Wikicliki: Collecting Habits on an Earth Filled with Smartphones

Can the museum engage artists in a discussion about what it means to collect their works?

Wikicliki explores this question through a survey of six artists whose modes of working provide unique but interrelated entry points into a range of issues confronting contemporary practitioners in Singapore today.

The exhibition is titled after the constantly evolving work, http://dbbd.sg/wiki, by artist Debbie Ding. Maintained since 2008, Ding’s work traces emerging issues around society’s use of the internet, technology, design, architecture, linguistics and varied cultural topics. Could the museum endeavour to collect such an artwork that expands and grows with time? This exhibition takes its cue from the newer modes of creating and presenting art showcased here, gleaning strategies necessary for the collection of contemporary art today.

The six artists featured in this exhibition exemplify this new development in contemporary art referred to as the “aggregate,” a qualitative approach to collecting, organising and interpreting the frenzied array of images and data that increasingly govern our everyday lives. Their works activate anachronisms, fictions, improvisations, and sympathies that articulate the predicaments of our current times. As the audience for art shifts its attention from the gallery space to the smartphone, these six artists stand at the centre of these new technologies of image circulation, highlighting the multi-faceted experience of Singapore’s industrial present and technological future.

Conversations around these concerns will be driven through a series of public outreach programmes developed by the artists in collaboration with the exhibition’s curators.

Artists:

Heman Chong

Chua Chye Teck

Debbie Ding

bani haykal

Amanda Heng

Charles Lim Yi Yong

Curatorium:

Selene Yap

Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol

Shabbir Hussain Mustafa

Kenneth Tay

Teng Yen Hui
and

Cheng Jia Yun from National Gallery Singapore