If you can tell your Monets from your Manets, make your way down to Singapore Art Week and chart your art-inspired path through the city.
This massive art festival — also known as Singapore Art Week — returns again this year from 17 to 28 January, ushering in dozens of exhibitions, walking tours, talks, art fairs and after-parties where you can rub shoulders with the who’s who of the local and regional creative scenes. Join the mad rush for events across the city as you discover (and rediscover) local art, appreciate our art spaces, galleries, and check out these art happenings over the week.
The crown jewel of Singapore Art Week
As the city opens each year with a visual spectacle, Art Stage (already in its eighth year!) is the main event that attracts both the art-appreciating type or the casual art enthusiast to its grounds. As the flagship show of the Southeast Asian art world, Art Stage continues to develop and bridge regional art scenes to create a stronger and more unified Southeast Asian market.
Art Stage, 26-28 Jan, Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Level 1, Hall A – C, 1 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore 018971
Art from Light to Night
One of the marquee events of Singapore Art Week, Light to Night Festival 2018: Colour Sensations will transform major cultural institutions and parks into spectacular works of art over two weeks in January. Spearheaded by National Gallery Singapore, in partnership with other Civic District partners—The Arts House, Victoria Theatre & Victoria Concert Hall, Asian Civilisations Museum and Esplanade—Light to Night Festival is the largest precinct-wide visual, literary and performing arts festival featuring both indoor and outdoor components that transform from day to night.
Light to Night Festival 2018: Colour Sensations, 19-28 Jan, Civic District
Get to know the Golden Age of cinema in Singapore
Get on these special guided tours (both mainland and offshore!) that will bring participants around the island on bus and boat to uncover forgotten film locations and experience newly-commissioned artworks in Singapore. The 2018 edition of State of Motion will explore film as a site of cultural and ideological production in the last decade of pre-independence Singapore. Reactivating snippets of our national past, Sejarah-ku (Malay for ‘my history’) comprises a selection of seminal Malay-language films produced predominantly by the now-defunct Shaw Malay Film Productions Ltd, as well as a diverse lineup of artworks and performances made in response to the films.
State of Motion 2018: Sejarah-ku, 20-28 Jan, Asian Film Archive, 100 Victoria Street, #04-01, National Library Building, Singapore 188064
Night time is the right time for art
Gillman Barracks’ flagship edition of the night time open house event, Art After Dark, returns this month for Singapore Art Week with an array of special exhibitions and programmes, new gallery openings (more art!), guest exhibitions, workshops and talks, art outreach… and of course late-night grub to satiate your hunger for all things aesthetics.
Art After Dark x Singapore Art Week 2018, 26 Jan, Gillman Barracks, 9 Lock Road, Singapore 108937
See Little India from a new perspective
Get to know this cultural precinct even more on this walk presented by LASALLE College of the Arts and Singapore Tourism Board, with support of Little India Shopkeepers and Heritage Association. Long-lost tales found in and around Little India are resurrected through murals, public art installations, free performances, and even a puppetry programme for the fourth edition of ARTWALK Little India, aptly themed Urban Mythology. Explore, celebrate and relive the stories of Little India on this journey.
ARTWALK Little India, 18-27 Jan, Various locations
Get your art fix, DISINI
DISINI is a curated festival consisting of a series of events, art exhibitions, outdoor sculptures and public engagements that will span nine months. Spurred by its locale, DISINI borrows its name from the Malay adverb ‘di sini’, meaning ‘over here’. The launch of this brand new visual arts festival at Gillman Barracks will feature French-Canadian DJ and cult hero, Jacques Greene, who will headline an all-night-long celebration at a party held in a fantastical pineapple-shaped pavilion designed by local fashion collective Mash-Up.
DISINI, 26 Jan, Gillman Barracks, 9 Lock Road, Singapore 108937
Singapore Art Week 2018, 17-28 Jan, Various locations
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