"HEARTLANDS: Home and Nation in the Art of Ong Kim Seng"
2008-10-16 until 2008-11-30
Singapore Art Museum
Singapore, , SG Singapore

Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and the National Arts Council (NAC) are proud to present HEARTLANDS: Home and Nation in the Art of Ong Kim Seng, a major exhibition of Singapore’s foremost watercolourist Ong Kim Seng. The show features 35 paintings, together with a companion book and video presentations, of significant places present and past in Singapore’s urban heartlands. The exhibition is supported by the Housing and Development Board and the Standard Chartered Bank. The exhibition opening was officiated by Guest of Honour, Mr Mah Bow Tan, Minister for National Development on 15 October 2008, at the Glass Hall, Singapore Art Museum.

Ong Kim Seng comments about the exhibition -

This is a project that I have planned to embark on for a few years now, but have not done so yet because of the cost and time needed. It will include a major exhibition of new paintings in watercolour as well as in a medium I use much less often – acrylic. In addition, my plan is to publish a book and a video record of significant places in Singapore’s public housing estates. The works will employ an innovative method of using paint to capture and evoke the past superimposed onto images of the present. It will use techniques I have not presented publicly in this way before. This will also be an innovation of heritage in capturing a vital slice of Singapore’s architectural and social history.

The subject matter will use actual archival materials of Singapore’s past to form a record of – and a tribute to – the HDB “heartlands”, where the soul and spirit of the country are grounded. This project will be a unique marrying of art and heritage, using a subject and techniques never tried before in this way. On exhibition are paintings done in the 60s , 70s, 80s and early 90s of areas that were not developed into Housing estates . Areas like Bukit Ho Swee , Kampong Tiong Bahru, Kampong Radin Mas , Telok Blangah , Potong Pasir , Toa Payoh and Ang Moh Kio are included in this exhibition.

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