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SINGAPORE: Until quite recently, visual artist Charles Lim has been living inside a squash court.
But don't take out your purses yet - he's not homeless.
On the contrary, the abandoned squash court at Winchester Road near Hort Park has been his second "home" as an artist-in-residence for TheatreWorks 72-13's Creative-In-Residence (CIR) programme.
For almost a year, his wife, film-maker Wee Li Lin, drops him off at 11am and picks him up by 7pm.
There's electricity, a refrigerator and, previously, his computer. If he gets a case of the munchies, he can cycle down to a nearby hawker centre. For other human necessities, well, there's a nearby tennis court - and it is surrounded by trees.
In the meantime, he does his job as an artist (you can check out his website: http://www.artsquash.org). When we met him, that job was to later go and recce at Changi - because Lim is thinking of getting barnacles to grow on the door of his squash court.
You see, the squash court - and everything that takes place inside - is both his residence and his artwork.
ALTERNATIVES TO ALTERNATIVES
With space a precious commodity among artists these days and the queue for the National Arts Council's housing scheme a kilometre long, the whole idea of being an artist-in-residence (Air) - which gives a selected artist a certain amount of space, time and resources to create his or her works - is an enticing alternative.
Usually, that whole definition is reserved for foreigners coming into a country. But lately, "local" versions are becoming more commonplace.
The Singapore Tyler Print Institute regularly houses Singaporean artists, and schools as well, like Lasalle College of the Arts and Singapore Management University.
The latter, in fact, has just partnered with The Substation for its first SMU-Asean Artist Residency Programme for 10 contemporary artists in the region, including Singaporeans.
Even a hotel like Marina Mandarin has recently announced its fifth artist-in-residence, Nafa graduate Tiffany Tay, who gets to be an artist for six months.
As unique as these residency programmes sound, there are others that are more alternative.
Aside from TheatreWorks 72-13's CIR, there's also Post Museum and neighbouring Your Mother Gallery (YMG) at Little India.
What makes these three different? Unlike the ones for the schools and hotel, where residents need to come up with something for a culminating exhibit, these three slightly tilt conventions, re-defining what being an artist-in-residence means.
GIVE ME AIR
Said TheatreWorks artistic director Ong Keng Sen: "Air is the term throughout the world and it could refer to 'air' for the artist.
"To have time to breathe and time to create."
Their CIR is a streamlined programme from the company's various residency schemes that they started offering in 2006 to both foreign and local Singapore-based artists and folk from other creative media.
The current focus on local artists (Lim's batch includes designer Jonathan Seow and playwright Ng Yi-Sheng) gives the programme "longer sustainability", Ong added.
Compared to the fly-in, fly-out nature of having international artists, those based in Singapore can continue their relationship with the company even after their residency is up, which in the case of CIR is one to two years.
Plus, the requirement seems rather relaxed.
"Some kind of end project. In the case of Charles, that's to establish the space," said Ong.
Establish as what? That's the interesting aspect in Lim's work.
While some artists may concentrate on the idea or concept behind a work, and others may plunge headlong into attaining that so-called "final work", Lim is immersed in-between - the process where he's free to create things with no deadline in sight as of yet.
"At the end of the day, it's the work that comes out of the place," he said.
As for what exactly that work is, the squash court gives him the opportunity to keep it away from the public for now.
"You give the work a chance to breathe," he said, echoing Ong's idea of Air as "air".
And also, it doesn't have to be work by him.
Lim said he's had five artists coming in to either "test out stuff" at the space or even shoot something.
'END RESULTS' SUCK
If CIR is about expanding the idea of what it means to be an artist-in-residence, two other places open up their spaces for artists under the radar: The young emerging ones and the fringe ones.
Post Museum and curatorial group p-10 have quietly been giving ad hoc residencies to both local and foreign artists. To date, there have been a total of 16 for both, the most recent being emerging local painter Arnewaty.
But it's not your fancy-schmancy type. It usually lasts from between one and three months at one of the rooms on the second floor of Post Museum, with funding of around $5,000 per donor, which is used mainly to cover rental cost.
Artist and curator Woon Tien Wei said that they would encourage or suggest to donors keen on buying art works to "involve" themselves in an artist's creative process. That means helping with the rent.
Somewhat like the CIR scheme, Woon said the approach of such residencies is not strictly to focus what comes out of it (no need to hurry the artist, right?) and to remove the pressure of "making things". "Everyone's obsessed with end results," he said.
Like CIR, they're exploring the possibility of inviting non-artists like arts administrators and art writers as well to participate in the residency scheme.
They have also been opening its doors to emerging artists, such as the recently concluded Figtion, a four-woman show by recent Lasalle graduates.
It's part of p-10's Curatorial Workbook Series Vol. 2, a kind of residency as well, said Woon, which allows young artists to try their hand at curating a show with a bit of help from the vets.
CLOSEST THING
Meanwhile, young artist and film-maker Seelan Palay has yet to get an artist-in-residency gig, but he's got the closest thing to it at Your Mother Gallery.
Last November, YMG co-owner and The Artist Village member Jeremy Hiah, which occasionally hosts "artists-in-residence" from other countries, invited him to put up "something interesting".
The result is his first solo show, an intimate, compact and thought-provoking exhibition comprising of a video installation, a series of textual collages and a portrait of an ex-detainee. It is ongoing until Aug 17.
Unlike his previous attempts at exhibiting, where he had to pay for space, Hiah "gave some financial support", said Seelan.
And it's precious space for him to use - seeing as how his mother calls him "karang guni" for stuffing his room with odds and ends.
While it's not technically an "artist residency" scheme, Seelan also talks of his experience in terms similar to Lim's: "Being in a space, and understanding a space for what it is, is important."
While Seelan doesn't get his own squash court, he did get what every artist wants - a time and place for artistic expression.
- TODAY/yb
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