s acting in Singapore and in Malaysia has won awards in Suria’s Pesta Perdana for Best Actress in 2001 & 2002 and Best Supporting Actress in 2007 & 2009.

Mastura previously worked with Teater Ekamatra for Madu Dua Kuala Lumpur in 2007 and Peti Kayu Ibuku in 2008 where Flying Inkpot’s review stated, “The strongest element of the production… was the fine performance by Mastura”.

Mohammad Sani Bin Hussin
Actor

A recipient of the NAC Georgette Chan scholarship, LaSalle-SIA scholarship and NAC Overseas Theatre Bursary Award, Sani Hussin has won Best Actor in 1998 and Best Supporting Actor in 2011 at Pesta Perdana, and has been nominated for many other awards over the years. Besides his numerous works with theatre companies such as Teater Kami, Teater Ekamatra, Dramaplus, ACT 3, Action Theatre, Actor’s Studio and Dramabox, his TV and film credits include the award winning series Soldadu 1 & 2, Singapore Short Stories, Bukit Chandu, Singapore Shakes Series, Ajna, Ameen, Roman Picisan, Sayang Semuanya, 9 Lives, Police & Thief, Bisikan Bayangan, Gurushatram and Point of Entry.

Rian Asrudi Bin Asbullah
Actor

Rian Asrudi is a talented student of School of the Arts who loves singing, dancing and acting. Besides participating in over 12 shows with Sriwana and acting regularly on Suria, OKTO and Mediacorp Channels 5 and 8, Rian made his theatrical debut in Teater Ekamatra’s Merah Pawana (2010). The One Minute of Fame 2006 finalist was given the prestigious role of leading the National Anthem in this year’s National Day Parade Finale.

Building as a Body
Commissioned by Singapore Art Museum, as part of The Singapore Show 2012: Future Proof
By Grace Tan and Randy Chan
Until Wedneday 28 March 2012
The Substation Façade
This is an InHouse event

There will be a party on Thursday 2 February 2012, 8pm to celebrate the installation of Building as a Body

Building As a Body is an art installation by Grace Tan and Randy Chan. The installation is a veil, composed of a matrix of dots and lines which envelope the entire façade of the building. The Substation is personified, and the veil articulates the opposing and yet inter-connecting themes of concealing and revealing.

The installation is commissioned by the National Heritage Board’s Precinct Development Unit and the Singapore Art Museum.

The project was conceived out of various conversations between architect Randy Chan and an inter-disciplinary artist Grace Tan, to investigate the history, function, and presence of The Substation. The installation is a collaboration between the National Heritage Board’s Precinct Development Unit and the Singapore Art Museum, for the purpose of encouraging local artists to create public artworks and making art accessible to the public within the district. The National Heritage Board’s Precinct Development Unit was established to energise the streetscape of the Bras Basah and Bugis precinct, and to facilitate the transformation of the precinct into a vibrant arts and culture district.

About the Artists

Randy Chan is one of Singapore’s leading young architects, and was featured as one of the 20 under 40 notable emerging architects by the Urban Redevelopment Authority in 2004. Randy’s firm was also selected to be featured in the acclaimed international magazine Monocle. Randy takes a multidisciplinary architectural approach to his projects and specialises in the convergence of Art and Architecture.  His work has been published in numerous local architecture magazines and international publications.

Formally trained in fashion design, Grace Tan founded kwodrent in 2003 as an inter-disciplinary practice specialising in spatial and wearable fabric-works. Her recent developments include paper compositions and objects constructed from sheet metal inspired by the tactility of fabrics. Her works are highly experimental and they often blur the lines between fashion, fine art, and mathematics. She is currently based in Singapore and has exhibited extensively both locally and internationally. Grace is an Associate Artist of The Substation’s Associate Artist Research Programme.

Cane
By Loo Zihan
Sunday 19 February 2012, 8pm
The Substation Theatre
Admission: $19 available from SISTIC, contact 6348 5555 / www.sistic.com
Rating: R18
This is an InHouse Event 

This event is part of the M1 Fringe Festival 2012: Art & Faith

In 1993, Singaporean artist Josef Ng’s performance Brother Cane resulted in a public debate over obscenity in performance art and a subsequent ten-year restriction of the licensing and funding of performance art in Singapore.

