Secret Garden
Made in Singapore 2013
Lim Hak Tai Gallery, NAFA, 28 Aug 2013
“Yeo Chee Kiong’s A Secret Garden (2010) consists of the element of installation, video and performance.
Choosing wool as a major material for the installation allowed Yeo to materialize the abstract ideas of rain,
cloud, shadow and night in his garden by rejecting any coarse texture of nature. Yeo’s secret garden is surreal, elegiac, poetic and mysteriously alluring for the visitors’ invitation.”
- Curatorial brief by Dr Wang Ruo Bing
Concept
Wool is an uncommon clothing material for a hot and wet tropical country like Singapore. It was a material I started to explore when I was in Scotland, later, it became a material that signifies my personal experiences in Scotland when I returned home. A material that is rather inviting and interactive, wool allows me to materialize abstract ideas such as rain, cloud, shadow, and night. With its unique property, my metaphorical expressions of sun, rainforest and columns also became poetic. In the wool sculpture series, the visitor are able to literally “enter” the sculpture physically, and experience in an intimate way, the tangible yet abstract phenomenom.
“There is a planted rainforest in my Secret Garden.
A Black Cloud intended to shower the forbidden Garden, And the black cloud loves sun.”
Performance And video installation: A performance that invites two performers to be the shadow/darkness of the black cloud with black knitted fabrics, and the shade/mirage of the red sun with neon orange knitted fabrics. The narrative expression of this one line story - The Rain of Singapore is Mischievous, A Sun Meets A Black Cloud in A Monsoon Season, and I Lost My Tears, is seeking a direct interaction between performers and the visitors. It also attempt to link up the performer and the installation in an interesting way. In the performance, the performers are to gradually move out from the exhibition hall and “disappear” silently. A video documentation will be taken and presented as video installation (option 01). The black and neon orange knitted fabric could be exhibited on two.
