Benchmarks
2023-08-02 - 2026-07-31 | The Arts House, 1 Old Parliament Ln, Singapore 179429, Singapore, Singapore, 179429, Singapore
Experience the Civic District afresh this August 2023 onwards, with Benchmarks, a new public art trail commissioned by the Civic District Alliance (CDA). Designed by six Singapore-based artists, Lua Boon Kai, Joyce Beetuan Koh, Immanuel Koh, Yang Jie, Jeffrey Tan and Jason Wee, the public art initiative features a series of six unconventional artwork benches inspired by punctuation marks dotted around the arts and culture precinct. Each art bench draws from the rich heritage of the district, inviting visitors to have meaningful exchanges with themselves, other visitors, or even the surroundings while appreciating the beauty of the Civic District and its colourful stories. These art benches for Benchmarks are located at key areas of the Civic District, such as the Asian Civilisations Museum, The Arts House, The Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay and along the Singapore River.
Follow #CVDBenchmarks on:
Website: https://artshouselimited.sg/civic-district
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theartshouse
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theartshouse

Talking Objects
2025-09-12 - 2026-07-19 | Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Rd, #01-02 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065, Singapore, 089065, Singapore
Singapore Art Museum (SAM) presents Talking Objects, its latest exhibition at the dedicated collection gallery. Drawn from the museum’s collection, the exhibition explores how everyday objects – commonplace items, familiar scenes and everyday representations — become vessels of memory, meaning, and emotion when seen through the lens of artists and their practices. Beyond materiality, Talking Objects considers how even the most everyday forms can become instruments of expression. In the hands of artists, the ordinary takes on new significance, inviting us to look again at the world around us.
Featuring works by widely recognised artists from across Asia, including Alwin Reamillo, Suzann Victor, and Christine Ay Tjoe, Talking Objects showcases a diversity of artistic voices and practices, while offering insights into SAM’s ongoing research into the material and conceptual languages of contemporary art in the region. These artworks resonate with shared human experiences while remaining grounded in the particularities of place and personal history. The exhibition invites visitors to slow down, reflect, and rediscover the quiet power of objects in shaping how we see and understand the world.
Talking Objects is housed alongside The Living Room in SAM’s collection gallery. Together, they create a reflective space where personal and collective experiences converge, offering insights into individual narratives and broader social and cultural conditions.

The Living Room
2025-09-12 - 2026-07-19 | Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Rd, #01-02 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065, Singapore, 089065, Singapore
Singapore Art Museum (SAM) presents its latest exhibition The Living Room, as part of the final chapter of Collection Project: Communicating, Convening, Commoning—a long-term collaboration between SAM, Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA). Housed at SAM’s refreshed collection gallery, the exhibition brings together performance-based works from the collections of all three institutions to explore how performances – fleeting by nature – can be remembered, reactivated, and carried forward through different forms of engagement. At its heart is a central question: What happens to a performance when it ends? Where does its liveness go, and how might we make sense of what remains?
Featuring works by renowned local and international artists such as Ezzam Rahman, Chuyia Chia, Kim Garam, Brian Fuata and others, The Living Room presents a breadth of practices spanning live performances, video, installation, performance traces, re-enactments, and artist-led activations. Taking inspiration from the living room as a space for gathering and presence, the exhibition invites visitors into an evolving environment that is brought to life through activation, conversation, and exchange. By bringing together works grounded in lived experience, The Living Room opens new ways of understanding how performance lives on through objects, memory, interaction, and shared encounters.
The Living Room is showcased alongside Talking Objects at SAM’s collection gallery. Together, they create a reflective space where personal and collective experiences converge, offering insights into individual narratives and broader social and cultural conditions.

