Yeo Chee Kiong
The wind, her rain, and a cloud meets with a tree in the monsoon season
"The wind, her rain, and a cloud
meets with a tree in the monsoon season", secured the top prize in the Open
Category of the CDL Singapore Sculpture Award for 35-year-old Nanyang Academy of
Fine Arts lecturer, Yeo Chee Kiong.
According to Yeo Chee Kiong, he would take 9 months to complete the construction
of this work in bronze that will tower 6 metres. The sculpture is earmarked for
the Marina Bay financial district.
Chua Ek Kay, Cultural Medallion recipient and Judge, remarked "This award winner
has specific significance of characteristics and nature relate to the nature and
the environment itself."
Apparently, the judges were looking out for a work that was original and
stimulative, and Yeo Chee Kion's work was far more provocative compared to the
other submissions which were deemed less interesting and too conventional and
derivative.
The judges included architect Peter Pran, and sculptors Han Sai Por, Chua Ek
Kay, Chng Nai Wee, and Beat Yeok Kuan, and officials from the Singapore Art
Museum and URA, and Kwek Leng Joo of City Developments.
There is speculation that the results of this competition would send a strong
signal to the local community that artists would have to push themselves hard at
the edge of originality, boldness, provocation, and innovation, in securing
public commissions, and that the formula of happy modernism is insufficiently
persuasive per se.
13-year-old, Kok Zhou Dao, one of the youngest participants won a Merit Award in
the Student Category for the creative use of materials of transplant shaped
colored acrylic sheets juxtaposed. He mused: "It's movement of the wind and the
clouds in disguise and the wave in the ocean and especially it is freedom energy
and life."
The models of the submissions are now on show at the Singapore Art Museum. More
students made up the 237 artistes competing for the 2nd CDL Singapore Sculpture
Award. The award, launched in 2002, saw a 40 per cent increase in entries in
2005.