https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4964-0207
![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper examines the significance of 5th Passage to Singapore’s contemporary art histories. This short-lived yet groundbreaking artist-run initiative operated from 1991 to 1996 at a time of momentous development for Singapore’s contemporary art scene. Yet compared to other art developments documented for this period, there is conspicuously little critical examination of the significance of 5th Passage. This article seeks to explore the array of reasons for the relative invisibility of 5th Passage in Singapore’s art history. Not merely a passive omission or forgetting, such invisibility includes conscious and unconscious suppression and censoring.
Acknowledgements
I am especially grateful to former 5th Passage co-founders, Suzann Victor and Susie Lingham, for their important insights and invaluable support, and staff of the Singapore Art Museum, particularly Chu Chu Yuan and Andy Koh who provided generous assistance with my access to archival materials; I also thank Chu Yuan for her artist perspectives. Thanks also to Eve Tan, Siew Kee-Liong, Susie Wong, Han Sai Por, Ray Langenbach, Noor Effendy Ibrahim, and Koh Nguang How for their insights and/or assistance with images. Finally, my thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. My research for this paper was supported by an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship entitled ‘Asian Art Publics’ (2017–20, grant no DE170100455).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dr Michelle Antoinette is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Art History and Theory at Monash University, Melbourne. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Asian art histories, especially contemporary art histories of Southeast Asia on which she has published widely. Michelle previously held research and teaching positions at the Australian National University, Canberra. She has held two prestigious Australian Research Council Fellowships researching developments in contemporary Asian art and museums, with her recent ARC DECRA Fellowship exploring ‘Asian Art Publics’ (2017–20 grant no DE170100455). Her significant publications include Reworlding Art History: Encounters with Contemporary Southeast Asian Art after 1990 (Brill | Rodopi, 2015) and with Caroline Turner, Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibitions: Connectivities and World-making (ANU Press, 2014). She co-curated (with Wulan Dirgantoro) the exhibition Shaping Geographies: Art, Woman, Southeast Asia, held in Singapore in 2019–20.
Notes
1 Cover image and front-page headline: ‘IN THE NAME OF ART … PUB[L]IC PROTEST’, The New Paper, Monday, January 3, 1994.
2 The Singapore Art Museum became host to a developing public archive on 5th Passage from 2019 – in the first instance, of documents collected by Suzann Victor and Susie Lingham. A number of sources for this research paper derive from this archive.
3 These plans were articulated in the 1989 ‘Report of the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts’ followed by the three ‘Renaissance City’ reports in the period 1998–2000.
4 Unless exempted the staging of arts entertainment events or activities in Singapore requires an approved license from the Singapore government’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).
5 LASALLE relocated to the city centre in 2007. It now forms part of the ‘Bras Basah Bugis’ (BBB) cultural district.
6 See Parkway Parade website, ‘About us’, https://www.parkwayparade.com.sg/about-us/
7 Invitation card for the officiating reception of 5th Passage: Access to the Arts, Parkway Parade, Singapore, 19 April 1991. SAM-SG5-SV1 5/1/1, 5th Passage Collection, Singapore Art Museum Archive, Singapore.
8 See note 7. This momentous period of contemporary artists’ ‘dreaming’, and later their ‘nightmares’, is traced artistically some twenty years later in Ray Langenbach’s video work, Singapore Sub Liminal, 1994–2015.
9 The corporate sponsorship was chiefly rent-free lease of the space. 5th Passage had to secure its own funds for events.
