Learn about the 10 artists whose work has been selected from the NIE Art Collection and housed in the NIE Library. To view their featured art work, please click on the thumbnail image or visit the Featured Art Works webpage.
Chng Seok Tin
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Chng Seok Tin completed her Postgraduate Study at Hornsey College of Art, United Kingdom, in 1980. Thereafter she studied Intaglio and Engraving at Atelier 17 in Paris in 1981. She proceeded to conplete a Masters of Fine Arts (Honours) at the University of Iowa in the USA. She has won several well-deserved awarfds like the Cultural Foundation Award under Postgraduate Studies, Hornsey College of Art. For all her outstanding and stupendous artworks and contributions, she was an invited Distinguished Artist, Art for All, UNESCAP, United Nations Conference Centre, Bangkok, Thailand, 2001.
Her source of inspiration is simply nature. She is often surrounded by landscapes of hull that is featured in many of her prints. She studied ponds and rivers and what she sees is translated in visual terms of a very personal nature. She works from photographs and sketches at times and as she puts it herself, she approaches her work in a spiritual and conceptual way.
Chua Ek Kay
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Chua Ek Kay was born in 1947 and passed away on 8 Feb 2008. He has been hailed as the bridge between Asian and Western art. Chua is the first Chinese ink painter to win the United Overseas Bank Painting of the Year Ward (1991). He as trained under master ink painter Fang Chang Tien of the Shanghai School but later developed a keen interest in Western art. He recived the Cultural Medallion Award in 1999. Prominent in Chua's paintings is the blend of traditional Chinese art forms and Western theories and techniques.
A variant lithographic process is employed in Awaiting a Dragonfly where Chua paints directly on mylar sheets (a mildly tectured, translucent material) which is then transferred to photosensitive aluminium plates in a 3-hour process. The plates are then passed through the lithographic press machines that transfer the image onto paper. Awaiting a Dragonfly is a successful piece that combines brushwork and print medium. Chua has skillfully captured the expressive of brushwork in the surprising media of the print.
Juneo Lee Eng Keong
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"This painting was done in Tasmania in 1992, the change in the climate and environment triggered my desire to represent the experiential contrast between Singapore and Launceston. Sublime cheerfulness and excitement is structured within the work as a response to the "healing space" of nature and fresh air. Conceptually, it is my psychoanalytical approach in drawing out my inner monologue of the change using naturalistic and affective instrument in art making." (I, Me and Myself: An Unholy Trinity, 1993)
Born in 1966, Juneo Lee Eng Keong received his Diploma in Fine Arts (Painting) from LaSalle College of the Arts in 1991 and Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) from University of Tasmania in 1992. In 1995, he graduated with a MA (Hons) from the University of Western Sydney (Nepean). He is currently a lecturer in National Institute of Education (NIE). He held four solo shows in NIE, one in Art Space, Singapore and three solo shows in Australia's Universities.
Milenko Prvacki
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“Fragmented” is inspired by the idea of non-narrative situations and notions that could stand cohesive without a traditional linear story structure. It is an integral extension of Prvacki’s “Visual Dictionary” works influenced by the contextual structure of a dictionary. This abstract painting remixes three fictive pages of dictionary fragments and reconciles as a diary of a completed journey. “Fragmented” is an intentional compilation of a variety of contrasting visual elements, shapes (soft, sharp, geometric), marks (in different media), colors(warm, cold, light, dark) and different materials cropped from my dreams of how my personal everyday dictionary would look like.
Milenko began his artistic career in the former Yugoslavia and had established himself in Europe before moving to Singapore in 1991. Since then, the prolific artist has deeply enriched Singapore’s visual arts scene and has been widely consulted on various issues related to the arts. Milenko is also one of the country’s foremost art educators and is the cultural icon of LASALLE College of the Arts, where he has mentored and inspired young Singaporean artists. His huge, eye-catching mosaics brighten up the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station.
Sarkasi Bin Said (Tzee)
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Sarkasi Bin Said (Tzee) was born in 1940. As a child, Sarkasi knew he wanted to be an artist. His flair for art won the notice of art teacher Haki Sulaiman bin Hj Suhaimi who took him under his tutelage.
Winning several accolades for his nation, his works have been awarded the Best Entry from the Sarasota Art Association in the United States (1981) and the First Prize (abstract painting) for Morning Delight in the United Overseas Bank's Painting of the Year Competition (1989). The local Malay art organisation, Angkatanb Pelukis Aneka Daya (APAD) honoured him with its Pingat APAD for his contributions to the development of art in general and batik in particular.
