Make my tummy go GROWL!

Just looking at all these food makes me hungry!

Kim Burke masterfully combines design and art with my favourite thing in the whole wide world: FOOD. Her miniature food sculptures are absolutely incredible. She realistically creates everything from apple pie, to sushi, to cheese wedges from polymer clay. The amazing part is, they all look completely realistic and would be hard to distinguish from real food if it weren't for the giant fingers in the photos. These food sculptures are actually 1/12 of their actual size (approx 1 inch)!! I cannot even imagine how she creates almost the exact colour and texture of the food and made them so detailed they look real and good enough to eat!

Here was what Kim Burke said about making miniature food art:

From a very young age, I’ve been enthralled by miniatures and was delighted at how wonderfully addicting it is to make them. It’s truly remarkable when the delectable textures of food can be reflected on such a tiny scale.

I strive to make each miniature of the highest quality possible with the most realistic details. My inspiration largely comes from scouring cook books and local pastry shops for ideas. Desserts and gourmet food are my favorite to create but I’m open to any challenge to take on!

Kim Burke has been a huge inspiration for me throughout my coursework as her works made me realised how appealing and fun food art can be and how food art can be one of the ways I portrayed my concepts through. Even though I couldn't create such beautiful and realistic food (due to lack of experience with polymer clay and creating food sculptures), I managed to many create my kind of food (desserts) using mainly paper clay, paper mache and a variety of different materials such as newspaper, tennis balls, plaster etc.

Also, I felt that my coursework would not be the same if I had created such realistic food items as my concept was "the irony of fairy tales and nursery rhymes" and somehow my entire project would have lost the feel of a childhood table setting that feels beautiful and magical but still has the touch of childhood immaturity. I felt that my imperfections in my artworks have portrayed the imperfections of childhood and the idea of not even trying to pursue perfection as a child. Also I feel that the imperfections and unrealistic aspect of my food sculptures also represented the imperfections of the fairy tales and nursery rhymes (the gory and sadistic aspect) and how unrealistic they are. Yet, they are a very subtle part of my artwork, just like how children and parents in modern days can overlook the "dark side" of a fairy tale and still enjoy immensely.

I hope my coursework has allowed it viewers to enjoy as much as they had enjoyed fairy tales and nursery rhymes when they were young.

All in all, I have to thanks Kim Burke for being a great artist and inspiration and her art has motivated me to do food art and has made me push until the very end :D GREAT THANKS TO KIM BURKE, THE FANTASTIC CHEF/ARTIST!!  

Colour pencil drawings for prep work

Drawing of a wolf as research drawings for the Big Bad Wolf

Research drawings of a toad for the Fairy Godmother

Research drawings on spiders for The Fairy Godmother

Research drawings on desserts (Sorry I couldn't rotate it!)

Sorry there are so little drawings. I forgot to take photos of my prep to put up D:

Above few are some photos of my colour pencil drawings for my coursework prep studies. I feel that my drawings have improved a lot since sec 1 if you have seen them before. Somehow, this year, I have put in more effort and interest into my drawings and I am happy to see myself progress in a way that I never thought I would.

I used to feel rather demoralised when I see my friends produce amazing pieces of drawings and paintings and I felt that I couldn't even do half of what they have done. I felt my drawing and painting skills were really bad and that kind of destroyed my interest in art, to the point where I didnt even want to doodle anymore.

However, I felt that this year, during the entire coursework period, I have put in more effort than I usually had in the past and I felt myself improve in terms of drawing, especially with colour pencil. Also, coursework and prep work has sort of let me regain my interest and enthusiasm for art and also trained my patience, until I could actually finish drawing something without giving up (that always happens in the last few years).

I regret not putting in efforts to actually do well in art for the past few years but I will work hard to improve in terms of drawing and painting, and even working with other mediums and trying out new things :D (all after eoys of course!)

I am proud of my coursework and what I have achieved this year :D

The man in his birthday suit (an overdue assignment)

We were given an article by our teacher a few months ago about an artwork with no work title, with no explanation and we were asked to blog on whether we felt the "artwork" is actually ART. 

