A tale of two artists and three cities

TWO creatives - a poet and a visual artist - have come together to pay tribute to three cities: London, Yangon, and, of course, Singapore. The result of their collaboration is an art exhibition and a book launch that encapsulate their memories and impressions of each city.

The poet is Marc Nair, a well-regarded writer and spoken word performer who received the National Arts Council's Young Artist Award this year. The visual artist is Nicola Anthony, a British artist who's been based in Singapore for several years and works with various media.

The pair met at a 2013 project where several artists had come together to say farewell to the last bungalow in Wilkie Terrace that was set to be torn down. Nair and Anthony found complementary themes in each other's works and decided to collaborate.

From 2013 to 2016, the artists travelled to London and Yangon separately to gather ideas for the show. Nair says: "We wanted to find some thematic consistencies in these cities and create works out of that. I'm Singaporean, Nicola is British - so Singapore and London were obvious choices. We wanted a third city we had never been to before, so we settled on Yangon, partly because, like Singapore, it is a former British colony, but its historical trajectory is so different from that of Singapore."

For each city, they selected specific locations with strong intersections of history, culture, faith and daily life. "We wanted to create a tapestry of experience through these intersecting narratives. Art becomes a way to look at these cities through multiple lenses and negotiate meaning," says Nair.

Nair wrote 24 poems altogether, eight for each city, while Anthony created about 33 artworks in response to the locations as well as Nair's words.

The works will be exhibited at Intersections Gallery at Kandahar Street next month, along with the sale of a limited edition art book that features the poems and images of the artworks.

An intriguing example is Crowned, Colony, which reflects on the twilight years of the British empire. Anthony carefully bent dried leaves to form a canopy over selected phrases from Nair's poem, which are set on a mirror. Looking at the artwork also allows the viewer to gaze at himself.

For another work titled Vain Memory, inspired by Nair's poem At the Museum of London, Anthony bundled many fine strands of paper on each other, each strand symbolic of a historical narrative. The gaps between the strands represent spaces where history is silent.

Priced upwards of S$500, these works offer a window into these cities' fascinating histories - but even more so the complex and indefinable ways artistic visions can merge, grow and feed on each other.