Arpeggio (Ann Siang Hill)

Credit Line: Gift of Artist 2006, Collection of SMU

Chua Ek Kay (1947-2008) was one of Singapore's leading contemporary Chinese ink painters. Born in China, Chua came to Singapore with his family in the 1950s. Here he studied Chinese ink painting under Fan Chang Tien. In 1991, he was the first Chinese ink painter to win the United Overseas Bank Painting of the Year Award. He later took up formal training in contemporary art, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Tasmania in 1994 and a Master of Arts (Honours) in Visual Arts from the University of Western Sydney in 1995. He was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 1999.

This artwork is from the Street Scenes Collection, a suite of 30 paintings donated by the artist in 2006 and currently housed at Lee Kong Chian School of Business. The Street Scenes Collection spans two decades of Chua's artistic practice, from 1986 to 2006, and pictures narrow alleyways, temples of worship, old shophouses and historic sites in Singapore, Kathmandu, Yogyakarta and Jiangnan. In later years, he was keener on evoking feelings rather than rendering actual physical architecture. Particularly, his depictions of Singapore city streets—from Little India to Ann Siang Hill—are suffused with feelings of melancholy as he captures history passing through the once-familiar streets he has seen grown, thrived, and waned over time.

This painting marked the beginning of a transition period in Chua's artistic training and development. It was completed after he won the 10th UOB Painting of the Year award in 1991. It embodies his concern with space, abstraction, minimalism and simplicity as seen by the use of simple lines and shapes to represent the roofs, windows, doors and walls of a row of old houses. The bold strokes and vertical rectangular shapes visually allude to the black and white keys of a piano as the title of this painting suggests. (Arpeggio means, "notes of a chord played very quickly one after another.")