So what I did first was to obviously research on the artist, T. Venkanna himself. What came up on Google was not much but I did find out that actually the artist did something similar by replacing himself in a painting such as "The Dream" by Henri Rousseau and renamed it "Dream in Dream", where he painted a nude portrait of himself instead of the woman in the original painting. Also, he based another work, "Two Moon" on another original work by Henri Rousseau "The Sleeping Gypsy", where he deliberately altered the sleeping gypsy to be both dead and alive, as he paints in a skeleton where Rousseau had painted a resting figure in multi-coloured dress. Venkanna’s figure brims with unrequited and unfulfilled lust. Although his body has turned skeletal in death, his penis, so charged with desire, stays alive with lust and remains fleshly, erect and blackened.

Therefore, it is apparent that the artist is interested in portraying the human body in others' original works in different ways, only this time, choosing to exhibit his own in an attempt to "recreate" the artwork "The Two Fridas" by a Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo.

The artist "exhibited himself" at the Art Stage Singapore exhibition, stark naked, where he is seated in a booth in front of "The Two Fridas" - only dressed in his "birthday suit". Visitors to the exhibition can choose to join him in the room, hold his hand, and get a photograph taken for a token price of $250. The artist claims that posing naked and taking photographs is part of his art installation about "removing the trappings of identity".

In my opinion, I am actually fine with him exhibiting his naked body in an exhibition and claiming it as a form of art, although I am not very clear with his intentions and concept behind his work.

Having to study SOVA for 4 years, I am probably used to looking at nude paintings and trying to question if they are really ART or just.. PORN? But I have accepted that the human body is part of God's creation, and it is Mother Nature's artwork. I mean, if other artists can paint naked bodies in their paintings, why can't he paint them and exhibit them, even if it is his own? I find that if you accept Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" as art, you can accept T. Venkanna's naked body as art too. If Marcel Duchamp can claim a urinal with his signature as his artwork, why can't T. Venkanna claim his nude body is too?

However, I have to question that fact that he charged $250 for a photo with his naked body and thus doubt his artistic intentions. I dont see how taking a photo with him stark naked and charging it for such an expensive amount of money is part of "removing the trappings of identity". I find myself thinking if he is actually sincere in expressing his ideas through his artwork or just making an excuse to make money. The artist's vague explanation of his artistic intentions did not help in clarifying my doubts and thus, I am not certain if what the artist created was really ART.

Also, I feel hard to connect how his exhibition has any link to Frida Kahlo's painting in the background. "The Two Fridas" shows the inner turmoil and self-doubt Frida Kahlo went through during the divorce she had with her husband, Diego Rivera. However, I do not understand how the exhibition of T. Venkanna's nude body had any artistic link to the intentions of Frida Kahlo. His lack of explanation also led me to thinking that he is exhibiting his body without a concrete concept and intention behind his work and is just trying to "copy" Frida Kahlo's painting or create some sort of controversy through this display of his nude body. I feel that his artwork has failed to communicate his intentions and did not speak for itself and thus though I concede that the human body may be considered as a form of art, however, it is a failed artwork without an artistic intention behind it.

Finally, I have to say that I feel that Singapore's art scene is just not ready for an artwork like T. Venkanna's naked body, or in fact any naked bodies. Singapore's art scene is very conservative and is not as developed as places like France and Germany, where art is a form of self-expression and you can do many different things to express yourself and your emotions and thoughts as an artist. Singapore is just not ready for such freedom of expression through art, whereby you can do anything you want, even if it means to flaunt your naked body in front of many people. Even if the exhibition had taken extra precautions to ensure that visitors did not feel uncomfortable or stumble upon it by accident, I believe that even so, exhibiting an artwork like so somehow is not so appropriate in Singapore as compared to other countries due to our conservative nature and it might not be socially responsible as an artist.

In conclusion, I am not strongly against nor do I approve of his form of self-expression but instead, I try just express my personal thoughts of this artwork to anyone who is interested.

Monkey Business :D

I found this post online about a humongous, adorable, colourful monkey made out of flip-flops of all colours! Yes. You have seen it correctly. FLIP-FLOPS! Slippers and all that jazz! So this monkey is in Brazil and it was built with the help of local students. It’s called “Fat Monkey.” Yes, I know. It sounds cute and funny! They used flip-flops because they wanted to spotlight something that was iconic of Brazil. I think it’s so ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE and I love how the monkey looks like it’s is just hanging out, basking in the warmth of the sun.

Here are a few photos from the Florentijn Hofman website…

And here’s a video showing how the monkey was made:

I think our school should do something like this! Probably use school socks or school skirt. I think that would be really awesome. Show off our school spirit and how much we value art and creativity!

