Safra Yishun

 

Due to global needs, social changes and technological advancement there is increasing trends in adopting a work life integration in achieving personal goals, family commitments and friendship joy. Dwelling is no longer contained in a house but expanded to contained spaces such as a car, a mobile phone etc. The mixed media sculptural artwork is constructed together by a house form, running gears and animated LED light effects. It is also an environmental art that adapts upcycled domestic items like umbrella fabric, container covers, bathroom tubes, fan blades, found ojects and various discarded components. The art workshop comprises of String art, Acrylic pouring and Sticker art. The participant’s creation will be displayed at different parts of the sculpture.. They are encouraged to bring small items from home eg keys, buttons, clothes, souvenirs, computer mouse. They will use the strings with the readymades and tie them together into a work of art. It is exhibited during Chinese New Year in which the participants are encouraged to extend their new year greetings in it's decoration.

Chingay 2023 Rabbits Arts Venture

 

Chingay 2023 Rabbits ART-Venture is a group project co- created by students and staff of New Town Primary School with Tay Swee Siong. Phoebe (biggest rabbit in the installation) was last of her kind on Earth. All her friends were not with her anymore. She was always wondering around alone. On one fateful day, Phoebe was walking in a beautiful flower field where she saw a unique flower. Phone was immediately drown to it. As she walked closer to the flower, she could smell a sweet scent. She had never seen a flower like that. Suddenly, the sky turned grey. A ray of light shone at her, and she heard a voice: "Do you have a dream...?" Phoebe thought for a moment. "A dream..?! I dream.. to fly around the world." "I can help you fulfil your dream, one condition." "What is the condition?" Phoebe asked. "I want you to lead and serve others with your heart." This installation features Phoebe leading a group of colourful rabbits from different backgrounds. As Team Explorer R'100. they work together to create a new spacecraft to achieve missions, exploring the future possibilities of Singapore.

Chingay 2023 Large Float

 

Food relates, connects and binds us as Singaporeans. It begins from our ancestor bringing their cultures and traditions from all over the world and settled into our island. Singapore food is unique. They are blended with flavors of our multi-cultural background, mixed with colorful palette of spices and has distinguish savory taste. Our food cultures transformed, integrated and shaped as as one united Singaporean. "Makan-Together 2050" invites the colorful ice ka-chang spacecraft with enormous robot cooking a feast in 2050. The robot picks the freshest ingredients, cooking them into futuristic flavor and serving them to our makan kakis. Eating is always one way that brings us Singaporean closer and to share our stories together.

Chingay 2023 Community Float

 

Float co created by residents from Tanjong Pagar GRC.  

The artwork was co-created with the Tanjong Pagar Cluster in Queenstown CC. There are 6 community workshops in which it outreached to 200 participants and residents. The event is a platform for the public to nurture creativity through string art, acrylic pouring sticker art and exploring various upcycling domestic materials as art mediums. 

Deer sculpture

 wire framework 

Volume created using aluminium foil, paper clay and epoxy clay.

Ender formed by steel wires.

Surfaces finished and painted with primer.

Design and painted by Singapore artist Teo Huey Ling 

Chingay 50 Mini Floats

Title

“Emerge Stronger Together”

 

The 3D installation is an artistic form of a sailing boat cruising through the stormy waters. On the deck are houses created by the CCK GRC residents through a series of community engagement workshops co created with the artist. Every house has a uniquely created flowering plant growing above its roof. The boat design is inspired from the Singapore two-dollar boat series design. The sculpture symbolizing our resilience towards the crisis and striving in creating individual homes with work, life, and play.

The sculpture working principles are leveraging sustainability by improvising upcycled household objects like used plastic containers, bottles, utensils, and leftover household items. It explores in using customizable maker electronics with modular parts and fasteners constructed using open-source 3D printing. 

 

Crucifix sculpture at Newport Cathedral.

 

The Newport Rood

Until the Reformation, the entrance to the chancel of St Woolos’ Church, Newport, like thousands of other churches across the country, was dominated by a wooden screen carrying a more-or-less life-size crucifix, probably with figures of the Virgin Mary and St John, one on either side.  The Old English word for such a cross was ‘rood’ and the screen on which it stood was called the ‘rood screen’.  (The word survives in the name ‘Holyrood House’, the site of a former monastery, in Edinburgh.)  The figure of Christ crucified was the ever-present, visible reminder of the central reality of the Christian Faith. The Reformation saw the destruction of most such images though many of the screens have survived in English churches (e.g. Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral, York Minster, etc.)  In St Woolos’ Cathedral, on the north wall, by the chancel arch we still have the medieval doorway onto the long-vanished rood screen.  

