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| above: The B.E.A.U.T.Y postcard.
(for backview please click on image)
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Beauty has always been in the eye of the beholder, and a collector's taste may not always coincide with an artist's conception. An artist might pour his raw emotions onto canvas or paper, and the end-result might be angry, jagged or painful. Or the artist might attempt several new experiments in media, technique, content or expression, and the results need not always be aesthetically pleasing in a conventional sense. The appearance of a piece may arise from valid artistic impulses, but the casual viewer might recoil from putting good money down for an artwork he finds ugly and repulsive.
BadEvilAwfulUglyTerribleYucky is an exhibition conceptualized by The Artists Village that attempts to find a good home for challenging works. These are two- and three-dimensional art pieces that the artists may never have dared to exhibit before for several reasons. The works may have been judged to be non-commercial, unable to blend in with a home décor, too provocative or disturbing, conventionally unaesthetic, too large or bulky for collection, with unappealing subject matter or colours - any one of a host of various reasons.
In a twist to the normal process of art acquisition, artists from The Artists Village will pay would-be collectors to retain one of their BEAUTYful art works. A nominal sum will be offered by the artists to encourage Singaporeans to keep one of their creations. The objectives of the exercise are two-fold: firstly, Singaporeans who may never have considered collecting art before may now be spurred to do so on terms that they might be better able to appreciate, that of pecuniary benefit; secondly, Singaporeans who do collect art often have conservative or unadventurous tastes, and the reversal of monetary flow might enable them to consider art of merit which need not be pretty, decorative or inoffensive. So that the project is not trivialized or degenerates into farce, the seriousness of intent to ensure valid collection is emphasized by a contract that will have to be signed between artist and collector. The collector must keep the artist's work for at least three years, during which time the artist has the right to make an annual check that his work still remains in the collector's possession. Should the work be discovered to have been discarded, given away or sold during this period, the collector must reimburse the artist one thousand times the amount the artist would originally have paid to have the work collected.
The project is an ironic commentary on the Singapore art scene which lacks sufficient art collectors. For the people that do collect, scant attention is given to progressive or alternative contemporary art of Singaporean origin which is the precise demographic that The Artists Village falls in. In the midst of several other Southeast Asian countries which avidly collect their national art, BadEvilAwfulUglyTerribleYucky is an ingenious artistic statement by an iconoclastic artists' grouping that gently cries to the Singaporean collector: Where are you, we need you!
TAV contact person for B.E.A.U.T.Y
tien
Tel/Fax: 6296 8707
Mobile: 9238 6609
E-mail: tien@tav.org.sg
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