SPORE Art Salon : 19th Edition 26 June !!

Happy mid-year, one and all!! The 2nd half of 2012 brings us a good dose of performing arts and a dash of the visuals at the 19th edition of the SPORE Art Salon. Invite yourselves to an evening of poetry reading, a short stage play, performance art, dance and of course, life drawing! Same time, same place, and you know it...

see you then!

WHERE: BluJaz Cafe, 3rd Storey (12 Bali Lane)
WHEN: Tuesday 26 June 2012, 7:30PM onwards
FB Event Page : https://www.facebook.com/events/310237509066341/

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HOST

DON SHIAU
Don Shiau writes songs for leisure, and occasionally performs them for punishment. Having taken to the stage with a guitar only in the last few months, he is now plying the open mic circuit as way to 'rehearse in public', in the hope that he may one day become competent enough to 'record in private'. He has been a regular face at the SPORE Art Salon for close to a year, usually lurking with a sketchpad and a Tokyo Iced Tea. You cannot find his songs anywhere on the internet ... yet.









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FEATURED VISUAL ARTIST
MARIONA VILASECA
http://www.marionavilaseca.com/

Born in Spain 1978, holds degrees in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona, ​​is currently writing her doctoral thesis on how the way of pictorial experience and contemplative experience, lead to the same extent, to the unit.
She has performed solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, South America and also in Singapore last year, during their residence invited by Jason Wee Grey Projects.
Her work is in private and public collections in different countries as well. This year, repeated her trip to Singapore to perform along with Kelvin Atmadibrata, an installation in Substation, during days 21 to 28 June. Both artists were part of residency exchange program Initiated by SinCat, a Singapore-Catalan cultural research team, Grey Project, a project space and residency by Jason Wee and Nau Cochlea, a residency space in Catalan by Clara Gari.


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FEATURED PERFORMING ARTISTS

LEA McGOWAN (dance)
Lea McGowan-Host and Performing Artist, Model Lea is delighted to be a part of Art Salon again, presenting inspiration for visual artists as she blends modeling and dance segments. For almost two years Lea has lived in Singapore working as a dancer/acrobat/performing artist for the theatrical circus production of "Voyage de la Vie" which concludes as the longest running show in Singapore's history July 16, 2012.  Lea has also become active in the local stand up comedy scene, and you might recognize her from replays of America's Got Talent...Don't miss your chance to see Lea in action at her last SPORE Art Salon before she takes off!


CHARLENE SHEPHERDSON (poet)

www.zarweanede.com
A wordsmith, illustrator and creative educator, Charlene works with text and images to explore the evolution of traditional art as it adapts to the confines of space and time in city living; reflections of the city through the eyes of its inhabitants.
Raised on a diet of Scrabble, Boggle and Wheel of Fortune, Charlene loves playing with the intricacies of syllables; deconstructing words to build new towers of meaning. Recently, her art and visual poetry have been showcased in The Arts House, The Substation, Singapore Writers Festival 2011 and Lit Up Festival 2011.
When not refueling the caffeine running through her veins, Charlene can be found collaborating as 1/3 of spacer.gif, a visual-textual art collective and in Party Action People, a spoken word troupe. She makes yeti-like appearances at www.zarweanede.com



CALL ME BEA (stage play)
"Call Me Bea" is written by Teh Su Ching, and featuring Su Ching and Ruzaini. CALL ME BEA also features choreography by Glory Ngim and video work by Wee Li Lin.
It is about Beatrice Lim, a socialite Tai Tai who has a tumultuous relationship with her aspiring singer-songwriter daughter Felicity. When Bea tries to seduce Ismail, a member of staff at the Singapore Elite Country Club, her world turns upside down.

CALL ME BEA is -

TEH SU CHING
Teh Su Ching's short film Ash is an official selection at the the 2012 Moscow International Film Festival. In 2011, Shanghai theatre group 3rd Culture Theatre staged her bilingual one-act play Seven Days in Jing An at the Jing An district theatre festival. In 2008, another one-act play, Russia! was featured in the Yale Playwrights Festival. Russia! was also read at The Substation, where Lim Yu Beng played the lead.
Her full-length play Ubin will be given a reading in New York's Workshop Theatre in October. Ubin's Tisch Asia reading in April featured Karen Tan and Oon Shu An in lead roles.
 In 2009, Su Ching's short story DnD, penned under the pseudonym Stella Chung, was featured in the anthology “Romance Volume 2” by Renaissance Publishing. Su Ching also acts - you may remember her as the teenage Penelope Chan in Raintree Pictures' Chicken Rice War (2000). She holds a BA in Literature and Theatre Studies from Yale University, and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Asia. She's now writing a feature-length coming of age teen dance film that centers around Mambo Nights at local nightclub Zouk.

