All Walks Of Life: Performance Art At The Esplanade

Forty three faces to commemorate Singapore’s 43rd year of nationhood. The performance was held in conjunction with the National Day celebrations at Marina bay where the parade and firework display is held. Coincidentally, the glass panels is about 43 meter long. It took me between 20 – 30 minutes per face. It was an exciting project and at the same time it was scarry as I could not be absolutely certain how it will turn out. The transparency of glass and using only three colours of spray paint is the main challenge. I’ve been training hard capturing facial likeness at high speed so that was the least of the problem.
I conceived this project as a tribute to my nation and partly to show the artist community not to dismiss caricature as low-art. Being trained in contemporary art, I consider this a legit ‘performance art’ project as the audience completes the art. It was highly interactive and the public enjoyed it. It was titled “From all walks of life” as I chose whom to draw at random as the crowd gathers.
“Singapore is a local foreign country” said one of the person who posed for me. That explains why about half of the people drawn were tourists, Australian, Danish, Swedish, Nigerian, Irish, American, etc. and locals form various profession. A few of them even became my friend on facebook. I talked to all of them as I drew and the process drew a large crowd every time. The venue officials loved it as they had something exciting for the two weekends that I was there. And they had a wonderful backdrop for the sea of people that gathered for the celebrations on the 9th of August.
Since it was up, the gigantic caricature mural became a popular public art piece. I constantly see people taking photos with it. It was even featured in the newspapers, radio and TV.
You may view a clip of the process by Mediacorp here: rawclipx.podcast.sg
or another version on youtube: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=CC1NcQ0llwo



For more pictures, look up my Picasa Photo Album