In Abundance

Introduce yourself and tell us more about what you do for work!
My name is Rose, and I work at the National Gallery Singapore as a Museum Programmer as part of the Curatorial Programmes team. I organise talks, academic workshops, and exhibition-related programmes, with a focus on art engagement—so things like symposiums and public talks.

Cool! What are some recent programs that you co-developed?
I recently worked with the Artist Village, which is one of the oldest artist collectives in Singapore. We did an art history quiz using some pieces in our collections. We also did open calls and invited people to share more about their understanding of the history of Singapore. There were games and quizzes, some weird questions, and even gossip (laughs). The best part is that we held it at a club because we didn’t want to do it within an institution.

Sounds like so much fun! Speaking of organising events, we heard you recently did a pop-up, tell us more about it!
Yes! My friends and I are part of this collective called Sandwich Club. We’re a bookmaking studio based in London. We design, edit and hand bind everything from scratch. So I decided to bring their works over to Singapore to this tea house called Silk in Chinatown to showcase some of the risograph works that they’ve been doing. We wanted to highlight the man-made part of bookmaking. And alongside that, I also did a book sharing from my own book.

Interesting! Can you tell us more about your book?
The book is called Superfluous Matters, and with it, I played with the idea of excess—from the colours, materials, and even the bookmaking, everything is extreme. In it, I talk about objects that are irrelevant or too much to handle, but that become as such because of incidents and memories that it probably contains. There’s also poetry interspersed in more visual formats to see how excessive it could be and what resonance it could still have in this context.

Very conceptual! Where do you usually get your inspiration from?
Well, one thing that’s inspired me recently is the first part of Jonathan Tan’s solo exhibition titled if a leaf falls. From the frames to the choice of images, materials, and even the placements, all of it had been considered, and it’s especially interesting knowing that John himself documents other artists’ artwork.

Last question: now that you’ve been working in arts for a while, what are your hopes for the Singapore art scene?
I hope for it to be more seen. I think for myself, as someone working in the arts, I know that there are a lot of things happening, but then there’s also only so much energy that I can put into seeing everything. So I hope that despite people being busy and doing our own work, we can still manifest and make time to visit galleries and shows.