Paper Trails Between Lion and Swan gathered an eclectic array of works by six Singaporean and six West Australian artists in cavernous Old Customs House. This was the second iteration of a transcultural exhibition exploring possible ties and disconnections. The first Paper Trails was held at SCULPTURE 2052, a gallery and research project concerned with ‘preserv[ing] “the accents” of sculpture and sculptural art of our time’ located in North Singapore beneath the Johor Strait.[1]
        While paper was the primary material for most of the work, sculptural qualities took precedence. Desmond Mah contributed two sophisticated painted sculptures (or sculptured paintings?) that continue to develop his unorthodox use of materials. Of the pair, it was Secret Letter to a Friend in Banjarmasin that was most striking to me. Mah’s increasingly confident, resolute, and unique use of materials are on show in this lively reimaging of the well-known ukiyo-e triptych by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre. Mah writes an alluring context around the work—of secret letters, colonial power structures, dispossessed Javanese women, and the darker side of Stamford Raffles’s biography (the so-called “founder of Singapore”). Yet, while the myth that surrounds the image is intriguing, the work stands on its own as an arresting and unusual image.
        This blending of the seeming antagonisms of surface and sculpture continued throughout. Xin Xiao Chang’s patchwork paper construction whose individual sheets, suspended like a sail in the centre of the gallery, included calligraphy which was either painted-in or cut-out, a play of light and shadow; Kelsey Ashe’s impressive silkscreen prints on a sculpturally installed concertina folding scroll; Sarah Thornton-Smith’s elegant etchings, folded into pettle or pod-like forms mimic banksias; Yeo Chee Kiong’s installation, tenaciously constructed using furniture thrifted in Fremantle; and finally, Deborah Worthy-Collins’ ethereal textile installation made from teabags. Rarely does Old Customs House appear “full”, however, the disparate work benefited from space to breathe—a curatorial achievement in itself.
        Unlike most residency programmes that see either one or several artists from afar plonked somewhere unfamiliar, the genius of Paper Trails is that the exchange was twofold. The project saw the half-and-half group exhibit in both Perth (Boorloo) and Singapore. In doing so, the curatorial team of Harrison Waed See, Desmond Mah, and Yeo Chee Kiong facilitated the group, exchanged ideas, and discussed the possibilities this collaboration might generate—a truly cosmopolitan activity, as opposed to the more standardised (and arguably rudimentary) artist residency programme.
        While the exchange may have been a cosmopolitan affair, the exhibition itself highlights the distinctive cultural contexts each artist brings to the work. Viewers found themselves stumbling between equivalences and apparitions, comparisons that appeared and disappeared, a mirage of understanding that seemed to approach as quickly as they would recede. Rather than a hindrance, the dissonance was what made the exhibition truly compelling, as the artists presented distinct works, unfettered by some overbearing curatorial vision with all its cultural impositions.
        Tan Yen Peng’s work exploits these shared and contradictory histories of colonial influence and geographic location in an unusual series of photographs. Dragged from the net, printed and displayed in op-shop frames, Here and Then, Now and There (The Swan's Way and A Tale of Singa) is a collection of paired images with shared qualities. Within one garish gilded frame we see two grainy photos, on the left, black swans paddle along the Swan River behind which towers Perth mining multistories. To its right, a white robotic swan monitors the quality of Singapore’s waterways. In another, a painting by Chua Mia Tee, one of Singapore’s most important social realist painters, sits next to Dianne Jones’ revision of Tom Roberts’ Shearing the Rams. Here and Then, Now and There, continues an idea Tan first explored in the work Here-Here, exhibited in Transcodage: Art Surveying Techniques of Maps at the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab in 2021. Here-Here contrasted ‘nostalgic images of Singapore and Taiwan’.[2] These pairings act not as comparisons, but visual polemics—what are we to make of them? Attempts at creating connections, differences? The genius of Tan’s work is its lack of didacticism, suggesting the “point” is to complicate our understanding of our connected yet parallel histories with a simple graphic gesture.
        In the corner of the hall, Nhawfal Juma’at’s work scintillated and fascinated. His work, An Inquisition into the Void Century, took inspiration from the undeciphered Singapore Stone, blown apart by British colonial troops during the construction of a fort, of which only one fragment survives (for more, see Francesco Perono Cacciafoco’s recent article in The Conversation). Juma’at has reimagined the stone three times in glistening aluminium foil and utilitarian chicken wire, each encircled by a track of blue LED lights, suggestive of the original Singapore Stone’s place at the mouth of the Singapore River. Having flown to Perth with only a few days available to construct the work, Juma’at’s sculptures are both a resourceful response to the conditions of the programme and to his chosen subject.
        These sculptural works were accompanied by the more pictorial works of Di Cubitt, Harrison Waed See, Terry Wee, and a particularly unconventional work by Ezzam Rahman. Rahman used a remarkable combination of anti-inflammatory patches, repurposed leather, epoxy resin, and his own hair, adhered to small canvas boards. Atop these peculiar panels, Ezzam writes in Jawi script, the Arabic writing system used in Malay. For Rahman, these works are a part of his sustained interest in relearning colonised Malay languages. However, the relationship between the research and materials used for the objects is difficult to decipher.
        Equally coded, Harrison Waed See’s Valley of Coasts and Beasts I, II, and III, are populated with a dense array of motifs. Like “spot the difference” games, the three screen printed banners feature subtle changes in symbols and imagery. Video game and fantasy aesthetics are prominent—health bars in the top left, stylised swords, tools, and other items, all geometrical rendered. Nearby to the blisteringly vivid screen prints, Study I for Valley of Coasts and Beasts, demonstrates a more gestural and painterly side. A preparatory painting, Study I is confident, loose, and painted with a hand that is not overbearing. It presents fresh ground for See, who has expanded his practice in the past few years. On the opposing wall to See’s Study I is a pair of a delicate and lightsome oil paintings on paper by Di Cubitt, Remnants and Ghosts #1 and #3—a resting point for the eye.
        Terry Wee’s screen prints play with the insignias of early 20th century Straits Dollars and the latter Malaya Dollar bank note designs—printing and reprinting the designs repeatedly to create meticulous geometric forms. Displayed together in a hexagonal form, the thirty-six prints (eighteen derived from each currency), form a subtle rumination on the colonial history of Singapore.
        Paper Trails is an example of twelve artists—three of whom took on the burden of curating and coordinating the project (See, Mah, and Yeo)—creating their own creative opportunities. The tenacity of this self-determined project is noteworthy. Desmond Mah, who is credited with the inception of this project, often expresses with vigour how the scarcity of opportunities in Western Australia often leads him to create his own projects and possibilities, particularly looking toward Asia rather than Australia’s eastern states. Paper Trails presents a fresh and more enmeshed format for cultural and visual art exchange.

Paper Trails Between Lion and Swan ran 9 – 23 June 2024 at Old Customs House.

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Footnotes:

1. See https://sculpture2052.com/about-us-1

2. See https://whitewhitewind.wixsite.com/tan-yen-peng/transcodage-2021

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Artwork credits:

1. Nhawfal Juma’at, An Inquisition into the Void Century, 2024, tin foil, woven wire mesh, LED strips, 100 x 70 x 40cm.

2. Sarah Thornton-Smith, Heartlines, 2023–2024, etching inks on hosho.

3. Desmond Mah, Secret Letter to a Friend in Banjarmasin (detail), 2024, oil and mixed media on xuan paper, 35 x 59 x 3cm.

Photography by Liang Xu.