Liu Kang: Essays on Art and Culture is a testament to the inexorable passion of an artist who knew no boundaries. This collection of essays, which Liu Kang wrote over 44 years, offers an insight into the artist’s myriad interests: interior design, music, literature, dance, photography, medical science, and the visual arts. Beyond these topics, Liu Kang’s contributions as a first generation Nanyang artist and art educator come to the fore through his thoughts and ideas about art societies, exhibitions, artists, the development of art education, and the growth of art in Singapore and the region. Liu Kang wrote his essays in Chinese. They have been translated into English for this volume, and are accompanied by commentaries that help contextualise one’s reading. This volume also contains snapshots of the artist’s life—from old photographs of Liu Kang travelling or painting, to that of the people he wrote about in his essays.

This monograph positions Liu Kang, one of Singapore’s first generation artists, as observer, commentator, and visionary of modernity in Singapore art history. The contexts in which his works were created consist of a colourful map of diverse cultures, places and influences, spanning China, Europe and Southeast Asia. The cross-cultural richness in Liu Kang’s way of seeing and art making are explored in four essays by curators and art researchers. These essays present fresh insights into the artist’s engagement with European and Chinese modernisms in a Singaporean context. The book also contains 208 colour illustrations and archival photographs, as well as an index and a glossary.

Liu Kang: Essays on Art and Culture is a testament to the inexorable passion of an artist who knew no boundaries. This collection of essays, which Liu Kang wrote over 44 years, offers an insight into the artist's myriad interests: interior design, music, literature, dance, photography, medical science, and the visual arts. Beyond these topics, Liu Kang's contributions as a first generation Nanyang artist and art educator come to the fore through his thoughts and ideas about art societies, exhibitions, artists, the development of art education, and the growth of art in Singapore and the region. Liu Kang wrote his essays in Chinese. They have been translated into English for this volume, and are accompanied by commentaries that help contextualise one's reading. This volume also contains snapshots of the artist's life--from old photographs of Liu Kang travelling or painting, to that of the people he wrote about in his essays.

Chen Chong Swee is acknowledged as one of the earliest artists to have explored depicting Southeast Asian scenes within the medium of traditional Chinese ink painting. Published on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition at National Gallery Singapore, this catalogue bears witness to Chen’s explorations across the mediums of ink and oil, the influence his immediate surroundings had on his art, and his insistence, above all, that it was impossible to divorce art from life. Full-colour image plates, newly commissioned essays and a biographical timeline of the artist within the catalogue flesh out the inflections of Chen’s oeuvre.

Imagining Singapore is the first comprehensive study on the history of Pictorial photography in Singapore. Drawing from interviews, unpublished historical data and newly discovered photographs, the book unveils a fascinating aspect of visual culture and its links to global Pictorialism.

Published to accompany National Gallery Singapore’s inaugural exhibition Siapa Nama Kamu?, the catalogue stands on the shoulders of giants to present a survey of Singapore art from the 19th century to the present, charting major themes across broad time periods. Over 400 works of art in a wide range of media are brought together to trace the ebb and flow of the history of Singapore art. Curatorial essays provide insight into the exhibition making, as well as examine the geographical confines of Singapore, the parameters of national identity and margins of time.

Intersections, Innovations, Institutions: A Reader in Singapore Modern Art is the second of two volumes of readers which the editors had published on Singapore art. The first volume, Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art, was published in 2016. Like the first volume, Intersections, Innovations, Institutions brings together historically important writings but the scope is on modern artistic practices in Singapore from the 19th century to the 1980s. The aim of this book is to make these writings accessible for research and scholarship and for new histories and narratives to be constructed about the modern in Singapore art.Bundle set: A Reader in Singapore Modern and Contemporary ArtRelated Link(s)