Singapore was also a hotbed of creativity in the Sixties, though its art scene at the time is sadly under-documented. “Several artists were experimental and bold and forced audiences to rethink their ideas and understanding of what art can or should be,” says Charmaine Toh, a curator at the National Gallery Singapore. Only recently did the gallery rediscover the first known examples of land art from the city a series of works by performance artist Tang Da Wu. One piece,
Gully Curtains, hadn’t been unpacked since the Eighties.
Wu was concerned to see Singapore’s landscape increasingly stripped of trees to build public housing. As a result of soil erosion, deep gullies scarred the land near his home. In response, he climbed into one of these muddy crevices and positioned seven pieces of cloth of different lengths inside it, adding jagged black marks indicating the depth of the ditch. He left the fabric there for three months, inviting nature to collaborate. The result was a
International Times (hereafter
Yoko Ono Water Show for one week, from May 28 through June 1.
1 The next issue of
IT, however, while still listing
Water Show as continuing through June 1, lists a new exhibition,
John Lennon and Yoko Ono: Four Thoughts, opening at Arts Lab on June 2 and continuing through June 9. Although this latter exhibition marks, as I propose, Ono and Lennon s first truly collaborative exhibition, little mention of it appears in the voluminous documentation of all things Beatles or in the literature on Ono, for that matter. Its scant representation in the literature no doubt arises from the dearth of documentation of the exhibition itself, which is somewhat surprising given the amount of attention Lennon generally received from the press as a member of The Beatles, the world s most famous pop group at the time, not to mention Ono s growing reputation as an avant-garde artist. Ono caused quite a sensation with her performances of