August 2008
| I have always been fascinated with images of 'working hands', particularly in the domestic context. The work I sent to Orah in August 2008 was an image of a hand assembling a cake.
There is something about a busy, creative hand at work. It is very spiritual, yet real. That combination fascinates me.
My mother has great hands. Always clever and busy. Louise Bourgeois' has great hands too. So does Picasso.
I stitched over the hands assembling the cake. I wanted my hands to be doing something busy too. |
06 December 2013
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July 2008
| We visited Winchester in July 2008. Orah organized a get together for us and one of the dishes she prepared was a salad made of beautiful purple leaves and orange and yellow Nasturtiums she was growing in her allotment. The dish looked dazzling like summer squeezed on to one plate.
My mother used to grow Nasturtiums. I never knew they were edible.
I cut up up the photo of 'Orah's Allotment Salad' into tiny little squares and reassembled them. I was not trying to reconstruct the memory but more like making it into something completely different. Now that I am here, I don't need the actual image. It can be pushed back to a place where I can tap in now and again to feel the warmth of that summer day.
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04 December 2013
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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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