animal wall

The Animal Wall is an "ecological artwork" along a river embankment forming which is part of a 50m long boundary wall at the edge of a new residential development situated in the Century Wharf area of Cardiff Bay. Designed by London-based German artist Gitta Gschwendtner, it consists of 1000 precast woodcrete nesting boxes of various sizes (matching the number of units in the residential development), allowing for different species of birds and bats to inhabit the wall and be introduced to the natural environemnt, an attempt to mitigate the effects that the recent building developments have on local environment.

The resulting wall feature is a visually powerful matrix of dark grey boxes arranged in an ordered randomness, lined along the length of the wall to infinity, almost making the long impenetrable wall along the waterfront bearable. Designed in consultation with ecologists, the boxes have yet to be inhabited as, Gschwendtner claims, the birds and bats won't be looking for places to nest until next spring but "there will be a constant turn-around of tenants" (iconeye.com) and "not everyone will come at the same time".

The artist also insists that bird poo won't be a problem, because "birds keep it very nice and clean around where they nest", though she makes no mention of bats. I'm sure that the residents will also enjoy pleasant evenings accompanied by the melodious sqauwking of a thousand birds and bats circling around their bayview apartments.

With the Animal Wall, the developer has managed to shoot 2 birds with one stone, pulling out the marketing friendly eco card and at the same time, ornamenting and masking (or imbile with a projected function) an otherwise fortress-like boundary wall.

Why not just plant a few trees? Birds nest in trees, don't they?




Gitta Gschwendtner

ryan mcginley: moonmilk

having just opened this weekend, McGinley's new exhibition titled 'Moonmilk' was for me an arresting series of works. the exhibition, referencing the "white, cheese-like substance found inside caves", places naked bodies in subterranean settings to remarkable effect.


Blue Breakdown
182.9 x 274.3 cms

the photographs are arranged in two rooms in the gallery - one larger main room and a smaller one to the side - and the physical scale of the prints relative to the room and to each other reinforces the relative scale of the human element and surreal surroundings in the photographs. ranging from the spectacular to the intimate, we move from the 'Blue Breakdown' print covering half a wall to the book-sized 'Coco & India (Cascade)', travelling from the human speck in the former to the pair of girl-sized girls sitting in the centre of the frame. that, for me, was the strength of Moonmilk: not only the otherworldly backdrop, cast further out by the extraordinary lighting, but the constant human presence in it. at times dwarfed, and other times brought to the fore, but always placing the subterranean world in perspective.


Coco & India (Cascade)
25.4 x 17.8cms

('Moonmilk' is showing until 8 Oct 2009 at the Alison Jacques Gallery)

haider ackermann FW09

I wanted to dress a woman who was lost, searching for something indefinable and only carrying her mental luggage. A woman coming from no-man’s land, draping herself in strong fabrics and starting a journey. She doesn’t know why she’s running away and she doesn’t know what she’s looking for. But she’s a brave woman, because you don’t start such a journey on your own. In being a woman, she’s looking for her masculinity.

a resurgent interest in Ackermann's work arose after reading an interview he did with Knack Weekend. one derives a sense of thoughtfulness from his responses in the interview - something that perhaps translates through to his work. the quietly drawn-back hair, earthy tones and soft fabric textures of his most recent collection lend a stoic placidity to the entire affair. bared shoulders, a hand on the chest, and a hood drawn over the head suggest uncertainty. the work is evenly poised between strength and frailty, with a remarkable awareness of effect.




the reserved tone of his work is something that has carried through over the years, and something that comes across in the edition of A Magazine that he curated. in that publication, as in the interview, one feels the atmosphere that surrounds his work. there is an expanse of space as communicated by the blank colourlessness, but there is also a feeling of being shrouded - by what? - the interview perhaps begins to provide the answer.

When you’re a small child walking through the medinas of Algeria, where you can see veiled spirits and ghosts wander through narrow streets, you’re intrigued by these images. You want to know what’s under the curtains, where the great mystery and this sensuality are coming from. Those are my roots as a fashion designer. I wanted to decipher the totally different world hidden underneath those fabrics.

(credit: roupas from stylezeigeist for his translation)

luis teran at hermes gallery

Who would have thought the impulse to perforate anything and everything can be called Art, the Hermès gallery in Singapore is currently hosting an exhibtion by the Argentinian artist, Luis Terán, who is known for creating artwork by perforating objects, from wooden furniture to metal cans to fabric. Titled, A Traveller's Stories, this exhibition features a collection of elaboraately perforated magazine pages mounted onto a series of light panels that gradually changes colour. The work begins with the idea of the magazine as a traveler's compananion, and as a surrogate for the traveller's experiences, each fragment added on to the wealth of stories and landscapes collected trip after trip.

