last week i had a triumphant if brief return to civilisation: got up late, went to an early lunch with desmond at tras street (fleur de sel: we were given nothing one thought of as exciting, but it was traditional fare done competently and quite deliciously, which is sometimes better) and then went up to gillman barracks: chiefly because i wanted to see the arachnid orchestra before it closed, secondarily that i knew of a chun kwang young exhibition at pearl lam (some newer works of a surprising pastel palette that i never would have associated with him.)on our way in quite by chance i light on a poster for the sundaram tagore and discovered there was a miya ando exhibition on, so we hotfooted it over there quickly. no one else being in that afternoon the gallery manager (who turned out not only to know luke heng — my new interest in singaporean art — but owned his works) gave us a thorough tour. including — windfall! — a private look at a large fluorescent painting from hiroshi senju’s day falls/night falls series, installed at the back of the gallery in a nook out of direct view. i had tried to see the larger hiroshi senju exhibition in january, during one of the gillman after darks, but the queue had been so long (and the crowd was giving me a headache) that i passed on it. nearly a year later a wholly unexpected encounter: under the ultraviolet lighting this electric blue cascade. ah, 缘分, she thinks。
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird