Conjugations – SMRT
[ 08.05 – 30.09/ 2018 ]
SPRMRKT 501 Bukit Timah Road 02-13 Cluny Court S259760
Think of a space millions of people pass each day.
The idea for Conjugation started when Tay was in Shanghai on an artist residency and took the Shanghai Metro daily. He saw the urban train carriages as a space that sliced through our daily consciousness. You enter at one point, and you get off at another. As the train snakes through the city terrain, seldom does one think about much more than their destination, let alone much distance they’ve covered. The train is a tunnel into which commuters disappear, and reappear again.
In Shanghai, Tay saw the opposite: the space held more weight for some who had nowhere to go. They anchored the lives of buskers, the old and the poor. Because of the immense traffic (the Shanghai metro sees an average of 10 million individual trips a day), one will see networking ads, people selling goods and flyers being distributed by people who spend their time on the trains, not just passing through.
Tay also started thinking about trains when he saw the MRT station for Holland Village – where he spends many hours – being built. A place he grew up in, he started noticing the changes to the residential enclave change after the station opened in 2011, on the new line that was the Circle Line. He saw what he called the ‘ripple effect’ of accessibility, and the waves of new groups of people that were drawn to Holland Village—previously rather inaccessible by public transportation.
Using satellite images from Google, Tay traced the daily commute over and over again with a malleable substance, creating a sculpture on canvas. The ‘freshest’ blend in with the older ones, hardening slowly over time. To the artist, this exemplified what he calls the “ripple effect” of accessibility, representing the effect a metro line has on the surrounding urbane. By stacking layers and layers on top of each other, he repeats the ‘journey’ of the commuter each day and in the end, the effect resembles that of topography, or a map relief. The series, set to grow with SMRT’s expansion plans, begins with 5 artworks — one to commemorate each line.
If one were to pay more attention to our journeys each day, what would it look like?
Calvin Tay
Calvin Tay (b.1987) studied Industrial Design at the National University of Singapore. Intrigued by materials and their properties, he is perpetually seeking new ways to manipulate them. In 2016, he co-produced SAMASAMA, a project involving migrant workers and non-profit organization HealthServe. He was most recently awarded a residency with the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai, China. His works during the residency revolved around the overlooked intangibles he experienced when moving around and interacting with the city and people.
Exhibition Catalogue
View the artworks available for sale in +1 (plusone). All artworks are original and come in signed editions. Prices include custom-made frames. Interested parties may email anmari@sprmrkt.com.sg for more information.