Commissioned by the Hermès gallery, the whole body of perforated magazine pages was completed in Buenos Aires, where Terán resides, and packed in his suitcase, travelling together with him to Singapore. Each magazine page is perforated with a pattern that is based on an image found on another page. The result is a superimposition of seemingly unrelated pages one in print and the other applied as perforation. However, there is yet another layer that is revealed through the translucency of the thin magazine paper. The light allows the print on the back side of the magazine page to be seen, adding to the superimposition. As the colour of the light changes, different portions of the pages are emphasized as the light is filtered through the magazine print and the perforation.

More about his Singapore trip on his blog.


Luis Terán : A Traveler's Stories
till 13 Sep
Hermès gallery, Liat Towers
3rd Floor, 541 Orchard Road

modern peking duck

Seeing how the crazy queues have finally dwindled, I got my hands on a box of Modern Peking Duck at the I_ON food hall. It is basically a somewhat simplified fast food version of the perennial Chinese restaurant favorite. The pieces duck meat were quite tender in most part, with the fats oozing out as you bite into the roll. The skin was, however, was uncrispy by most definitions. What is also lacking are the greens - sliced cucmber and spring onion, that is usually wrapped together with the duck, to add crunch and to serve as a counterpoint to the heaviness of the meat. Sold in boxes of 5 pieces, I have to admit the pre-rolled roast duck were still somewhat satisfying (how can duck fat not be), though it lacked the aura of enjoying peking duck in a restaurant.

As if continuing the modernist project of mass production and standardization for some future socialist utopia, the process of producing the wrapped duck rolls feels impersonal and almost mechanical. The roast duck was speedily (and almost mechanically) sliced up by the chef after which the slices of duck were wrapped en masse in pre cut sheets of egg crepe with a dash of hoi sin sauce. What remains of the duck carcass was promptly piled on top of the mountian of other matyred duck and the chef grabs another crispy fowl beginning the process all over again.

Having pre-wrapped peking duck in a box is just not quite the same as having it in a restaurant. Watching the waitress slicing off the crispy duck skin at tableside and serving it on a platter from which you pick a slice to roll in a piece of rice crepe, together with cucmber and spring onions and as much or as little hoi sin sauce as you wish. If you can gather a few friends or family, you are probably better off going together to a chinese restaurant to share a whole peking duck, it is likely that price will not be much more than a equivalent portion at Modern Peking Duck, and you get to share the experience with good company sitting around a dining table, not wandering about a mall. But if you are alone and just want a quick fix, pop down to I_ON and join the queue, if there is any at all. I recommend eating it on the spot, seeing how the skin has already lost it crispiness when served, it will be worse of if you left the duck rolls tumbling within the oversized box and letting the hoi sin sauce soak through the egg crepe.



Modern Peking Duck
#B4-75 I_ON Orchard
2 Orchard Turn

garfield minus garfield

when we strip Garfield away from the comics, the focus turns to Mr. Jon Arbuckle - a hopeful but awkward and clumsy young man whose lines begin to take a particularly existentialist turn once his cat is replaced with blank space. Garfield Minus Garfield, in its best moments, plays like a 3-panel line from a Samuel Beckett piece. Dan Walsh, responsible for 90% of the material on the site, started to "champion and popularise" the concept and saw his project explode in 2008. a year on, the strips are as darkly humorous as ever.



the work has also been published in a book form, available from Amazon. credited to Garfield's original creator, Jim Davis, the book is a symbol of an intriguing dynamic between appropriator and original creator. instead of refusing the use of his strips, Davis called the concept "an inspired thing to do" in an interview with the Washington Post, and went on to publish the book with a foreword by Walsh. the book features Walsh's material with additional pieces by Davis, and involved a one-off fee offered to Walsh by copyright holders Paws, Inc. to write a foreword "to a book by Jim Davis inspired by Garfield Minus Garfield".

thoroughly blurring the lines between appropriating and creating, one might draw links between this process (appropriating and re-appropriating Garfield?) and the act of re-blogging made easier by tumblr, placing original content at a premium. if there is even such a thing as original content - what does the word 'original' even mean? - as Walsh freely says, "everything is derivative". the legal status of copyrighted property also presents an issue yet to be tuned to the realities of artistic ownership, a fact that some will point out. Jim Davis created Garfield, Paws owns the strip, but to whom does Garfield Minus Garfield belong?



all strips credited to Dan Walsh

BLACK comme des garcons in singapore

Came upon this while doing my rounds at the Hilton Arcade. BLACk cdg will take over the old Giorgio Armani space at the Club21 Hilton/fourseasons stronghold, peddling the less bank breaking line of classic comme pieces done in black, with the label meant "to last as long as the recession lasts". While a BLACK mens line has yet to been announced at the moment, I hope the unisex pieces do not run me into the red. It'll be the ultimate irony for a line that purported to be a response to the recession. On a side note, I think it'll be pretty awesome if they just reuse the fittings in the old Armani store and just paint everything black.

