SINGAPORE: Don’t look now, but a garden has just sprouted up at the Substation.
Along the walkway outside, winter melon, bitter gourd and loofah vines are slowly spreading to form a canopy. Take a peek inside the box office and you’ll discover an assortment of wild plants.
It’s all part of a site-specific installation called Soil, the latest exhibition under the Substation’s ongoing Rubble Project series, where artists are invited to make works at some of the more unconventional spaces at the arts centre.
For co-creators photographer Tan Ngiap Heng and cross-disciplinary artist Lim Chin Huat, the work is a literal green thumbs up for the place.
“We both thought it would be a nice tribute to the Substation,” said Mr Tan. “This was the soil upon which a lot of Singaporean artists grew – and since we’re all sort of (looked at as) ‘wild people’, we used wild plants for the installation.”
It was also an opportunity for the two artists, who had never collaborated before, to explore mythology in making art, something they had been mulling over.
Taking their cue from the ancient Chinese story of Kua Fu – the giant who died trying to chase after the sun and whose body became a mountain range where a forest grew – they’ve also created a shadow puppetry video work, which is shown inside the box office.
“The giant could stand for the Substation or (its late founder) Kuo Pao Kun, who started this whole thing, and later on, more and more people benefited from this space,” said Mr Lim.
The site-specific installation includes a multimedia piece inspired by the Chinese mythology of the giant Kua Fu. (Photo: Tan Ngiap Heng)
Both of them should know – like many Singaporean artists, they began their careers there.
The 47-year-old Lim recalled his excitement when the Substation first opened in 1990. As a fine arts student at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, he would often hang out and catch exhibitions and performances that inspired him to branch out into theatre and dance.
After a five-year stint with Toy Factory, he eventually co-founded the dance group ECNAD, whose first three productions were held at the Substation. “It was my playground during my first 10 years as an artist,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Tan’s initial encounter with the Substation was soaking in the vibrant scene there as a reviewer and photographer for the Esplanade’s defunct The Arts Magazine in the late 1990s. But eventually, he shifted from observer to creator as well.
“My first experience of actually doing creative work was here, doing the multimedia for a performance by Jeffrey Tan called True Deep Blue, where he turned the (theatre black box) into a swimming pool,” said the 50-year-old.
While art is something both of them do with comparative ease, gardening wasn’t exactly part of their skill set and working on Soil was a learning experience.
They sought advice from Fireflies Health Farm, who helped them cultivate the vines. At the same time, they experimented with growing plants at the Substation’s basement before bringing these back to their respective homes to tend to them.
Artists Lim Chin Huat (left) and Tan Ngiap Heng get their hands dirty preparing for their “garden” exhibition Soil at The Substation. (Photo: Tan Ngiap Heng)
After trying out different kinds of plants – including mushrooms – they settled on coin and money plants, some of which they had picked from the wild. All in all, the garden component of the exhibition features some 40 plants in recycled water bottles and more of these in 21 trays.
And even as they’ll continue to tend to the plants during the exhibition’s two-and-a-half week run, they know not all of the plants may survive. “Some may die, but it’s part of the natural process,” said Mr Tan.
Both are also fully aware that their garden isn’t the first one here. The Substation’s original and much-missed garden, where Timbre currently stands, was on the back of their minds while doing Soil.
“We’ve lost a garden that was actually a very happening space in the past,” said Mr Lim.
However, Mr Tan pointed out that a part of that old garden is actually still present today, in the form of a sapling taken from the Substation’s banyan tree, which had been cut down.
Loaned to the arts centre by another artist, Loo Zihan, the young tree is quietly growing near the The Substation entrance (and Soil’s vine canopy).
“Our installation is interacting with the banyan tree and it’s kind of nice,” said Mr Tan.