Sarkasi currently holds the Guinness world record for the Longest Batik Painting, 100m by 0.7m Indonesian-style painting of orchids, which he completed on the 20th of May 2003.
Pattern is a means of imposing order and for Sarkasi this is a creative imperative; it is a system of order to which sensations and perceptiosn conform. In opting for such a procedure Sarkasi seeks to imbue his pictures with a sense of the absolute which would not be possible if the interest had been to trap and freeze reality with all its attendant immediately.
Sng Cheng Kiat
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Sng Cheng Kiat was an art lecturer at the then Institute of Education. As an experimental artist, he enjoyed using widely differing media to achieve his effects. The result of his works, therefore, is visually compelling. Besides painting, he was equally skillful with clay for it is a substance that is pliable and expressive and akin to nature. He migrated to Australia in the early 1980s.
Prapan Srisouta
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Prapan Srisouta is a Thai woodcut print artist. He was born in Lampoon in 1939 and received the grand prize in the field of woodcut-prints in 1961 and 1962. He studied at the school of Fine Arts in Bangkok. He then went on to the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture at Silapakorn University also in Bangkok. He later furthered his studies in Germany at Werkkinstschule Hannover, funded by the DAAD Scholarship to study Art in Germany in 1965 to 1966.
The movement of each of the figures' hand, hip and leg muscles is full of energy and life. The fluidity of the muscles of these figures is more vivid because of the medium which is also drawn into the surrounding still life of trees, grass and bridges, leading onto the lines of the hills. From being inspired by the mural paintings in Thai temples, the focus of Srisouta's artistic interest has shifted from Thai lifeways to an idealistic style which is the new era of his creativity.
Tang Da Wu
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"Jantung Pisang - Heart of a tree, Heart of a People". It is about people living in the tropics surrounded by banana trees, and the banana plants have become part of their lives.
"A drawing from Tapioca Friendship Project. It is about the Japanese invading Malaya/Singapore in 1942 till 1945."
Tang Da Wu was born in Singapore in 1943. He studied at the School of Fine Arts, Birmingham Polytechnic and graduated with a First Class Honour in BA in Sculpture in 1974. He completed Advanced Studies in Sculpture at St Martin's School of Art and in 1985, obtained a Masters degree in Fine Art from Goldsmith's College, University of London.
Tang is a prominent leader in contemporary Asian art practice and is a pioneer of performance art in Singapore. In the 80s and 90s, Tand performed extensively throught UK and has held numerous exhibitions nationall and internationally in Portugal, Japan, Phillipines, Indonesia, Poland, Malaysia and UK.
Tang founded the Artists' Village (Singapore) in 1988, and in 1999 and 2000, participated in the first Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale and Gwangju Biennale respectively. He won the 1999 Laureate of the 10th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (Arts & Culture), Japan, and has been hugely influential in shaping contemporary art in Singapore.
Wong Chor Yee
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Wong Chor Yee’s painting career began in 2004 after leaving her position as vice-president of human resources at Nanyang Technological University. She pursued painting, using watercolour as her primary medium under renowned watercolourist Ong Kim Seng. Wong also obtained a certificate in sculpting from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and was a student of well-known sculptor Chern Lian Shan. She later expanded her media to include Oil and Acrylic.
Wong’s paintings display her characteristic style of capturing details from an emotional connection with her subjects. Her research and exploration with modern day sculpting and modeling materials have also enabled her to achieve an original style of enhancing 3-D textured effects in her oil paintings to stimulate thoughts and emotions.
Thomas Yeo
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Thomas Yeo was born on 22 April 1936 in Singapore. He was one of the winners of the Cultural Medallion in 1984. He represents one of Singapore's second-generation artists who studied inthe West. Though he infused Western ideas into his work, he never completely abandoned the images and impressions of Asia. He has been descrbed as one of the first Singaporean abstract artist. Landscape is a prominent and continual aspect of his work, portraying images from his many travels. He gradually gravitated towards mixed media collages when he recycled ideas from his landscape paintings, and incorporated a multitude of available materials.
Each picture is the outcome of a considered working through of surface, pigment, shape and texture. These featurs are integrated with ease in his work, and one might get the effect of witnessing "floating planes" of colour that vibrate back and forth in immeasurable spaces.
Sources:
Po, S. Y. (2011). The NIE Art Collection. Singapore: National Institute of Education. Retrieved from https://www.nie.edu.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-library/nie-art-cat-final.pdf?sfvrsn=0
Wong Chor Yee's biography:
Raffles Fine Arts (2019). About artist Wong Chor Yee. Retrieved from http://rafflesfinearts.com/?page_id=212
Art of icons on show (2010, 21 October). The Straits Times, Life!, p.C4.
