Paper boats is a music video commissioned by Anjana Vasan for her latest album, Strange Country Jukebox. The video uses an animation style that combines vector shapes with line drawing done using rotoscoping techniques. The work was brought to life through Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects.

Click on the video link to watch the MV in full, and see some of the screen grabs from the video as well as a page from the storyboard.

You can find Anjana’s music on Spotify.

House Is Open is a virtual game that went live at the start of 2020. The brainchild of theatre collective, Fill the Vamp, the game walks players through the rich history of three Singapore musicals through short write-ups filled with fun facts and trivia, interviews some of the talented creatives behind the music, and also features FTV’s starlets singing beautiful renditions of select songs.

Working primarily with Adobe Illustrator, I created a the vectors for the three levels of the gameplay, choosing props and set pieces from the three musicals to highlight and reference for players. Watch the short video to experience a brief walkthrough of the game. Scroll down to see a collection of process photos as well as a screen capture of the end of gameplay. Enjoy!

Find out more about about FTV by clicking here.

Coping Mechanisms (2019) is a collaboration with Pooja Nansi, a poet, and Kult Studio, a collective of designers for the Singapore Biennale 2019, 22 Nov 19 to 22 Mar 20. It is on display at 8Q@SAM on Queen Street, Singapore.

Commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum to produce a work for the exhibition, Pooja reached out to collaborate on a visual artwork based on a poem of the same name.

The poem takes snippets of conversation from a group-chat where people share their joys, triumphs, trials and tribulations of every day life. The visual translation of this group-chat as a coping mechanism is a cacophony of text and typography which leads the viewer to weave in and out of the shared space.

Kult Studio was responsible for the AR experience of the work. This virtual dimension of the work brings it full circle back into the mobile device, where the poem was first conceived.

More information on Pooja Nansi and the commissioned artwork can be found here: https://www.singaporebiennale.org/art/pooja-nansi

For the later half of 2018, Priscilla Tey and I had the opportunity to conceptualise and design for the annual aedge exhibition organised by the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts (STAR), Ministry of Education, Singapore.

aedge (Art Educators’ Developmental & Generative Explorations) is an annual Art exhibition that encourages Art teachers to hone their Art practices and enhance the professional excellence of the fraternity.

The catalogue, logotype and collateral were inspired by the hit pop song, The Edge of Glory by Lady Gaga, and features physically and digitally manipulated typography that folds into space. The vibrant choice of colours were a shift from previous years’ monochromatic logotypes, and also reflected the playful energy of our design collaboration.

All public schools in Singapore were given 2 copies of the aedge 2019 catalogue, and this was made readily available at the exhibition site of the School of the Arts over the course of the show.

Marbling became a recent fascination in the classroom and in my own studio practice. Curious and excited by the playful and experimental nature of the medium, I found myself spending hours making countless marbling pieces on papers of different sizes. Once I became a bit more aware of how to control the medium, I found the compositions a perfect landscape for my thoughts and experiences because of my physical involvement with the medium. Taking some personal writing from my private blog, I felt it was about time for the words to exist in the print world.

These A5 zines were printed on 140gsm Maple Bright paper and were sold with unique marbled envelopes at the Singapore Art Book Fair 2018 in July.

These print brochures were for projects that I have been privileged to work on since 2013. While some were designed by myself, others were collaborations with other designers. They are:

Creation (2013) – An Art Exhibition by SJI Old Boys at Singapore Art Museum

root (2014) – An Art Exhibition of 8 Young Artists at Ocean Financial Centre; Collaboration with Lim Shu Min

Elbowroom (2015) – An Art Exhibition by 9 Young Artists at NIE Art Gallery; Collaboration with Lam Si Yun and Priscilla Tey

Waning, Waxing (2018) – A Visual Art Exhibition at ION art gallery; Collaboration with Priscilla Tey

A Date with Dwayne (2018) – Theatre performance at The Black Box, ITE College Central

His Four Sides (2018) is part of an ongoing exploration on the fluidity of paint. Coming after Her 4 Sides (2013), His Four Sides is an introspective work that uses fundamental basic shapes that visually move in and out of the canvas space. The colours were mixed after a difficult period in my life, and in retrospect now come to represent the collage of experiences of the past few years.

Medium-format film taken on Hasselblad

Having studied and lived in Providence, Rhode Island, for the past 4 years, I was interested in capturing the time and space that I observed around the city. I also made a trip to Swan Point Cemetery where many of the oldest families of Providence are buried, Americans who once lived in and walked on the streets of the rustic city. 

Colour laserjet print
2014

Catalogue for the RISD Museum's exhibition featuring alumni, Arlene Shechet's collaborative work with Meissen. The catalogue design was inspired by the recast element of the exhibition, whereby discarded pieces of Meissen porcelain was upcycled and re-processed to become exquisite sculptural works by Shechet. Most of the photography was shot using a Canon DSLR, and the main typefaces used were Antwerp paired with Avenir in order to embody the collision of old and new that was running through the exhibition. 

Interactive Installation

Hello, My Name Is invites viewers to take a name sticker to label a face. Over time, the name accumulate, hiding the ethnic faces that emerged from the shadows. This installation has been staged in America and in Singapore. 

11” by 17” 
Linocut print

I Belong Here Too (2014) reconfigures the house that I grew up in into a housing development board (HDB) block, an icon of the Singapore landscape. I have had conversations with a number of Singaporeans who feel strongly that living in a HDB classifies one as being a truer Singaporean than others. During the process of working with linoleum and mixing the inks for the national colours of Singapore, I was also contemplating on the growing tension back home due to income inequality and the scramble for Singaporeans to find an authentic national identity.

Mixed Media Video

A brief adaptation of the story of Bukit Merah (Malay for Redhill), a fable from Singapore.

46" by 46" 
Oil on canvas
2013

This painting was done in different orientations. The square format was meant to avoid creating a conventional landscape or portrait study. 
 

Colour inkjet print on Classic Crest Natural White 80T
2013

Carroll's beloved story of a girl with an overactive imagination and a never-ending stream of questions has brought readers tumbling down into Wonderland with her since its first publishing in 1865. This re-conceptualisation of Alice's ruminations in a fantastical land invite readers into her fragmentary consciousness of dreams and idle fantasy. Playing with dreams brings a revitalised look at Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 

Triptych of 60" by 20" canvases
oil on canvas

Having received many religious materials from my parents over the years, 'From Mum & Dad' is an exploration of my relationship with religion and my parents. This painting was completed in 5 days, including time taken to stretch and prime the canvases.

Ink, water, perforated black paper, white glue

Studio-time spent exploring non-traditional drawing tools to create tonal/value studies from live figure models. I worked mainly with white glue, perforated black paper, powdered charcoal and indian ink. I executed the work mainly with a cork-on-paintbrush tool fixed with necklace beads, a spray bottle, sticky-foam ended toy bullets and my fingers.