Cane by Loo Zihan consists of a re-enactment of Brother Cane based on an eyewitness account by artist Ray Langenbach, a performative lecture reconstructing incidents surrounding the event based on various oral accounts, and pre-filmed segments with individuals involved in Brother Cane and performance art in Singapore. The work seeks not only to commemorate and honour the memory of this performance, but also to explore the possibility of representing performance art, a form often perceived as ephemeral or transient.

Loo Zihan is a Singaporean moving-image, performance and installation artist. He received a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BFA from Nanyang Technological University. His films have been screened in various film festivals including AFI Fest (L.A.), Pusan International Film Festival, Newfest (New York City) and Frameline (San Francisco). He has had recent exhibitions and showings at NEXT / Art Chicago, Zhou B Art Center (Chicago) and Defibrillator (Chicago). He is the recipient of a James Nelson Raymond Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Photo Credit: Miao Jiaxin

Goddess of Mercy
By Alecia Neo with Clarence Chung
Wednesday 15 – Sunday 26 February 2012, 11am-7pm
The Substation Gallery
Admission: Free
This is an InHouse Event 

Two families. Four faiths. Visual artist Alecia Neo and sound artist Clarence Chung bring forth an art installation about love and faith, and how each needs the other in order to survive.

In a huge rustic house in upper Bukit Timah lives Tan Ying Hsien and his mother Dr Nalla Tan. Nalla suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and her condition has deteriorated to the point whereby she is a stranger even to herself. While Dr Tan was an active member of church, her youngest son Ying Hsien calls himself agnostic, and unconvinced about life after death. In a shophouse unit in Queenstown lives the Neo family. Filled with books about Buddhism and cooking, it reveals Mdm Tay Siew Hwa’s areas of specialties. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, she devotes more time to self-study about her religion and life after death, while undergoing chemotherapy. Her oldest son Alex Neo, builds his own shrine of beliefs with religious pendants and symbols from Thailand.

Guests are invited to participate and witness rituals of healing. Photography and soundscape installations will evoke the range of emotions experienced by the mothers (Alzheimer’s sufferer and Cancer patient) in trying to reach out emotionally to their sons, as well as the abstract phenomena of how religion functions.

This exhibition is part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2012: Art and Faith.

Alecia Neo

With a great love for people and cultures, Alecia Neo‘s work is often about common human experiences of alienation and loneliness,dislocation and belonging, and the search for self. Having recently embarked on a series of documentary projects in Singapore, she is enthralled by the process of getting to know her immediate surroundings and the nucleus which she operates from.

Her latest body of work, Home Visits has received a Honorable Mention in the 2009 Berenice Abbott Prize by juror Tim B. Wride, Curator of the Department of Photographs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The series was selected for the 2nd Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF), in 2010. It was first exhibited in whole, in the first annual Singapore Survey show at Valentine Willie Fine Art Gallery, in 2009.

Portraiture has become the main focus of her art work. She has also been recently selected as 1 of 5 mentees of renowned NYC based photographer John Clang for his 2011 mentorship programme.

Clarence Chung

Paid to perform for the first time in 2006 at the tender age of 19, Clarence has been performing professionally ever since. Today, he entertains as resident musician at RedDot Brewhouse at Dempsey Road. In 2010, Clarence found an interest in contemporary sound design and post-modern composition and hence began to take on freelance motion picture projects that require the manipulation of sound effects and music to create emotive and abstract commentaries.

For more information visit www.singaporefringe.com

The Prayer
By Eng Kai Er
Wednesday 22 – Thursday 23 February 2012, 8pm
The Substation Theatre
Admission: $19 available from SISTIC, contact 6348 5555 / www.sistic.com
This is an InHouse Event 

This event is part of the M1 Fringe Festival 2012: Art & Faith

The Prayer is a solo dance-theatre performance piece with existentialist questions at its heart. What are we on Earth for? Why should we continue existing? How can we be cheerful, when we have discovered the terrible secret that life is meaningless? These questions are explored but remain unanswered. The quest to find the answers results in a performance piece that is dark, desperate, and yet funny.

Eng Kai Er

Choreographer/Dancer

Eng Kai Er is a Singaporean choreographer. Dance is her favourite expressive medium, and she uses a mix of dance and theatre in her work, to create performance pieces that are daring and moving. In childhood she was shaped by Chinese dance and figure skating and she remains influenced by these disciplines. Her choreographic work has been shown in Singapore, the UK, Sweden and Switzerland.

