Mentoring young Singaporean contemporary artists

Ms Jane Ittogi, Chair of SAM

Mr Leng Tshua, CEO of SAM

Dr Susie Lingham, Director of SAM

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

1. I’m very happy to join all of you at the opening of the President’s Young Talent. I understand that this is Leng Tshua’s first official function since taking the lead as SAM’s CEO. So let’s give him a big welcome. Thanks to you and the team at SAM for putting together this exhibition.

2. The President’s Young Talent has been around for 15 years. It’s a platform that recognises young artists in our contemporary art scene. It is also the premier mentoring and commissioning platform for our young contemporary artists.  They get guidance from our mentors and curators, which is extremely useful and important to them because art apprenticeship is still the oldest and most effective form of art learning. They have a wonderful space here at SAM to showcase artworks and engage with a wider group of audiences. It is a platform that allows them to shine and to be seen and to be recognised.  

3. Our artists have gone on to remarkable successes. One of them is our own mentor Chor Leng. She was the artist selected as one of the PYT artists 6 years ago in 2009. Before then, she and her husband had come back from their studies in Canada. It was not so easy to carve out a career in the arts scene at that time. But 2009 was a turning point for her, because she was selected as one the President’s Young Talents. The President’s Young Talent platform supported her, provided her funding to create artwork at a large scale, provided her mentoring from more experienced artists and a space in this very same building to showcase her work and to reach out to a wider audience. Six years later in 2015, she is here on the other side of the table. When SAM approached her to be a mentor for this year’s edition of the President’s Young Talent, she didn’t hesitate because she thought it was a chance to give back and do her part to mentor other young artists. So thank you to Chor Leng and all our curators and mentors. 

4. Today we have five young artists featured under the PYT. Ang Song Ming, Bani Haykal, Ezzam Rahman, Loo Zihan and Ong Kian Peng. They are all here, congratulations to all of you once again, well done! I am sure all of you know that you will be joining the ranks of a very prestigious group of contemporary artists. You have predecessors like Tan Pin Pin, Donna Ong, Robert Zhao, and Vertical Submarine. Many of them have gone on to become familiar and well-known names in our contemporary arts scene. They have gained for themselves both local and international acclaim, so I’m sure all our young artists here tonight will be inspired by those who came before them and they will also carve out their own paths of success in due time. 

5. At a broader scale, I would say our art and cultural calendar has been very vibrant this year. Almost 8 months have passed; it’s been a busy year because of SG50. We’ve had a ramp up of many cultural activities. We’ve just ended our Golden Jubilee weekend and I think many of you must have been involved in one way or another to celebrate our 50th birthday. But the SG50 celebrations have not stopped. In fact, there are many other things to look forward to. The Singapore International Festival of Arts is now in full swing. This weekend and next weekend we have the Night Festival. SAM has a five Stars Project coming up, dedicated to SG50, where we have 5 of our best contemporary artists reflecting on the values of our 5 stars on our flag. There will be an exhibition coming up in SAM in September. There will be the revamp of our National Museum and Asian Civilisations Museum in September and November. And also in November, we are opening our National Gallery at Supreme Court and the old City Hall. So it’s a packed calendar for our arts and culture, and there’s much more we can look forward to. 

6. Within this landscape of evolving and growing arts and cultural activities, SAM continues to play a very important role. SAM remains a key pillar in our arts scene. SAM will continue to be an anchor, a jewel in our arts scene. It will be a hallmark institution for contemporary arts in Singapore. It will continue to provide an important platform to nurture, to develop our budding artists and to showcase the best of contemporary art in Singapore. 

7. More importantly, I think SAM can do so much more, to reach out to audiences and to help them better appreciate and understand what contemporary art means. Contemporary art is complex, it is not just about techniques, but it is also about the art of ideas and concepts. So it beholds all our curators and staff at SAM to think hard about how you can engage audiences, help to facilitate more conversations between artists and audiences, help people to appreciate the processes and the multi-layered motivations behind a certain art work, and to help people to re-consider their ideas of what constitutes art. And that’s work that all of us in the Ministry and in SAM must engage in to help build new audiences and to help grow the audience base for contemporary art in Singapore. 

8. We have achieved much over the last few years. It’s been a very busy SG50 year so far, but there’s much more we can do and look forward to in the coming years. In fact, next year is SAM’s 20th anniversary. It is an important milestone for SAM. Next year is the year that SAM takes the curatorial lead for our 5th Singapore Biennale.

9. So we have much to look forward to in the coming year. I want to thank all of you for being supporters of SAM. I particularly want to thank our sponsors and long-standing supporters who have contributed not just to this year’s PYT, but also for a long time committing SAM to become a premier contemporary art institution. So on that note, congratulations once again to this year’s PYT artists and thank you to the curators and all of you. Enjoy the exhibition tonight. Thank you very much!