10 While TAV's dedicated space was situated in a rural setting, from the beginning its artists regularly presented their art projects in Singapore's urban public spaces and this sometimes occurred around shopping precincts and inside malls. Seng has cited the artwork More Than 4 for the Fringe Festival of the Singapore Festival of Arts in 1988 as an early instance, where TAV members Lim Poh Teck and Tang Mun Kit “laid pieces of art from Wisma Atria to Raffles City for people to step on” (Seng Citation2009, 13–14; cf. Say 2019). Others include Art Mart–Singapore International Shopping Festival at Cuppage Terrace, 1989; and The CARE Show, 1990 (including performances outside Paragon and Wisma Atria, and inside Scotts and Raffles City shopping malls). See also https://www.tav.org.sg/archive.html
11 Victor explains, ‘I had accepted the invitation to create work for the Abeno-Soho project by in turn extending the invitation … to Lingham and Han Sai Por, so as to form a team … ’ (Personal communication with the author, 3 July 2020).
12 5th Passage Founding Director, Han Ling, was responsible for, and managed, the then very new idea of the 5th Passage ‘Pop-Up’ stalls at the Raffles City retail complex (Victor’s personal communication with the author, 13 February 2020).
13 Ng’s performance of Brother Cane has been well described and analysed by now, including through restagings of the performance by artist Loo Zihan (see Loo Citation2012).
14 As communicated with the author by Victor, 13 October 2020.
15 Lingham notes that as co-organiser with AGA, ‘5th Passage had repeatedly asked TAV president and curator of the performance art events for descriptions/titles of the works, but this wasn’t supplied. Hence, 5th Passage put up their own advisory in the space’ (Personal communication with the author, 29 June, 2020).
16 The relevant PEL was applied for by 5th Passage member, Iris Tan, on behalf of 5th Passage.
17 Victor reports that there was also a sense that TAV attempted to distance itself from 5th Passage following the controversy, especially after TAV member and AGA performance art curator, Lee Wen, had reported to the media: ‘We don’t want people to misunderstand that Artists Village supports controversial performances’ (see Ng Citation1994, 6); (Personal communication with the author, 13 February 2020). In Lee’s blog pages two decades later, he would praise and congratulate Lingham and Victor, and reflect apologetically: ‘For how wrong we were to you that in all the dissertations and spoken debates we forgot your story … not once did we under[stand] how you stood by us in earnest support, silently observed and suffered neglect. Your space got shut down, your programs forgotten, your artists dispersed and your names disappeared from theses, journals and from discussions. My heart goes out to you both and in fact I like to say you did it your way and the most elegantly deservedly to the victory that is yours to claim’ (see Lee Citation2013).
18 Further, Iris Tan was ‘prosecuted for providing public entertainment without a licence, as the performances continued past the approved time.’
19 A much smaller sum of SGD$1,000 was required to accompany applications for licenses for scripted performances (mostly by theatre practitioners who work with scripts).
20 Lee Wee Yan reported that having access to a shoplot at Pacific Plaza provided him a rare opportunity to work as a solo artist rather than the more common practice of having to share subdivided space in a group show, as well as to hone his practice publicly; his work featured on the cover of a local newspaper thereafter (Lee et al. Citation2019).
21 Art critic Lee Weng Choy reflected on the critical potential and need to contend with the consumerist ‘aesthetics of the spectacle' when presenting installation art at the site of Singapore’s shopping centres at this time, citing various works from the Surrogate Desires exhibition (see Lee Citation1995; Citation1996).
22 Chu recalls this to be the likely title of this work.
23 Personal correspondence with the author, 19 June 2020.
24 Tan presented a performance artwork at the AGA on 1 January 1994 while an art student at NAFA. Following the ‘5th Passage incident’, she was prevented by NAFA from presenting a performance artwork for her graduating exhibition in May 1994, at a gallery at Orchard Point Shopping Centre (Koh Citation1994, 4).
25 Victor was also invited to create a work for one of the outdoor stations but recounts that the work was forcibly discontinued by Theatreworks representatives for reasons unknown to her (Personal communication with the author, 3 July 2020).
26 ‘ … I wish we, 5th Passage, were given a chance to present our views [at this conference] of what has happened – especially when our situation relates so much to the issues of space, spaces and spacing’ (Victor, in Lee Citation1996, 179).
27 Personal communication with the author, 12 June 2020.