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.

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.

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.

Let’s Play! The Art and Design of Asian Games
2025-09-05 - 2026-06-07 | Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM), 1 Empress Place, 179555, Singapore
Games are among humanity’s oldest shared experiences – a source of joy, challenge, and connection for thousands of years. In Asia, they have developed in remarkably diverse ways, from the lively, fast-paced rhythms of mahjong and congkak to the contemplative strategy of go and chess. They have entertained and educated, reflected power and status, and acted as metaphors for life.
This exhibition explores the rich history of Asian games and the role they have played in shaping culture, identity, and community. Some travelled widely, taking on new forms and meanings across borders. Others became tools for mental training or expressions of artistic ideals. Even today, they remain at the frontier of innovation – as seen in the rise of artificial intelligence.
Many of the games on display are also works of extraordinary beauty and craftsmanship. As you explore the exhibition, we invite you to discover how the act of play continues to inspire, evolve, and connect people across time and place.
Let’s Play! incorporates playable interactives, outdoor installations, collaborations with schools and local game associations, and a diverse line-up of programmes and talks.

Gallery Children’s Biennale 2025: Tomorrow, We’ll Be…
2025-05-31 - 2026-03-29 | National Gallery Singapore, 1 St. Andrew's Road #01-01, Singapore, 178957, Singapore
The family-favourite Gallery Children’s Biennale 2025 is back with multi-sensory and immersive installations where art meets play! As National Gallery Singapore celebrates its 10th anniversary, the fifth edition of the Biennale invites the young and young at heart to dream big, express their creativity, and explore a hopeful and inclusive future shaped by the core values of Joy, Kindness, Love, and Dream.
Through interactive installations by artists from Singapore and Asia, children across ages – even from as young as babies – can express themselves freely and be immersed as active participants!
Highlights include Dance Dance Chromatics by Singaporean artist Wyn-Lyn where a seamless canvas of digital ‘paintings’ are activated via movement; and Japanese artist Hiromi Tango’s series of large-scale colourful flowers with petals carrying words of kindness engraved in Braille.
For more information, please visit: https://www.nationalgallery.sg/sg/en/festivals/gallery-childrens-biennale-2025-tomorrow-well-be.html

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.
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