You are what you drink - and discard

A PICTURE is worth a thousand words, so the saying goes. Judge for yourself at Equivalence - a solo show by photographer Stefen Chow and economist Lin Hui-Yi which aims to portray the effect of a global economy through discarded drink cans.

Two facing walls at Objectifs' Chapel Gallery are pasted with a total of 1,000 pictures in this show. Each wall is filled with 10 rows and 50 columns of 6R prints of drink cans, and they all add up to the value of one object shown in the centre wall. That, in a nutshell, is the state of the karung guni (recycling) trade of aluminium these days.

As your eyes scan the photographs, you will inadvertently wonder when was the last time you had a canned drink of F&N Sarsi, Nescafe, or 100Plus. And then you'll also marvel at the beer brands that you've not seen before in Singapore - such as Haywards 5000 (tagline: super strong beer), Knock Out (tagline: strong beer) and Myanmar (no prizes for guessing where that's from).