Engage with history through art at Temple, National Gallery Singapore’s first rooftop installation integrating kinetic motion and sound
2025-10-25 10:00 - 2026-10-11 19:00 (Asia/Singapore) | National Gallery Singapore, 1 St. Andrew's Road #01-01, Singapore, 178957, Singapore
Embark on a meditative experience at Temple, a new participatory artwork by Vietnamese-American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Commissioned by National Gallery Singapore for its Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission series and presented as part of Singapore Biennale 2025: pure intention, Temple invites visitors to reflect on history and contemplate the impact of war through a multisensorial experience that blends kinetic motion and sound – underscoring the Gallery’s mission to connect the art of Singapore and Southeast Asia to the world and foster critical dialogue on global issues through art.
Featuring bells and mobiles crafted from recovered and defused unexploded ordnance (UXO) from the Vietnam War, visitors are encouraged to strike the defused shells, gongs, and chimes, creating a meditative soundscape. Through this transformation of weapons of war into instruments of peace, Nguyen inspires ideas of karmic balance, reincarnation, and the memories embedded within materials, offering a powerful lens for healing and reconciliation.
Temple is the eighth edition of the Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission.

Peacock Power: Beauty and Symbolism Across Cultures
2025-10-31 10:00 - 2026-08-30 19:00 | Peranakan Museum, 39 Armenian Street, Singapore, Singapore 179941, Singapore
With its dazzling feathers and spectacular tail, the peacock has long symbolised beauty, power, and divinity across Asia. For centuries, its striking form has captivated artists and devotees alike, inspiring works that range from sacred images to everyday adornment.
The peacock motif travelled between cultures. Peranakan art, shaped by the convergence of multiple influences, is the starting point for this journey. Treasures from the National Collection and important lenders explore the bird’s presence in a broad range of artistic disciplines. Each object invites visitors to consider how a motif moved between regions and contexts, revealing the networks that connect peoples and how artistic traditions evolve through exchange.
The exhibition presents these connections through colourful displays, interactive stations, and lively programmes. A new work by artist Ernest Goh explores the peacock in the context of its symbolism, cultural heritage, and ecology.

Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise
2026-01-09 - 2026-11-15 | National Gallery Singapore, Ngee Ann Kongsi Concourse Gallery, Concourse Level, City Hall Wing, 1 St Andrew’s Road, Singapore, Singapore, 178957, Singapore
Discover the power of art through the perspectives of five trailblazing women artists from
Southeast Asia. Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise foregrounds their lives,
perspectives, and artistic practices, featuring over 45 works by Amanda Heng (Singapore),
Dolorosa Sinaga (Indonesia), Imelda Cajipe Endaya (Philippines), Nirmala Dutt (Malaysia), and
Phaptawan Suwannakudt (Thailand) – many of which are shown in Singapore for the first
time.
Fear No Power is National Gallery Singapore’s first major exhibition connecting and
comparing the practices of women artists from Southeast Asia. This landmark exhibition
highlights the significance of women-centred approaches in shaping modern and
contemporary art across the region. With artworks spanning painting, photography,
sculpture, and performance from the 1960s to 2010s alongside archival material, Fear No
Power honours the multi-faceted roles of these pioneering women as artists, educators,
writers and community organisers – telling a larger story of women’s empowerment in
Southeast Asia.

