After my first curator tour experience at the Asian Civilisations Museum, I wanted to go on a similar guided tour at the other museums too. When I heard that the director of Singapore Art Museum himself was doing a tour, I signed up!

Not knowing what to expect, I entered the museum lobby and joined the many people present. When the tour eventually started, the final group of people was huge! There were at least 30 of us and it was quite a tough tour for Mr Kwok at the Singapore Art Museum. Nevertheless, he managed to share and conduct a great tour. It was an enjoyable experience.

Mr Kwok explaining to his audience

The tour was for an exhibition titled Accelerate: Chinese Contemporary Art. The name of the exhibition already got me excited. I may not have studied Arts before, but I love looking at beautiful things, colours and thought provoking artwork. And contemporary art is something I quite enjoy.

At the start of the exhibition, many minds were already challenged by Miao Xiaochun’s work of digital art, Microcosmo.

This piece, as shared by Mr Kwok, is created to show the different perspective of a scene through the eyes of many. Each panel features similar views at different angles and point of views. It challenges one to piece all the panels together and almost have a three dimensional view of the scene in 2D.

One of the pieces I was attracted to was this huge painting of many red figures sitting around thousands of tables.

Eat! by Wu Mingzhong

It shows a typical Chinese-style banquet with red figures seated in a regular pattern. A very common sight to me, and one that I don’t really enjoy too. At closer look, you’ll notice that these figures are mainly red glasses.

The exhibition is interesting enough for everyone to check it out and there’ll sure be something that’ll make you stop and take a closer look. It gives me a whole new thinking to Chinese Art, which I previously didn’t have much interest for. But Accelerate is different. It shows how the Chinese artists are changing and adopting new techniques and technology to create their masterpieces.

I’ll end of this post with couple more pieces that I found interesting at the exhibition.

Clock by Chen Ke

Ferris Wheel by Chen Ke

Part of the piece -
The Petroleum monster captivate with wit
by Wang Mai

Accelerate: Chinese Contemporary Art is on till 26 October at the Singapore Art Museum. Do go check it out.