Newport Cathedral is the latest Cathedral in these islands to erect a new Rood as a visible reminder of the Crucified Christ as the central reality to which the Christian Faith and the Christian Church bear witness.  Other cathedrals have done this in the past century or so, e.g. Peterborough, Wells, Brecon and, only recently, Lichfield.  When I proposed the possibility of our new rood I pointed out that the Cathedral contained no significant images showing what the Cathedral stood for.  Many great churches have stained glass or other representations of the Mysteries of the Faith but Newport Cathedral boasted little or nothing.  I was told that the PCC had long ago pondered this fact.  

I began to wonder what would people think when, in say 50 years, they come inside the Cathedral.  Many other churches might well have closed by then.  What – if anything - would St Woolos’ Cathedral tell them about its reason for existing and the nature of the Faith for which it stands?  Perhaps it would just tell them that it was old and rather beautiful.  That is clearly not enough.  As I considered the interior space of the Cathedral with Mr Alban Caroe’s fine, modern chancel arch and the adjacent medieval door, high in the wall, I wondered whether perhaps we needed a new, hanging rood, to replace the lost medieval one and to bring back into the heart of the Cathedral a representation of what this church and the Christian Faith are all about.  For a couple of years I thought that perhaps we should get Cristi Paslaru to paint for us one of his wonderful icons, this time, a huge crucifix.  He has done several specatcular ones and would, of course, personalise the design for this location.  I knew that the varuous authorities would balk at another icon and I also realised that it would entirely dominate the simple grandeur of the Cathedral interior.  That didn’t feel quite right since the altar is the principal focus and nothing should divert from that.  (A Cathedral is not an art gallery.  The art is there to enhance the point and purpose of the place not to overthrow or usurp it.)

Thanks so the generosity of an anonymous donor, the new figure of the Crucified Christ now hangs in the great chancel arch, adjacent to the medieval rood door.  It is the work of Singaporean artist Mr. Tay Swee Siong and is his third such figure.  The first is in the house of my friends, the Redemptorist Fathers, on Nallur Road, Singapore.   I saw it when staying there with them in 2016 .  The other is in the garden of the city’s Catholic Cathedral of the Good Shepherd.  As I travelled back through Singapore on my way home from visiting family in New Zealand, I realised that this figure was the answer to my notions about a new, hanging rood, for St Woolos’.  It would clearly make its point but it would not dominate. 

The Newport figure is the largest of the three being some eight feet in length.  The figure is crafted in steel wire, each piece being cut and welded into place as the figure takes shape through the creative eye and imagination of the artist.  When the figure is finished to the satisfaction of the artist, it is powder-coated in black and three large nails are added to complete it.  Whilst Swee Siong’s artistic instinct was at every point the determinative, creative force behind this work, Redemptorist Father, Vincent Low CSSR, provided a point of reference for the artist and a watching brief on my behalf.  I received updates of progress as the figure began to take shape in Singapore.  Once completed, the piiee was professionally packed in crate constructed of recycled, reinforced cardboard and shipped to Southampton.  It arrived at the Cathedral in Holy Week and was carefully manoeuvred inside to await installation once social distancing regulations made that possible.  The proportions having been calculated in relation to the chancel arch, installation was simply a matter of judging the height at which it should be hung.  It is suspended on fine steel wire such that it seems to hang invisibly in the air.  

I have deliberately avoided any artistic interpretation of the Rood since I am hoping people will have a chance to see it for themselves.  I hope to write again when there has been time to live with this figure and to become acquainted with it.  I should end by saying that I believe it will entrance and engage those who see it, with open hearts (necessary to appreciate any art), drawing them to understand the centrality, for this holy place, of God’s love in the self-giving life and death of Jesus Christ.

Lister Tonge

Dean of Newport

May 2020

https://deanofnewport.wordpress.com/2022/04/01/invisible-radiant-and-prominent-the-newport-rood/