Martin Eklund

Music

Looking for creative challenges, Martin Eklund moves between music, film, photography and software. He writes mostly on the guitar and piano, then moves from improvisation to digital re-arrangement and re-working. He has made music for films, games, theater, performances, dance and just for fun! He was a part of Swedish art collective Tensta Kollektivet and is currently designing virtual instruments at XLN Audio. Sometimes he finds time to release music under the name teadrinker.

Photo Credit: Martin Eklund

The Substation is accepting submissions for Open Call 2012. The Substation Open Call programme was first initiated in 2008 to support and realise strongly artistic, critical and rigorous visual arts proposals, and was expanded to include performance  in 2010, and sound art in 2011. Selected proposals will be staged or exhibited at The Substation in September 2012. For application details and requirements, please visit the Open Call microsite at www.substation.org/opencall

minimART 2.0: Open Call for Participation
Saturday 7 April, 2pm-9pm 2012
Sunday 8 April 10am-6pm 2012
The Substation Gallery
Admission: Free
This is an InHouse event 

minimART is a platform for young contemporary artists to showcase and sell their original fine art works ranging from painting, sculpture, and photography, to installation work, performance, and other forms of contemporary art. All works for sale are priced under $1,000.

This event is organised by artists for artists in Singapore! It aims to contribute to the development of local artistic practice, in particular young contemporary artists. It also hopes to plant the seed of art collecting among art enthusiasts with affordable artworks.

To participate, or to find out more, please read below and visit http://www.minimartsg.com/

Participation fee

This is a not-for-profit initiative, but selected artists are expected to contribute a $30 participation fee to share the costs of the project. minimART will, however, help artists to get sponsorship from the public. There is no fee involved in submitting your registration. To respond to the open call, please fill in the application form and submit by 25 Feb 2012. The application for can be found on the minimART website here: http://www.minimartsg.com/open-call.php

Why minimART?

minimART is a non-for-profit project initiated by two artists, Vincent Chow and Kelvin Atmadibrata. It is an on-going project seeks to create platforms to local young artists to present their artworks. The project currently organises a series of events that are held once or twice per year at The Substation.

minimART aims to offer:

Artists

1. An affordable platform for young artists to show and sell their works to motivate them to constantly producing new artwork
2. A networking and socializing channel to meet other artists that could lead to collaboration.
3. An opportunity to be talent spotted by curators and art galleries.

The Community

1. Make art appreciation as common as going to the supermarket.
2. Appreciation of artwork by local artists. With a focus on contemporary art, it will help to heighten the level of appreciation on unconventional artistic expression among the local audience.
3. A way to encourage art collecting culture especially for first time art buyer with affordable artworks
4. An accessible and less intimidating platform compared to visiting a gallery.
5. Opportunities to meet and talk to the artists.
6. Introduce the Substation as an independent art space to the general public to encourage more people to participate in programmes organised by the Substation.

The team behind minimART 2.0:

Daniela Beltrani (curator)
Wesley Leon Aroozoo (curator)
Noor Effendy Ibrahim (advisor)
Chen Jieyun (organiser)
Kelvin Atmadibrata (organiser)
Vincent Chow (organiser)

Public Logbook of Ideas (2003-2013)
By vertical submarine
Friday 10 February- Sunday 12 February 2012, 12pm-9pm
The Substation Theatre
Admission: Free
This is an InHouse event 

All texts published in Internationale Situationniste maybe freely reproduced,
translated or adapted, even without indication of origin.
- Notice first appeared on the back of Internationale Situationniste, no. 2, December, 1958.

This project aims to document vertical submarine’s unrealised ideas and failed projects mounted up collectively in a publication format. Apart from ideas listed on the ‘Inventory of Ideas’ (containing both ideas archived, since the group was formed in 2003) the publication will also contain unrealisable ideas and unsuccessful projects to be consolidated from 2011 to 2013.

Comprising three volumes, this book project will feature writings and visual documentations, of which the first volume will be launched and displayed in The Substation Theatre this February. The texts will be presented in various forms – ranging from visual art proposals, notes, poems, short stories, ‘biographies’ and transcripts to immaterial forms such as conversations, rants and dreams. The visual documentations shall include traditional forms like sketches, photographs and readymade images.

The Substation’s Associate Artist Research Programme (AARP) is a 2-year residency programme where selected art practitioners are provided with curatorial, financial, administrative, and operational support to pursue and develop individual interdisciplinary art research and practice at The Substation.

The key objective of the Associate Artist Research Programme is to support and promote critical and sustainable research, development and discourse in contemporary art and interdisciplinary practice in Singapore.