I visited Chua Chye Teck’s New Castle exhibition at The Substation after school yesterday. I really wanted to visit after I saw the emailer a few days back. Chye Teck’s work has always resonated with something in me and New Castle was the first time that I got to see his prints.
TOP TO BOTTOM, from (”New Castle“)
© Chua Chye Teck, 2006
New Castle was shot in the North Shields of England in 2006, when Chye Teck was part of the photography residency commissioned by the International Photographers and Researchers Network (IPRN). Like his previous works, he focused on habitation, physical and psychological spaces. Images of similar places in one’s memory bank are invoked. I found myself looking at certain pictures thinking about where I had seen something similar in Singapore; memory and reality fusing into discordance. The choice of perspex mounts further accentuated the floating nature of our internal worlds.
From Angeline Ng’s exhibition write-up:
New Castle…has the ease to slip into one’s memory invoking thoughts such as “this reminds me off…” or “this looks like…”. They have no specific identity apart from being just what they are: houses, hedges, walls buildings. The starkness allows us to look for clues, to differentiate or draw parallels with our own experience or knowledge. If we linger to reflect, some memories may surface.
New Castle is showing till Sep 16 at The Substation Gallery, 45 Armenian Street, Singapore. To see more of his images, visit IPRN’s site and click on Singapore from the list of countries.