Momentary Pulses: Art in the Central Business District
2026-01-30 - 2026-12-31 | Various sites across Singapore’s CBD (from Raffles Place to Tanjong Pagar), Singapore
Date: 30 January 2026 – 31 December 2027
Venue: Various sites across Singapore’s CBD (from Raffles Place to Tanjong Pagar)
Admission: Free
Presented by The Everyday Museum (a public art initiative by Singapore Art Museum), Momentary Pulses is a public art trail that invites you to slow down and encounter art in the daily flow of life. Spanning overlooked and interstitial public spaces like linkways, open plazas and MRT passages, seven newly commissioned installations by Singapore based artists respond to the sights, sounds and commercial pulse of the Central Business District (CBD) — turning routine journeys into moments of reflection and imagination.
Featuring works by Song-Ming Ang, Finbarr Fallon, Catherine Hu, Zul Mahmod, collaborative duo Teow Yue Han and Federico Ruberto, Yang Jie and Immanuel Koh, the trail reveals the textures and histories embedded within Singapore’s urban core. The works will be launched in two phases, with the first phase featuring five installations by Song-Ming Ang, Finbarr Fallon, Catherine Hu, Zul Mahmod, and the collaborative duo Teow Yue Han and Federico Ruberto. The remaining two works by Yang Jie and Immanuel Koh will be introduced in the later part of 2026. Each installation is sited within walking distance in the CBD, including stops near OUE Link (Raffles Place), One Raffles Quay (North Tower), Asia Square (Tower 1), Shenton House, and Tanjong Pagar MRT (Exit G). Look out for kinetic and sound-based installations, AI-driven works, sculptural interventions, and site-specific gestures that reframe how we perceive the city’s everyday infrastructures. Together, these works offer distinct lenses on movement, memory, technology and transformation — encouraging new ways of seeing a district in constant motion.
As part of the public art trail’s opening, The Everyday Museum launches Story Scape (30 January – 8 February 2026), a festival organised in collaboration with StoryFest. The festival extends the trail through exciting storytelling performances, artist talks and an evening audiovisual experience at RASA Space. Programme details will be announced on SAM’s channels.

In Our Own Frame (Photography Exhibition)
2026-04-08 08:00 - 2026-06-29 22:00 | Guoco Midtown Public Art Wall, 128 Beach Rd, Singapore, 189773, Singapore
In Our Own Frame brings together 22 imagemakers and grows out of the year-long POV: Photowalks programme designed by photographer Benjamin Tan.
Alongside works from POV participants, selected responses from WiSSG (Women in Street Singapore) and the wider Singapore photography community form a wall of moments, with photography as a way to pause and return to the present.
Kantaya New presents her staged series “A Modern Day Affair” within the exhibition.
Free admission.

Brandon Tay: Sangkalan
2026-04-15 - 2026-10-25 | Various Locations, -, Singapore, Singapore, -
Step into Brandon Tay: Sangkalan, an evolving installation of a fictional island ecosystem where fragments of a “lost” coastal culture are shaped through three species — a fruit, an insect, and a bird. Together, their rhythms of growth, flight and song weave a vivid picture of how humans and nature might share perception, memory, and meaning.
Travelling across four regional libraries in Woodlands, Tampines, Jurong and Punggol, the installation unfolds as a living archive that evolves with each presentation. Visitors can encounter new elements over time, making each stop a slightly different experience. Through vibrant textiles, sculptural forms, and archival materials, Singaporean artist Brandon Tay translates the island’s collective memories into a language of colour, geometry, and symbols. Echoing the decentralised logic of blockchain networks, Sangkalan invites visitors to reimagine information systems, their origins and how nature might inspire new ways of sensing, connecting, and remembering.
Brandon Tay: Sangkalan is held in collaboration with the National Library Board. Through the Library showcases, SAM continues to extend contemporary art beyond traditional museum settings and into civic and community spaces, encouraging encounters with contemporary art in unexpected and accessible everyday environments.
Venues:

15 April – 31 May 2026: Woodlands Regional Library
3 June – 19 July 2026: Tampines Regional Library
22 July – 6 September 2026: Jurong Regional Library
9 September – 25 October 2026: Punggol Regional Library

