I first locked eyes on Chan Mei Hsien’s beautiful drawings when I browsed the Noise 2007 brochure. What makes her work so amazing are the delicately interlaced lines, traveling continuously within the boundaries of the paper.

Mei Hsien received her diploma in Fine Art (Printmaking) from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and is currently freelancing in graphic design and portrait drawing. “I am a printmaker who likes to experiment with figurative lines in my prints and drawings. Drawing has always been an integral part in my art practice,” she says. “I started doing portraiture in 2004 with a print series titled Man In Crisis. The ‘Man’ in the title implies mankind in general -the white collar group- and my subjects have recently morphed into political figures. I also incorporate drawings with digital imaging to create graphic works.”

Of her work, titled Duo Crisis, Mei Hsien says: “I enjoyed the spontaneity and energy in the process of creating the artwork. I was led by a line focusing on the figures from the projection, removing all details from the background. The line runs continuously within the restricted space without a break. Humor is imperative and I draw with a touch of witticism, the confident, in my one-eyed man series. The work displays my fascination with lines - how they can transform into a drawing, especially in portraiture.”

Photograph courtesy of the artists.

One of the highlights of the M1 Fringe Festival 2009 (7-18 January) will be the Museum of Broken Relationships. Hailing from Croatia, Olinka Vištica and Drazen Grubišic originally started the Museum as an exhibition of various objects from their own lives which held meaning to their relationship, and the eventual breakdown of that relationship. Through the objects, accompanied by the personal stories of their donors, the artists attempt to create and preserve an international collection of our emotional heritage.

The Festival is putting out a call to everyone in Singapore to donate their own personal artifacts and stories of lost loves in the hopes of creating a Singaporean component of the Museum that will become part of the permanent collection and tour with the artists to various countries. Unlike ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from failed loves, the Museum offers you the chance to overcome any emotional collapse through art creation: contributing to the holdings of the Museum. By giving away these ‘controversial objects’ embedded with memories and emotions of the past, the artists hope to create a space for “secure memory” and “protected remembrance” through the preservation of our collective scarred emotional history.

To contribute to the Museum, please download the donation form or email info@singaporefringe.com. Deadline: 15 December.

The exhibition runs from 7 to 18 January 2009 at the Esplanade, Jendela Space. Admission is free.

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I have an insanely high drool-factor for Afton Chan’s collections, particularly on the men’s side. Afton is a recent graduate of The Raffles Design Institute with a B.Des. Fashion Design (Best Collection).

At just 21-years-old, Afton is now designing a capsule collection under the mentorship of Desmond Yang (Abyzz). “The collection consists of draped garments, pants with interesting silhouettes, as well as pieces that can be worn in more than one way,” she adds.

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Marily’s love affair with photography started when she was fifteen. “That’s when I received my first camera,” she says. “Four years later and I am still going strong. I am currently studying photography in Madrid. Last year I participated in a Noise internship with photographer Kheng Ju. I enjoy shooting with film cameras more than digital at times, but I still would not trade my Nikon D700 for anything in the world. I am particularly interested in Photojournalism even though I still like to explore the different fields of photography.”

About her photograph, Marily says: “This is a picture of my friends. They are in a band. I like the composition of this photograph and how each person brings a special element to it.”

18-year old Hong Ling Yang is a student at Nanyang Polytechnic, specializing in illustration, storyboarding, motion graphics, concept art and animation.

His painting of a blood consuming vampire -aptly titled ‘Drinking By The Moonlight’- was part of Noise 2007. “It is a surreal presentation of what society is like,” Ly explains. “A world where people “suck” each others’ “blood” and one can never be sure of who are the good people and who are the bad people. A seemingly kind soul may be secretly inflicting harm on you behind your back.”

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Straightforward and subtle lines and unexpected details, have launched Li Xian’s Constructivism-inspired creations into the display space of the new-shop-on-the-block, Blackmarket.

“Inspired by Russian Avant Garde, my graduation collection takes cues from the curvilinear sculptural forms, to create designs with folds and interceptions at the most unexpected places,” Xian explains.

The 20-year old is a fresh off graduate from Temasek Poly, with a diploma in Apparel Design and Merchandising. “I am also a self-taught illustrator,” she adds. “Illustrating and doodling allow me to record what I see every day.”

Baby I Nicht You (Oil and acrylic on jute) - 2008

The Marina Mandarin Singapore recently invited Huang Lip to be their fourth artist-in-resident. 21-year old Lip is currently pursuing his honors degree in Fine Arts (Printmaking) in LaSalle College of the Arts and has been gaining much recognition with the arts community for his highly-bold style and individual voice.

During his residency, Lip will be working on a series of monochromatic works based on fragmented images from magazines, movie stills and other sources then re-juxtaposing it into a whole new dimension. This forms an expression of the artist’s interest to present the quality of paints, transition of figures into paintings and paintings into emotions, as well as the relationship between artist, art object and audience.

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Noise Singapore is a platform for aspiring artists, designers, photographers and musicians to be noticed by the industry bigwigs when their works and music gets showcased on a national level, and seen by the world through the Internet.

Noise is currently looking for submissions for its 2009 Festival showcase in the following categories:

Art & Design
Outlandish illustrations, ingenious graphic designs, charming paintings, edgy graffiti art – Noise wants them all! Selected works will be showcased on various platforms, including print publications, the Noise website and Noise television commercials during the Festival Showcase in March 2009. Click here for details.

