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

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

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.

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 Singapore Short Film Awards (SSFA) is an annual event which promotes and recognises excellence in short films. The SSFA programme includes a week-long schedule of film screenings, bringing you the best Singaporean shorts produced over the last year. There will also be discussions, masterclasses and parties. Every film submitted, along with award nominees will get a one-time screening at this event. All screenings are free to attend and no advanced booking is required. The awards ceremony will be held on 10 March 2012 and is by invitation only.
Visit the SSFA microsite for more information

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)

Logbook of Public 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 

vertical submarine will present a talk on Friday 10 February, 7pm

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.

Syndicate Subsessions
Featuring Gema, Muon and Brandon Tay
Saturday 24 March 2012, 8pm-10pm
The Substation Theatre
Admissions: $15 available from the box office, contact 6337 7800 / boxoffice@substation.org
This is an InHouse event 

The Syndicate Subsessions is a series of quarterly performances curated by audio-visual collective, Syndicate. Known for producing experimental sights and sounds in Home Club, Syndicate is collaborating with The Substation to venture off the dance floor and into the theatre. Each installment will feature a different guest artist, pushing the boundaries of music and visual performance and delivery.

Launching the Syndicate Subsessions series, Gema is an emerging producer and multi-instrumentalist who loves analog synthesizers, sub-bass and poly-rhythms. Muon, the first guest for the Syndicate Subsessions, bridges the disparate gap between the worlds of explosive rock and dark electronica without falling prey to the trappings of either.

Joining Gema and Muon, Syndicate resident visualist, Brandon Tay, will present unique visual narratives for each individual performance.

Titik Nol
Thursday 1 – Saturday 3 March 2012, 8pm
The Substation Theatre
Admission: $16 for 1 March preview, $20 for performances on 2 & 3 March.
Available from The Substation Box Office, contact Mishaal 6337 7800 / boxoffice@substation.org
This is an OpenHouse Event 
Language: Bahasa Indonesia, Malay and English (with English surtitles)

Siti, a Malaysian Moslem woman and Sukran, an Acehnese boy, have a common link: Sofyan. Sofyan is Siti’s love interest and Sukran calls him “Bapak”. But nobody knows if he is Sukran’s father. And nobody really knows if Siti and Sofyan are in any relationship.

Sofyan’s life is shaped by the political situation in Aceh. The existence of Free Aceh Movement and its tension with the Indonesian government affects all Acehneses’ lives. But how does it affect Siti’s life, a woman living in Malaysia? When the Aceh tsunami occurred and Sofyan went missing, their lives became even more complicated and they were left with questions. When someone goes missing, one keeps hoping that that person will come back, but how long can one wait?

This story is based on a short film, which is presented here as a full-length play; actual footage from the film will be projected during the performance.

Director and playwright – Agnes Christina
Director (short film) – Nicholas Yudifar
Actor – Agus Nur Amal (a.k.a. PM Toh)
Actor – Emanorwatty Saleh

For enquiries, please contact Agnes at tropical_topaz@yahoo.com.sg