June 2008
| 'Fragments' was a group exhibition I was involved in with glass artists, Jane Cowie, Dominic Fondé and a performance artist Andreé Weschler. We were all foreigners (and artists) who had ended up in Singapore for whatever reason.
I made small glass pieces using painting and fusing techniques. All was new and exciting. Jane, Dominic and Andreé were great fun to work with as well.
I was looking at the small glass piece I had sent Orah, thinking about the time I was making the pieces in Jane's studio, fighting the mosquitoes swarming around my head and thinking about the distance the piece had literally travelled in the envelope with the word 'fragile' written on the frog tape.
My memory, my friends and Singapore suddenly felt really, really far away.
Does this distance ever come closer or does it keep drifting away? |
26 November 2013
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May 2008
| Meidi-ya supermarket in Singapore was like a mini Japan. You could get most things Japanese there. I remember being extremely excited when I saw proper sushi being sold there (then I found out that you could get sushi anywhere in Singapore). 'Natto maki' is my all time favourite. Natto is fermented soy bean. It has a very distinct smell and taste.
Like I wrote to Orah in May 2008, I miss natto and raw egg on a bowl of steaming rice. Although I can get frozen natto from the local Chinese supermarket (sell by date is a bit suspect), I don't really fancy eating eggs raw here. Probably because it is not a done thing. In Meidi-ya supermarket, they sold eggs that could be eaten raw. In Japan, so long as you get good quality eggs, they are fine to eat raw. No problem.
I have perched myself in a little space between the cabinet and the wall, daydreaming about eating eggy natto on rice. A daydream of elsewhere. |
25 November 2013
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April 2008
| There seems to be a shift. The picture drawn for April 2008 is of a hand with a broken finger nail and a text reading 'so what are you waiting for?'. I was busy at that time preparing for a group exhibition, experimenting with painting and fusing glass. Maybe a sense of direction was presenting itself after being in Singapore for 16 months.
So in a hopeful spirit, I photocopied the first page of a notebook and wrote, 'so...what are you waiting for?'.
What am I waiting for?
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22 November 2013
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March 2008
| I made a small book called (W)HERE for March 2008. Each folding page contains a short writing and a little ink drawing. The last page ends with, 'Where next? Home?'
Gaston Bachelard notes in his book The Poetics of Space that, '...all really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home' (p.5). How? I wonder. If this was true, one should not not have to suffer from the notion of homesickness.
The words WHERE? and HERE? are stitched on multiple layers of thin muslin and photographed against the wet, cold November sky. Floating words that speak of nowhere in particular.
The rain is getting stronger now. |
20 November 2013
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February 2008
| Dark and gloomy picture for February 2008. What state of mind was I in? I can sense angst and frustration. Why? What was making me feel so depressed?
I suppose it could have been anything. The fact that my new apron (from Cath Kidston) was far too big and I had to alter the damn thing made me plunge into despair ('Nothing fits me here! Not even an apron!'). It could have been that in February 2008, Meidi-ya supermarket in Singapore stopped stocking Marigold Vegetable Stock. Who knows?
The sense of fitting or belonging can shift at the slightest thing. I know that from experience. My apron feels better now that I have altered it but still isn't quite right. |
18 November 2013
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January 2008
| January 2008, I would have been in Singapore for exactly one year. Without the seasonal change, one month merges in with the next and I remember finding it hard to keep track of time. The New Year must have slipped in, sort of after Christmas and just before Chinese New Year.
I can't seem to get my head around the idea of Phenomenology. I know how I felt today when I woke up. I can see my own two feet and know that they are cold. I can also sense some kind of emptiness in my heart that I hope will fill up some day. Are all these valid experiences under the definition of Phenomenology?
I hope my friends will be able to enlighten me in this new pursuit of intellectual challenge. |
13 November 2013
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December 2007
| My Universal Home was a space that Anita created with the potential to become a home for everyone.
'My Universal Home is about yours and everybody's space.'
I have recently started to read Gaston Bachelard's The Poetic's of Space again. A small group of us have set up a reading group to go over his writing. I am curious to know how my current state of 'unsettledness', if there is such a word, will affect how I read the book. |
12 November 2013
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October/November 2007
| From 28th November to 8th December 2007, I took part in an art project organized by my Belgium artist/designer friend Anita. I set up my 'social knitting space' within Anita's My Universal Home, a structure she had designed for the Singapore Design Festival. I looked at the activity of knitting as a common language which could be shared by everybody who came to my social knitting space. I remember being very nervous at the start as I had no idea how the project was going to be perceived or whether we would be able to speak the common language.
I still think about the idea of common language. How do people communicate? How do people understand one another? It's not necessary about the language you speak. How does one connect with others?
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11 November 2013
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Here are a handful of works that I have already completed. I only came up with the idea to start the blog yesterday when I thought I would love to have an audience for the pieces I was creating. I would also be very interested to hear your views to what 'home' means for you.
September 2007
| An 'authentic' recipe for making dry mee siam and a squiggly half knitted object were the works for September 2007. In contrast to the strange hybrid recipe of luncheon meat, rice and cheese I had sent Orah in July, this was supposed to be the real stuff, using real authentic ingredients. I must have been getting used to living in Singapore somewhat if I was managing to get a little mental space to 'show off' what you can get in the 'real' place. The connection with the knitting? I have no idea.