BLACK was previously mentioned here

the handburger

I admit being one who is easily seduced by fancy graphics and quirky interior spaces. On the other hand, I also treat establishments which place great emphasis on graphics and decoration with a fair bit of skepticism, having experienced rather lacklustre products being peddled at a couple of such places in the past year. So it was with mixed feelings that I was anticipating the opening of this new burger joint at Raffles City called The Handburger. I first noticed the place when they had put up the hoarding while the shop was being renovated. It wasn't a loud and fancy as you might think, but was all white with an array of hooks fixed onto it. And on the hooks hung little promotional booklets introducing the new restaurant. The booklets were designed such that every page was a layer in a burger, starting from the bun on the cover, to the tomato, cheese, patty etc, all rendered in cute colourful graphics.

I happened pass by on their opening day while looking for dinner one evening and popped right in without hesitation. Run by the people of The Soup Spoon (which is next door), the Handburger, as its name suggests, is a canteen style restaurant serving handmade burgers, using fresh ingredients, with most of the items on the menu are made inhouse. The spac is dominated by the bleached-out hue of the timber finishes which were decidedly not the most appaealing under the flourescent lighting. Three rows of long canteen tables filled up the front-of-house which was cladded with darkened mirrors on one side. On the other side was a wall of shelves covered in cutesy vector cutouts, behind which was the kitchen.


On the menu was a good selection of different types burgers. I was quite tempted by the less tradtional burgers, like the parmasan prawn cake burger and the tandoor chicken burger. ButI ended up ordering The Works Burger which had a beef patty, thinking that I should try something more conservative on my first visit before going to the more gimmicky ones. The burger turned out to be this towering stack stack of 180g NZ sirloin patty and melted cheddar, topped with are a strips of crispy fried bacon, a sunnyside up, morsels of mushrooms and onion rings, finished with a caramelized onion bun. A bowl of chunky fresh cut fries and bbq sauce were served together with the burger on this giant paddle tray with indents carved out for the plate, bowl and untensils sit in. I was quite amazed at how the the burger managed to stay in place without toppling as I was slowly carving it out with my fork and knife ( A burger purist would probably scoof at using utensils to eat a burger but that's besides the point now). And due the lack sauces and slices of tomato and pickles, there was also a noticeable lack of plate tectonic action which I appreciate, hate having my plate looking like a crime scene after polishing off a burger. I could have done with a thick slice of juicy tomato but the juicy patty and the sunny side up provided enough moistness to the stack. While not truly excellent, i thoroughly enjoyed it.

Feeling gluttonous (like always), I ordered one of their soups before the burger arrived. I chose the chilled tomato soup with chilli, avocado and corriander which came in a glass. The cold soup was smooth and rather refreshing, a wonderful start to the meal ( would expect nothing less from the Soup Spoon people) and a good counterpoint to the heaviness of the burger. The flavours were delightfully layered, the sweet tangy notes of the tomato, the heat from the chilli, the buttery avocado, finished with the aromatic notes of corriander.

Unless you hate burgers, there is nothing much not to like about the place, hearty burgers made with good ingredients, the vector-chic interior and graphics and the friendly staff.


The Handburger
Raffles City Shopping Centre
B1-77/78

the monocle singapore survey 2009

whoever's job it is to trawl publications and media for possible gaps to exploit with marketing in the Economic Development Board, he/she landed a mini-coup with this one. unlike the disaster (well, it did make for a very good laugh) of the MDA rap, this survey manages to package concrete information about singapore into a deft, sharp and slick read. it focuses on industries, economy and other key areas of development, alongside some faces of the underbelly of the country: small cafes, art galleries, tiny designers and retail spaces.

in keeping with monocle's habit of writing about politics, culture and economy from the perspective of a design-conscious observer, the singapore survey manages to refrain from shoving cold facts into readers' faces. instead, it keeps its edges sharp, looking at people on the ground involved in their individual endeavours and making tempered but pointed observations about each area it surveys.

there is, of course, an overwhelming sense of positive energy practically shining out from the articles - something one might cynically point out as a positively well-sponsored tone. however, it consistently keeps well within the magazine's own generally upbeat vibe, neither belaboring its points nor weighing itself down with too much information.

something of interest, perhaps: the New York Times provides a little walk on the cynical side.



this survey also downloadable in .pdf.

