Singapore Art Museum (SAM)
10 May 2025 - 17 Aug 2025
Gallery 1, Level 1, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness reads as a survey of artworks by Heman Chong. From artworks first made in 2003 to new works, the exhibition charts his prolific conceptual practice over the last two decades. An invitation into Chong’s incisive use of words, objects, situations, logics and affinities, the exhibition presents his critical and affective interrogation of our shared human condition in the 21st century.
Banner image: Heman Chong, Perimeter Walk, 2013–2024. Offset print postcards, 550 pieces. Commissioned by UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Development of Perimeter Walk supported by M Art Foundation. Courtesy of the artist
15 Jan 2025 - 18 May 2025
Gallery 3, Level 3, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Following its presentation at the Singapore Pavilion at Biennale Arte 2024 in Venice, Seeing Forest by Robert Zhao Renhui returns to Singapore.
The observation of the ultimately unknowable in the natural world is a hallmark of artist Robert Zhao Renhui’s praxis. Since 1998, under the auspices of his own semi-fictional Institute of Critical Zoologists, Zhao’s many and varied projects have served as lenses that highlight the resilience of nature and the various interactions that occur when such resilience overlaps with human life and society.
Notably, over the last seven years, he has been focusing on secondary forests in Singapore — forests regrown from deforested land due to human intervention such as development and plantation — and the new ecosystems that have developed within it. For the Singapore Pavilion, decades of Zhao’s accumulated observations are condensed and organised into an intensive installation, which returns to Singapore after its exhibition run at the Biennale Arte 2024 in Venice.
Through this exhibition, we see how the island of Singapore has evolved to arrive at the present day, revealing some of the ways in which human urban design can shape the natural world itself, resulting in an ecosystem of migrant species that echoes the trajectories and makeup of the city’s human population. At the same time, Seeing Forest also highlights phenomena that are universally relatable to those living in any urban environment.
30 Aug 2024 - 20 Jul 2025
Gallery 4, Level 3, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
“My art is doing time, so it’s not different from doing life or doing art, or doing time. No matter whether I stay in ‘art-time’ or ‘life-time,’ I am passing time.”—the artist Tehching Hsieh thus describes his durational performances, which turn the banality of life and the passage of time into medium and subject for his art.
Building on Hsieh’s philosophy, the exhibition Everyday Practices examines the inventive ways artists have appropriated quotidian routines and lived experiences to express powerful statements of resilience and endurance. Through their works, we witness ongoing conflicts, humanitarian crises and asymmetrical power relationships. In this context, the gestures that the artists have employed, by dint of repetition, reveal themselves as small acts of resistance that return agency to the individual. Art, as we see here, offers a means of sense-making and coping in the face of adversity.
Drawing from the collection of Singapore Art Museum, Everyday Practices brings together artworks by diverse artists across different generations and geographies in Asia. They affirm that the collective strength found in individual actions cuts across cultural practices and conditions. The question that is universal to us all is: “In the face of life’s challenges, how do we go on going on?”
20 Jul 2024 - 29 June 2025
Gallery 2, Level 1, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Spark Curiosity. Rekindle Wonder. Explore contemporary art with the uninhibited spirit of a child and rediscover the joy of learning.
Established as part of Singapore Art Museum’s continued support of art education, the Learning Gallery is dedicated to the engagement and understanding of broader issues through contemporary artworks. These artworks have been specially selected from the National Collection or commissioned to extend the learning of contemporary art to all ages.
Inspired by the theme of childhood, this edition of the Learning Gallery encourages child-like curiosity in encounters with art. You are invited to embrace the spirit of exploration to have an uninhibited relationship with the world: to look, feel and live fearlessly. Exhibiting artworks of various media and across diverse forms of presentation, the artworks address multiple themes such as home, nature and the environment, people, places, memory and time. They also raise important and timely questions on what it means to live in contemporary times, evoking the emotions and experiences of each individual in the process.
Speaking of which – A pop-up activation
Held in conjunction with Singapore Heritage Festival 2025
1–25 May 2025 | 12–8pm Daily
Free Admission
Level 1 Urban Park, Guoco Tower and HarbourFront Centre Level 1 Atrium
The Everyday Museum—a public art initiative by Singapore Art Museum—presents an engaging pop-up exhibition across two venues in Tanjong Pagar and Harbourfront, in conjunction with Singapore Heritage Festival. Exploring the cultural pastimes of 1950s and 1960s Singapore, the exhibition offers an alternative look into the lesser-known or often-overlooked social practices and oral traditions, reflecting on art’s longstanding role in examining and shaping everyday life.
Visitors can experience a rich selection of materials from the National Library Board 's visual archives along with literary submissions curated by the editorial team behind creative practice journal PR&TA. On select weekends, look forward to programmes that will explore vernacular histories—including communal practices and visual language—and their traces in the present, as further activations of the pop-up exhibitions. For the full line-up of programmes, please visit this link.
The pop-up exhibitions extend from The Everyday Museum’s Speaking of which, a self-guided audio trail series that invites renewed readings of the places we inhabit through archival records, oral interviews, and commissioned audio works. Visitors will encounter excerpts from the episodes onsite; for the full audio trail experience, please visit the Speaking of which webpage on The Everyday Museum’s website.
- Located at the historic port of Tanjong Pagar
- Opened in 1996 as the first art museum in Singapore.
- Presenting contemporary art from a Southeast Asian perspective for the artists, art lovers and art curious.
- You may find more information about the exhibition, programmes and resources on https://www.singaporeartmuseum.sg/.
- This ticket is only valid for Tourists and Foreign Residents. Singapore citizens and Permanent Residents do not require a ticket.
- Children 6 years and below is free of charge.
- Senior ticket is applicable for seniors aged 60 years and above with valid proof of identity (e.g. passport) must be presented at the ticketing counter to enjoy concession admission.
- One caregiver accompanying visitors with disabilities will enjoy free admission, regardless of the caregiver's nationality.
- The Organiser/Venue Owner reserves the right without refund or compensation to refuse admission/evict any person(s) whose conduct is disorderly or inappropriate or who poses a threat to security, or to the enjoyment of the Event by others.
- Ticket holders assume all risk of injury and all responsibility for property loss, destruction or theft and release the promoters, performers, sponsors, ticket outlets, venues, and their employees from any liability thereafter.