Music
Noise is looking for raw, promising musicians, bands and voices to create original music to heat up the airwaves! Choose from pop to hip-hop, rock to country, jazz to heavy metal, classical to techno…or any other music you know of. If your music truly rocks, Noise Singapore might just come knocking on your door and yank you out of your bedroom recording studio and onto the concert stage. Click here for details.

Photography
Can you capture the “Decisive Moment” on your camera like the great Henri Cartier-Bresson? Do you see a world of possibilities through the lens? Here’s your chance to get your photographs noticed by top photographers in the Noise Singapore curatorial team. Click here for details.

Deadline: 15 December 2008.

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In 2006, 26-year old Interactive Designer Alan Swee received a bronze Crowbar Award in the Interactive CD-ROM category, with his project titled Linkin Park. “The brief for this project was to create an interactive CD-ROM for a music band that you love,” Alan explains. “I choose Linkin Park. The idea and concept of this CD-ROM was to create a park scene. Just imagine Linkin Park sitting on a bench in the park. Less is more, a minimalist style was adapted to showcase the band’s profile in a more stylized and focused manner. I gave it a darker and rougher kind of treatment - dark colored textured background, silhouettes of band members and objects as navigation and splashes of graffiti paint, to bring out the mood.”

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This December, local design collective Mimipong will showcase their Hug Your Sorrow plush toys in a month-long exhibition, titled The Saddest Place on Earth.

The project is a collaborative effort between Mimipong’s line of tear dolls together with international and local creative professionals. The writers – selected from a diverse range of backgrounds – were invited to pen their unique interpretations of sadness on the dolls’ cloth tags. Among the international luminaries are Swedish singer-songwriters Jens Lekman and Pelle Carlberg, senior writer of Frankie magazine Mia Timpano, UK indie songstress Laura Marling and Hong Kong-based toy designer of popular Treeson vinyl figures Bubi Auyong.

On the homegrown front, the exhibition features April Lee of ambient duo aspidistrafly, award-winning poet Cyril Wong, prolific filmmaker Wee Li Lin, singer-songwriter and frontman of The Observatory Leslie Low and Singapore Literature Prize nominee Ng Yi-Sheng.

The exhibition runs from 12 December 2008 to 12 January 2009 at BooksActually, 5 Ang Siang Road.

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Last Friday, 25-year old Zhao Renhui bagged SIPF’s first ever Emerging Artist Award. Out of twenty-seven shortlisted candidates, Zhao was named the winner of the festival. The award seeks to recognize the best up-and-coming photographic talents from South East Asia. Photographers for the program were selected from a pool of over 150 applicants. The privileged few then had the extremely rare opportunity to have their portfolios reviewed, and to participate in master classes by prominent international figures in the photography world such as Pablo Bartholomew -one of the world’s top photojournalists-, Robert Blake -Chairman of the General Studies Program at the International Centre of Photography in New York-, and Fred and Wendy Baldwin -founders of Fotofest and the International Biennial of Photography.

What is the series about? “The series is entitled The Institute of Critical Zoologists, which is the first interdisciplinary scholarly center dedicated to promoting scholarly dialogue and research on the principles and practices of animal spectatorship, animal advocacy, animal killings and animal-related polices in the fields of social sciences, entertainment, commerce, aesthetics, culture and ecology,” Zhoa explains. “It exists both in fiction and in reality,” he continues. “My projects in the Institute of Critical Zoologists produce forms and ideas about the zoological gaze. They concern themselves with the institutionalization, the archive and the mediation of the zoological gaze. The inspiration for my works comes from trends in conservation and zoological research. These trends and events include how economic incentives shapes the appreciation of zoology and its preservation, and the critical debates about the feigned objectivity of zoology as a science; they prompt me to question the ambivalence of these measures and push them to their logical extremes.”

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Fashion’s obsession du jour I’ve spotted on the streets has gotten me craving for an old friend known as the pin button. When I was a teenager, I loved pin buttons with an almost unhealthy obsession. There was something about the ability to fashion a new outfit in a snap by simply pinning a few buttons on my jackets and tees.

Cheeky Molly’s Button Up online store provides a selection of razzle-dazzle pin buttons touching on all the mod trends. “It is currently a one-woman sweatshop,” says owner Chloe Masada. “Purchase of the button-making machine was part impulse buy, part practical solution to a love of 1-inch buttons.”

So where does that inspiration come from? “I’m not a designer, I work with images I find around me. I edit them to create the buttons I want. I wouldn’t sell anything I wouldn’t want to buy myself. The first series has already gone on sale and work has started on Series Two. Designs for Series Three are already in the works, and will feature guest designers.”

The simplicity of the composition, the pools of color and the banality of two people climbing the stairs in unison, make up for a beautiful shot by 17-year old do-it-yourself shutterbug, Afiq Norzali. I invited him to churn out a banner, so that we could plaster it on our site and stare at it for the entire month of November.

“The picture was taken at Tekka mall. I had never seen a staircase that colorful before,” Afiq clarifies, “so I decided to take a picture of it. Shooting this photograph has opened quite a few doors for me: it was shortlisted twice for Noise Singapore. This was my first time joining a competition. Participating has inspired me even more and has made me more confident.”

Afiq is currently taking his O-levels. “It’s destroying my brain,” he says. “I’m hoping that photography will help me understand myself more, and also help me share my emotions and feelings with the people around me. Caring is sharing! I was hooked on photography the minute I got my hands on an SLR. I’m saving up to buy a digital camera, to make it easier for myself. But cameras are expensive. But I just love taking pictures. I get impatient waiting for the results. I also tend to be more careful when framing my subjects, and I try to make the most of the thirty-six frames I have.”

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