National Gallery Singapore's Provocative Art

The Supreme Court Building and City Hall make up the gallery

The National Gallery Singapore is definitely worth a visit when in the Lion City, as it holds the world's largest public collection of Singaporean and Southeast Asian art totalling over 9,000 items. 

Supreme Court with its wood panelled ceiling

Not only are the works hung on the walls or placed around the rooms interesting to look at, but the buildings themselves. The museum is housed in the former Supreme Court Building and City Hall, and they are linked together with short walkways shielded from the heat outside.

You can even go into the Supreme Court chambers, a dark room with beautifully precise wood panelling on the ceiling, and the room has a dock for the accused, and some items are behind glass cases to make use of the room.

I had visited the museum before so I went to see some new exhibitions. Some of the post-modern art are curious to consider. Take The Pleasure of Being, Crying, Dying and Eating by Montien Boonma from Thailand.

The cyclical nature of life and death in this work

There are round tables set up for dining with what look like chopsticks made of slender bones on top of the red tablecloth. Nearby is a giant column made of bowls stacked up and taking a closer look, the bowls have what look like dinosaur bone designs on them.

The cylindrical shape of the installation signifies the cyclical nature of life, and the title refers to the Buddhist belief that life has the stages of pleasure (eating), and suffering (crying), from birth (being) to death (dying), and then rebirth. Montien uses the ordinary objects to explore his Buddhist views, and also to mourn his wife who succumbed from her illness.

Poor farmers with their musical instruments

Another Thai artist, Paisal Theerapongvisuanuporn, shows the massive gap between the rich and the poor in Music, Lives and Peasants. Fantasies of being wealthy are beyond the reach of poor farmers who are worked to the bone. They carry musical instruments with them playing folk songs in a bid to ease their sense of displacement. 

Meanwhile, there's a voice coming from Michael Shaowanasai's Exotic 101, with a pole on a small round stage for supposedly a woman to perform pole dancing or some kind of suggestive dance.

This is Shaowanasai's commentary on sex tourism, as the voice gives instructions on how to become an exotic dancer. This work was made in 1997, during the Asian financial crisis when the Thai baht was devalued over 20 percent and the country faced a financial meltdown. As a result, sex tourism relies on exploiting women from the countryside who are poor and desperate for money.

What would you do with a pink pistol?

From Indonesia is Jim Supangkat's Ken Dedes, which shows the replica bust of an ancient Javanese goddess, combined with a woman who is topless; the work draws attention to the multiple and conflicting layers of Indonesian identity.

While Supangkat wanted to use the myth of the goddess to extol feminine power, his work was actually criticised for insulting Indonesian culture. 

One curious work shows a bunch of pink crackers shaped like pistols that are randomly placed in a mound on the floor. Indonesian artist FX Harsono called this work What Would You Do If These Crackers Were Real Pistols? 

Also part of it is a desk inviting the viewer to sit down and write their opinion, but no one did!

Controversial Indonesian art

It was fascinating that a museum like this in Singapore exhibited such provocative works that had such strong and critical opinions about their respective countries!