Under Clear Skies (Seah Street)

Credit Line: Gift of Artist 2006, Collection of SMU

This artwork is part of 25x25 Campus Art Tour.

Listen to the audio description of the artwork here.

Transcript:

The painting Under Clear Skies (Seah Street) created in 1992 marks a transition in Ek Kay's artistic development. With its abstract minimalist rendering of a shophouse, it differs from his earlier detailed Street Scenes paintings. Where before the building had more body, here the building is flat and its evanescent contours suggested by muddy translucent grey brush strokes. Four vertical windows in soft cobalt blue are arranged in ascending height. To the left, above two of the blue windows, are a cluster of horizontal trapezoids of copper blush that make the unglazed clay tiles of the roof. The blue and copper complements in quiet harmony. A vast white negative space dominates the lower right of the painting, an airy stillness that balances the crowded forms on the left. Gentle thin grey lines streak the surface here and there, like creases on paper.

Here, Ek Kay is concerned with simplicity as he plays with space and establishes a rhythmic pattern through the repetition of vertical and horizontal lines and colour blocks, and translucent and opaque ink washes.

Painted after completing an Advanced Diploma in Painting from LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts in 1990 where Ek Kay learned Western art, and winning the 10th UOB Painting of the Year Award in 1991, the painting signals the direction that Ek Kay would take in his artistic practice to create a visual language that synthesised both Western and Eastern traditions of painting.

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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.