HANDphone coverage

I found this on my sister's tumblr :D

This is an AT&T advertising campaign that was designed by Jose Estrada, a Mexican, who won a million dollars in an open competition organized by AT&T just using painted hands and a mobile phone. Quite amazing!!! Enjoy it!

Australia

Bahamas

Brazil

Canada

China

Costa Rica

Egypt

England

France

India

Italy

Japan

Mexico

Morocco

Netherlands

Norway

Paraguay

Russia

South Africa

United Kingdom

It is pretty amazing how just a few pairs of hands can form so many different background designs, don't you think? They manipulated their hands to form different shapes, did some layering and painted their hands. At first sight, it looks complicated and makes you go WOW. But when you take a closer look, you really have to commend on how creative this idea is, to create something so cool from something so simple and unexpected like your own hands.


I like how AT&T made use of hands to show the concept on how convenient it will be always having an AT&T handphone around with you. They also used the the hands to create different backgrounds to suit different countries and their cultural background and painted them in bright colours to attract attention because we must not forget this is for publicity!


All and all, I really like the innovative aspect of this project as it is something new and something I would never thought could be make me go WOW.

National Identity = Art??

With globalization, it is futile for Singapore to persist in establishing a national identity in art.

Unfortunately, I have to say that even though establishing a national identity with art is not impossible or useless, but it would be an incredibly difficult feat to accomplish.

Globalization is said to be the age of cultural crisis and has created a homogeneous culture which is heavily westernized, therefore resulting in crisis in the cultural arenas and has slowly destroyed what cultural identity is. Singapore is not excluded, especially with our already weak cultural background. Singapore, as a multiracial society, does not even have a strong cultural foundation to begin with, due to the mixture of religion and tradition brought to Singapore by immigrants from the past. We do not have a unique Singaporean culture as of now, just a mixture of cultures blending together. It still confuses me until now what exactly it means by "Singaporean".

Singapore art is not any different. We do not have a unique style of art that represents Singapore. Instead, all we have now is a confusing mixture of both Western art influences and Eastern art influences, which is essence is just "Nanyang Art". However, as much as we would like "Nanyang Art" to be "Singaporean Art", it just fails to encompass the "Singaporean Spirit" and instead represents the entire South-east Asia. In Indonesia, art can be used to establish national identity among the locals as their art style encompasses their traditions, religion and culture, painting the daily life of their people and the Indonesian society. The Indonesian painters have created their own Indonesian art style over a long period of time. On the other hand, Singapore does not have a cultural heritage development and history long enough, as compared to countries like Japan, who has a strong sense of national identity which can be seen in the Japanese artworks. Therefore, it is incredibly difficult to create and develop our very own local art style that would aid in establishing national identity among our people by acknowledging “Singaporean art”, and not just deeming paintings and sculptures done by local artists as just “art”.

To be truthful, Singaporeans are not really interested in developing art in Singapore, especially Visual Arts, thus using art to try to establish a form of national identity in Singapore is very difficult, in fact, almost impossible. How many people are actually interested in pausing their busy schedule to take a look at the public art around them or take time off to attend art galleries to appreciate what Singaporean artists have accomplished? In fact, they are probably much more interested in flying off to Paris to just take a glance at the famous and renowned "Mona Lisa". Singaporeans mostly thinks that local art is not worth investing time and money on as local art is simply not "famous" and "popular" enough. They rather handle the immense amount of work piled up on their work desk than even sneak a peek at a painting done by a local artist. To try to establish a unique identity with Singaporeans attitude towards local art will indeed take immense amount of work and time to cultivate their cultural interests towards Singaporean art.

Establishing a national identity in art means that WE have to ACKNOWLEDGE that local art is SINGAPOREAN art and not just art or a decorative piece of work. We have to understand that every work that a local artist makes is part of our cultural heritage and we have to accept and be proud of SINGAPOREAN art and its importance to our country. To allow it to be a part of our national identity, we have to make it an important part of US in our lives. Until that happens, art is still unable to make its way into our history.

Therefore, establishing a national identity in art with globalization is not futile but it would extremely difficult and strenuous, and it would take a very long time to make Singaporeans acknowledge Singaporean Art. But still, it should be something we should try and put some effort in as this concerns us and our country’s future.