But it is the knitting I turned to for the new work. I crocheted a small place mat using the wool I sent to Orah and scraps of left over wool I keep around the house for the imaginary plate of dry mee siam I would love to create but no longer can get the ingredients for. But maybe it is better that way. At least it will always remain authentic in my head. |
07 November 2013
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August 2007
| The collection of stuff I sent to Orah for August 2007 was a mess. I could not recall at all what was going through my mind at that time other than guessing that I must have been very busy or rushed to send her such a poor array of things. Maybe the burnt candles were from my daughter's birthday in July? But the half melted plastic bags and the used sequins were a complete puzzle. Maybe they were reflecting my garbled existence then.
Not that my existence is any clearer now, I wanted to make sense of the mess I had in front of me. So I went about stitching the sequins in a neat line around the edge of a drawing and I also put together the half burnt cut up little squares into a tidy rectangular shape. The process was therapeutic and enjoyable and made me feel like I was in control (of what?). I made three small new works, the last one resembling a Japanese flag. Of course, the invisible umbilical cord was at work again. |
05 November 2013
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July 2007
| I started to find strange mix of East and West in local cookery magazines. For me it somehow made sense. The combination of East and West is not an unusual thing in Japanese cuisines either (using soy sauce with pasta dishes, etc) but I was curious to see how Orah would take such a hybrid dish. So with this in mind, I made the July 2007 work.
Looking at the recipe for Luncheon Meat and Twin Cheese back in England, I quite fancied actually making it. The result? It was a strange mix of East and West but I liked it. It made sense. |
05 November 2013
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June 2007
| Some of the food items I saw in Singapore were a complete mystery. Some of them, particularly the sweets, were in lurid bright colours which really did not resemble anything one could possibly consume. Trying these strange looking food items became my hobby for a while. The more I tried the more I felt I was getting to know the place better. Sometimes trying new things takes a little bit of courage but once you try and find it is ok, you feel other things will be ok too.
I wanted to try making some food that did not look like food. The work for June 2007 is one of the test pieces I made using clay and painted in black ink. The actual item would have been made of sugar and black food colouring. I was thinking about fitting in, learning and adapting to new things and the little black food was meant to speak about my foreignness in a new country. Would people eat it/me? If they did, would that mean I was accepted?
I put the little black things into a bowl of soup. The black thing is still me, the foreigner in a familiar place. Will anyone eat it? |
04 November 2013
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May 2007
| Back in Singapore from my visit to Tokyo, I decided that I needed to 'welcome the morning in' instead of being 'chased by it' so I started to wake up at 5am to work on my drawings before the everyday morning madness took over.
My working space was literally a tiny corner in the dark and gloomy kitchen in my apartment in Singapore. The top of the little cabinet where I kept all my paints and drawing materials was my desk. I would perch on a little plastic stool and manage to make a handful of drawings in watercolour before it was time to wake the kids up.
None of the drawings were any good but the daily exercise of moving my hand helped me keep my mind focused and gave me a sense of purpose which was important for me at that time.
I haven't carried on with the early morning drawing activity but 'welcoming the morning in' is still my policy. However, early mornings here are cold, dark and generally miserable. I miss the warm heat of Singapore. |
03 November 2013
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April 2007
| A postcard capturing the Tokyo night scene with Tokyo Tower in the distance was the art work for April 2007. Looking at the postcard now, it really hits me that I miss this place so much. It is my birthplace at the end of the day. My home country. Perhaps you are always connected with your birthplace with an invisible umbilical cord. I simply wrote, I MISS THIS PLACE SO MUCH on the card. No extra explanation needed. |
28 October 2013
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March 2007
| I picked up the Japan Airline's postcard on the plane going to Japan. I wrote on the back, '10 minutes to landing...home?'. That was the piece for March 2007. A questioning of where home is/was.
I decided to cut up the postcard into very small squares and stick them together with sticky tape - creating a layering effect as I reconstructed the card. Two airplane silhouettes were also added.
I have landed but the questioning still remains. 'Where am I? Where is home?'. |
27 October 2013
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February 2007
| February 2007's work was from a body of work ('100 Paintings') that I made in Singapore only a month after I moved there. I was desperate to keep busy. Desperate to hold on to what I was doing in England. I only had the dining table to work on but so long as the works were kept small, it was manageable.
The layering techniques that I used were ideal for the state of mind I was in where I was not too sure about anything in the new place. The number of works, '100', was also necessary for me to keep going. I was intent on keeping myself busy.
The little paper tag in the February 2007 work gave me inspirations for the 2013 piece. Still very much in the 'missing Singapore' mode, I looked at the paper tag as something that could take me back to Singapore. A lot of layering is taking place here again - hiding and revealing. The unsettling feeling of being in a different place is unnerving although England is not entirely a new country for me. |
25 October 2013
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January 2007
| I was very new in Singapore in January 2007 and the work I made then was about the food I missed in England - the ham, the cheese, the chutney the wine.
Now back in England, I miss so many food items from Singapore. I had to make a piece about all the food I was currently missing. I created a collage of all kinds of local food from food courts in Singapore and on it I wrote the January 2007 note deliberately in the past tense ('I missed...') and kept the 2013 list in the present ('I miss...') to indicate that I am missing the food in Singapore right this moment.
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24 October 2013
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