People visit museums and galleries for a disparate amount of reasons, whether to learn about a certain historical subject or to be inspired by a master artist. But while walking around and admiring the priceless artwork and artefacts, one question never really comes to mind: How in the world did the gallery acquire these items?
Setting up Navin Rawanchaikul's Asking for Nothingness.
Answering that unasked question is the point of the National Gallery Singapore's latest exhibition, "(Re)Collect: The Making Of Our Art Collection".
Open for two-and-a-half years, the National Gallery Singapore's two permanent galleries are home to the world's largest institutional collection of Singaporean and Southeast Asian modern art -- 8,630 pieces to be exact. Before that, custodianship belonged to the National Museum Art Gallery (founded in 1976) and then to the Singapore Art Museum (founded in 1996).
Black Stupa, 1989 by Montien Boonma.
"(Re)Collect", which runs until Aug 19, showcases more than 120 pieces of the artworks -- including major pieces by four master Thai artists -- to chronicle the gallery's journey and evolution from post-war Singapore until today. It is also a chronicle of the progression of Southeast Asian art through the decades.
"People are becoming familiar with who we are," said Russell Storer, deputy director of Curatorial and Research. "But they might not understand all the things that we do. We felt the best way to start was to look at the history of the collection -- where did it begin, how did it evolve, and how did its direction develop over time."
Upon entering the gallery, visitors are first faced with a small self-portrait of Malaysian batik artist Chuah Thean Teng staring intently back at them. Labelled P-001, it is the first piece of artwork registered in the national collection during Singapore's nation-building period.
"The national collection began in 1960 with a donation from [philanthropist and co-founder of the Cathay Organisation] Dato Loke Won Tho," said Storer. "At that time there was no national museum, so it's an incredibly forward thinking donation. He had a dream of a national gallery that never eventuated during his lifetime."
From then on, seminal moments of the country's museology are on display, acquired mostly through donations from artists, private donors, organisations, or the Gallery's Art Adoption and Acquisition Programme. There's a select few of Dato Loke Wan Tho's more than 110 donations, ranging from different genres to genders. There's Indonesian artist Affandi's colourfully grotesque Self Portrait, given to the gallery as a gift from his 1975 solo exhibition -- the first solo exhibition by a Southeast Asian artist held in a museum setting in Singapore. Then there's numerous artworks from the National Museum Art Gallery's inaugural show in 1976, "ART76", including Singaporean artist Cheo Chai Haiang's And Miles To Go Before I Sleep -- again, a gift from the artist.
Moving forward, visitors get to view recently acquired artworks like Thai artist Thawan Duchanee's Hanuman (1973) and Indonesian artist S Sudjojono's never-before-seen personal sketchbooks acquired from an auction.
"[The acquiring process] varies from work to work," explained Lisa Horikawa, curator of the exhibition. "Sometimes we go look for work, sometimes we get offers from outside. It varies from offers, to private dealers, to auction houses, or things that we stumble upon by visiting an artist. Every artwork really has a different history behind joining the collection.
Chuah Thean Teng's batik self portrait — Singapore National Gallery's first ever work of art gifted by Dato Loke Wan Tho. Photo courtesy of Chuah Thean Teng
"Many people think that curators can make a decision on what to select, but it's not that easy, because we identify an artwork, we do very thorough research of its exhibition history, prominence history, and the significance of the artwork and the artist. We also investigate how it fills the existing gaps in the permanent collection and we make the case as a whole to the acquisition committee, which consists of external specialists."
With the acquisition committee being extremely selective of artworks, especially in terms of contemporary art, it's a pleasant surprise that inside Gallery C, three grand-scale artworks by three Thai contemporary artists are on display.
First is Montien Boonma's Black Stupa (1989), made up of five large pieces of paper painted with soil, charcoal and glutinous rice connected together from the floor up to form a looming black stupa. Montien, one of the most respected modern Thai artists who passed away in 2000, was known for his pioneering mixture of media, and this particular piece alludes to the idea of impermanence, as well as the ancient methods of building pagodas by stacking terracotta bricks.
Second is Navin Rawanchaikul's touching and profound Asking For Nothingness (1995-1997) -- an arc of 11 towers stacked with 11,000 medicine bottles, which are half-filled with portraits of the elderly in Thailand. It could possibly allude to the disappearance of the memories, traditions and stories of the elder generations, marginalised by Thailand's rapid modernisation. If the artwork wasn't acquired by the National Gallery, it would now be sitting in boxes in his studio in his wife's home in Japan.
Then there's Rirkrit Tiravanija's Untitled 2014-2015 (curry for the soul of the forgotten), a three-channel 47-minute video of villagers cooking a pot of curry while the curry pot mysteriously moves across each screen by itself. In front of the projection is a bronze cast of the exact curry pot the villagers used to cook.
Rirkrit's artwork raises a lot of questions as we never see the locals eating the curry together. This, and the bronze pot creates a distance that tends to happen when objects are displaced into a non-neutral space, much like an art gallery.
"When it comes to collecting works of contemporary art, we take a very selected approach," said Horikawa. "So rather than focusing on the latest development, we're more interested in drawing historical connections of different works by comparing these works against what we have in the permanent collection, as well as in the discourse of art history in the respective country or region."
And though Thai artists have a large space of their own within the exhibition, Thai art only makes up 1.6% of the permanent collection.
"Works from 19th century and 20th century are still under-represented, and we're hoping to find some in Thailand from that period," said Horikawa. "It's very difficult. Thai collectors have some of the best works and they're very attached to their works. But we're still very fortunate that in some special exhibitions, there will be loans from private collectors. We don't have to collect everything. Acquisition is not the only form of work we can do."
From the tiny batik self-portrait of Malaysian artist Chuah Thean Teng during post-war Singapore to the grand-scale works of Navin and Rirkit in the now highly developed country, the Singapore National Gallery has shown how far it has come, and how much further it's willing to go for the sake of art.
(Re)collect: The Making Of Our Art Collection
Untitled 2018 (The Infinite Dimensions Of Smallness) by Rirkrit Tiravanija for the Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission. An intricate bamboo maze installation with a Japanese tea house at its centre. Apipar Norapoompipat
Family Portrait, 1954 by Georgette Chen.