Lai Yu Tong: The Dogs
2026-05-03 12:00 - 2026-07-06 18:00 | ShanghART Singapore, Block 9 Lock Road #02-22, 108937, Singapore
ShanghART Singapore is pleased to present Lai Yu Tong’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, The Dogs, opening on 30 August 2025. Featuring a new series of works that centres around his encounters with a pack of stray dogs, the artist invites us to reconsider our relationship with entities that exist on the fringes of our environments, while reflecting upon his own experiences and interactions with the dogs across several months.
Drawing upon observations of the present, Lai’s practice examines the overlooked and neglected. Everyday objects and subjects such as cars, crows, hands, and chairs feature as motifs across his works that are cast within the stories and scenarios that he creates around them. By looking at something for extended periods of time, he brings out alternative perspectives on the familiar. Recently, his gaze fixates upon the stray dogs that he encounters around a forested area close to where he lives. Their existence as wild, untamed and shy creatures that roam under the shadows of Singapore intrigues him.
In a highly developed and controlled society, the presence of these dogs introduces a degree of unpredictability, even instilling a sense of danger. Initial encounters with them ended with Lai retreating out of fear. However, following multiple visits where he would observe, photograph and sometimes feed the dogs, the fear that he felt eventually shifts into a kind of love, as he forms a connection with these misunderstood creatures.
Storytelling makes up a big part of Lai’s approach, manifesting in forms such as drawing, sculpture, and sound. In these latest works, Lai seeks to retell his encounters with these enigmatic creatures through intimate pieces of drawings and collages on various modest everyday materials — cardboard, wood, and paper. He simultaneously draws and obscures the dogs, playing with techniques of erasure and transparency that render his subjects as ghostly figures and impressions. Such loose methods of representation alludes to the elusiveness and placelessness of the subjects he draws, whilst also allowing them to take on other identities and connotations.
Through a selection of two-dimensional works, a sculpture, a sound piece and a performance, the gallery space is transformed into a site of encounter between the audience and the dogs. Bridging the distance between us and them through Lai’s own experiences, the exhibition encourages visitors to empathise and identify with the beings that live on the edges of our environments; out of sight and away from what we are familiar with.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form is Emptiness
2026-05-29 10:00 - 2026-10-04 19:00 | Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Rd, #01-02 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065, Singapore, 089065, Singapore
Singapore Art Museum proudly presents Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form is Emptiness, the first major solo exhibition in Southeast Asia dedicated to the practice of internationally renowned Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto. Conceived in dialogue with the Buddhist cosmological concept of the Five Elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Void), the exhibition unfolds across five interconnected sections that loop into one another, mirroring the cyclical rhythms of nature and life. This elemental framework reflects Sugimoto’s enduring inquiry into time, perception, and the structure of reality.
Bringing together over 60 works spanning five decades of his multidisciplinary practice, including significant, new, and rarely seen works, the exhibition reveals the breadth of Sugimoto’s oeuvre across photography, sculpture, and large-scale installation. From his meditative seascapes to architectural interventions and contemplative objects, Sugimoto’s works delicately balance a strong material presence with a deep metaphysical inquiry.
Form is Emptiness offers an immersive introduction to the work of one of the world’s most significant contemporary artists. Moving between permanence and impermanence, visibility and void, the exhibition invites audiences to slow down and consider how form itself can become a vessel for reflection, and how, through Sugimoto’s lens, the material world becomes a mirror for the mind.

Finding the Writer's Voice
2026-06-13 - 2026-07-04 | Online
𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿’𝘀 𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲
What is the story within you that keeps running into roadblocks, whenever you try to bring it into fuller expression? Is there a deeper truth beneath it that is asking to be seen?
This four-week workshop aims to help you get in touch with, recognise, and develop your unique writing voice. Whether you are a beginner writer, or an experienced writer looking for a fresh approach towards your craft, this workshop aims to help you achieve greater clarity and purpose in your work.
Participants have the option to submit up to ten pages of creative work for detailed individual feedback.
This workshop is open to writers of poetry, prose and creative nonfiction.
Reduced fees are available for students, as well as for those in need of financial assistance; please email rainbowfictioneers@gmail.com to find out more.
𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀: 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th Dec 2025
𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲: 9.30am – 12.30pm on Saturdays
𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Online
𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝘂𝗽 𝗮𝘁 rainbowfictioneers.com/writersvoice
———
𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿
Stacy Ooi is editor of 𝘝𝘰𝘺𝘢𝘨𝘦: 𝘈 𝘓𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭, and founder of the 𝘙𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘣𝘰𝘸 𝘍𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘴, a literary platform based in Singapore. Her poetry has been published in 𝘉𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘯 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸, and 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴. Her fiction is published in 𝘉𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭, and forthcoming in 𝘊𝘈𝘓𝘠𝘟 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭. She dreams of a world where we are gentle with each other.