the sartorialist book

"Maybe you'll find inspiration in a colour combination, or may be in a play on textures or a mix of genres, for example 'punk meets eskimo'. I like people to draw their own conclusions, to find their own inspiration without the influence of a guiding hand"

Just picked up this little piece of fashion history from Kinokuniya, the Sartorialist book. I'm sure the Sartorialist blog is familiar to many people and this book is a collection of the street style photographs taken by and featured on the blog by Scott Schuman, who started the blog as a hobby after leaving his full time job. While the idea of the street style snap can be traced back to Shoichi Aoki who pioneered the idea in his STREET magazine in the mid 90s, documenting youth wearing weird and off beat clothing on the Japanese streets, it very much remained on the printed medium until the beginning of this decade, with the advent of affordable digital cameras and personal web publishing platforms like blogger or wordpress. The Sartorialist is perhaps one of the oldest and probably the most influential street style blogs in the Anglo-European world, enumerating through the pictures that style does not equal trendiness. Documenting stylish people of across a spectrum of ages dressing in a variety of genres (many times unclassifiable), The Sartorialist, to me, embodies the fashion zeigeist in the later half of the 00s, the dwindling of power of the "designer's vision" and the decline of the top down flow of fashion trends by way of the print media, making way for a more democractic and individualized approach to style and the power of personal curation.







16.50usd on Amazon
48.15sgd at Kinokuniya

1 caramel

Spent a lonely Sunday afternoon outside by myself sipping tea and reading, one of those days when my thoughts are too distracted to sustain any kind of intelligent conversation with anyone. The place is 1 Caramel, one of the newest patisserie in town. Operated by the people behind Rochester Park, it's located at the ground floor of the rather pretentiously named apartment building called The Luxe. I have always lamented the dearth of good patisseries in Singapore, especially since Canele went the way of Bakerzin (Baker's Inn sounded so much better, sigh...), expanding into this mass market bistro chain, with the quality going down south. Good patisseries should just concentrate on making good cakes and 1 Caramel seems to be doing.

The rain was pattering on the road outside as I sat in the cafe, a brief respite from the heat of the past few days. The place was small and cosy, pretty quiet for a Sunday afternoon, probably due to the rain, not that it's a bad thing. Awashed in the dim diffused glow of the grey weather, the space was clean and sleek with a slight hint of self conscious trendiness. On the inner most side was a tall glass display cabinet, stretching from waist height to the ceiling, displaying the variety of cakes available for the day (too many to count with my ten fingers!). On the other side of the space, was a row of tables, with a long cushioned bench backed onto the full glass store front. The chairs on the other side of the tables looked like augmented country style chairs, white but with very high back rests. In the centre of the space was a long marble counter with brushed stainless steel legs, probably the best place to sit at but was quite underutilized, being filled only when the normal tables were taken up.

I first ordered the red miso souffle with yuzu ice cream, Expecting something rather savory and being somewhat skeptical of what I would be getting (I had in my mind the image of a chunk congealed miso soup), I was pleasantly surprised by how light the miso flavour was. The miso gave the otherwise plain souffle a hint of saltiness which melted with the sweet aroma of the miso. The savory-sweet souffle was served with yuzu ice cream, which provided a nice contrast with its temperature and citrus notes.

I later ordered a slice of the red velvet cake, which is an American southern classic. I know of another place in Singapore that makes it, though the cake and that place had been rather disappointing as a whole, but that's another story. 1 Caramel's version comes as a confection of deep red sponge layered with dark chocolate fudge (instead of the usual buttercream or butter roux icing) and cherry ganache which gave the cake a nice tarty twang.

While the double dessert did not cure my moodiness and the rain continued to pour as I walked out of the cafe, I left feeling certain that I will be back soon, as certain as the sun appearing after the rain clouds clear.


1 Caramel
#01-01A, The Luxe
6 Handy Road

alecia neo: home visits

Alecia Neo's portrait series entitled 'Home Visits', selections from which are currently presented as part of the 'Air-Conditioned Recession' gallery at Valentine Willie, struck me as a fairly well-executed study of the individuals within a community. taken in each subject's home or workplace, the everyman becomes a personage: a barber on his throne, surrounded by implements; a grandmother wrapped in an ethereal halo. at the same time, there is a sense that the tone of the portraits is being kept admirably neutral, their purpose more descriptive than narrative or moralistic. despite the slightly stylised setups, the photos neither glamourise their subjects nor portray them in an overly pessimistic light.

perhaps one criticism that can be directed at the series is a slight feeling of inconsistency in the treatment of some of the portraits - a sense of work in progress, maybe? but that does not detract from the strength of the series as a portrayal of a community of individuals with a feeling of empathy, rather than mere sympathy.