Sydney Contemporary 2019 - Installation Contemporary

Carriageworks

12 September – 15 September 2019

Curator Mikala Tai

Special Thanks to Anne Bradford, Priscilla Bourne, Sach Catts, Tango Conway, Chris Ross, Emily Galicek, Alana Wesley, Zoe Wong

Haw Par Villa – Video Snapshots series is a recent addition to the ongoing body of work Haw Par Villa – a project that considers ideas of cultural, national and personal identity through a cultural theme park in Singapore. This site specific video installation was first commissioned at 4A Contemporary Centre for Asian Art, and has been restaged at Carriageworks for Sydney Contemporary, Installation Contemporary. 

The videowork documents dioramas in the park in various states of deterioration and maintenance, with only the movement of trees or clouds disturbing the photographic stillness of the static camera shot. These short looped video amplify contradictory aspects of time present in the park; the invariable nature of sculpture at odds with obvious signs of change, the diorama’s dramatic depictions of movement undercut by the comedic futility of filming motionless sculptures.  The bamboo scaffolding, in which the videos are installed, speak to the park’s ongoing physical renovation and construction, while also playfully referring to how the park's history of refurbishment is intertwined with the construction of a Singaporean cultural and national identity.  In a final inversion, it is the videos that seem transitory and not the bamboo.  These video scenes appear to be in changeable positions on the scaffold, a nod to the literal relocation of concrete statues during the renovations, and a reversal of the typical temporary presence of scaffolding, instead the bamboo – usually a sign of change – becomes the permanent fixture.  

Photography by Zan Wimberley