DRAYTON ALEXANDER HIERS
Recent directing credits include developmental readings of Ubin by Teh Su Ching, The Book of Living and Dying by Chong Tze Chien, and Lightning from Heaven by Scott Sickles. As a playwright, his work has been performed in Singapore at the Arts House and 72-13, and in New York at The Tank NYC, the Bushwick Starr, Lumenhouse, and the Brooklyn Reliquary.
He is the Artistic Director of LoNyLa Singapore, which is dedicated to developing new works by Singaporean playwrights, regularly producing readings of new scripts in exchange with theatre artists around the world.
With Jean Tay, he is an instructor for SRT’s Young Co Playwrights, which is in its inaugural year of training new dramatic writers.  He has an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia, where he is Program Coordinator and Adjunct Instructor for the Department of Dramatic Writing.

RUZAINI
Ruzaini has been doing mainly production work for the past 3 years with various companies such as Wild Rice, Toy Factory, Singapore Repertory Theatre and STAGES. An actor at heart, he also acts for YellowChair Productions and NYUTischAsia Drama Lab work.

18th Edition... DE BRIEF!

You guys... the 18th edition was a huge success, so much fun, energy and just full of awesomeness, thanks to one and all who came out to support your friends on stage, and all who came out to just enjoy the evening, have conversations.

Here are the photographs - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.456576947686495&type=1

Enjooooooooy and see you bunch next month!

Lan Fang Chronicles, Thu 31 May - Sat 2 Jun

Co-organiser and frequent host of the SPORE Art Salon Ng Yi-Sheng is having his work featured in a Singapore Arts Festival show called Lan Fang Chronicles. This coming weekend is your last chance to catch it:

Director: Choy Ka Fai
Date: Fri 18 May-Sun 2 Jun, 7pm (3:30pm matinees on selected dates)
Venue: Ying Foh Kuan (Shuang Long Shan) 9 Commonwealth Lane, Singapore 149551
Tickets: $25 from Sistic

The Lan Fang Republic was the first democratic state in Southeast Asia. It began as an independent settlement of Hakka Chinese gold miners in Western Borneo, and it lasted from 1777 until 1884. Its multiracial capitalist history bears more than a few similarities to Singapore's.

This performance, taking place on the grounds of a Hakka Clan Association, uses both historical fact and fiction to bring this forgotten civilisation to life. Directed by multimedia artist Choy Ka Fai, it also features Singapore playwrights Zizi Azah, Robin Loon, Ng Yi-Sheng and Yak Aik-Wee, as well as actors Pat Toh, Najib Soiman, Rizman Putra, Yak Aik-Wee, Bright Ong, Serene Chen and Nora Samosir.

“If history could be taught this way, a lot more people would be interested in their local history. …By approaching Lan Fang as an artist and reconstructing knowledge out of memoirs, records, interviews and suppositions, he [Choy Ka Fai] encourages us to imagine, thus bringing to life what he calls the Chronicles of Disappearance, of the Lan Fang’s Republic’s history.” Cheah Ui-Hoon, Business Times, 22 May 2012.

Here's a Vimeo preview, a YouTube documentary, and more info from Ka Fai's website.

SPORE Art Salon : 18th Edition on 29 MAY!

AGAINST all heat this May, a beautiful line up of musicians, a poet, a singer, a filmmaker, and a never-seen-before first-time Super-enthusiastic model to pose for drawing has come together and fallen in place pretty nicely and in a timely manner to boot! We had an absolute blast in the month of April and there's no expecting what might be different this time around... so come join us on 29 May to find out!! See you then!

WHERE: BluJaz Cafe, 3rd Storey (12 Bali Lane)
WHEN: Tuesday 29 May 2012, 7:30PM onwards
FB Event Page : https://www.facebook.com/events/446812438679744/

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SPORE Art Salon is a non-profit initiative created for visual artists to meet, mingle, inspire, and share with performing artists. During the event, we alternate between drawing sessions with live models, and performances from musicians, contortionists, poets, dancers, actors and more. We also feature works of, and demonstrations by visual artists, individually or collaboratively.

For those who are new to the art salon, our event is modeled after world famous Giles Larrain's Art Salon in NYC, with a distinctly Singaporean twist and flavour!

There is a minimum donation of $7/person at the door, and proceeds will benefit our featured artists. The bar and kitchen will be open, so come have some drinks and dinner, meet, mingle and inspire with fellow creatives of various disciplines. Guests are encouraged to participate in the life drawing sessions in between performances, so, bring your sketch materials along!

For information on our archived editions, please visit
www.sporeartsalon.blogspot.com

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FEATURED MODEL

LAURA
It's always very exciting (and nerve wrecking) to take a budding idea and trying it out for the very first time. Laura is inspired by music and the fashion movements it can inspire, and believes in using the body as visual tool for self expression. Her set aims to challenge the image of innocence by taking the whimsical and giving it a twist of grunge. She is also keen to explore the relationship between artist and the mode - whose inspiration or work of art will it be this edition?

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FEATURED VISUAL ARTIST

LI LIN WEE (filmmaker)
http://www.bobbingbuoyfilms.com/
Li Lin is known to be the most prolific female short filmmaker in Singapore with almost 10 short films under her belt. Most of them award winners, in 2005, Li Lin’s short film “Autograph Book”
was the first ever Singapore film selected for the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival in New York. A graduate of Brown University in Rhode Island, USA with a BA in Art Semiotics, Li Lin also spent a semester in Tisch-NYU doing “Sight and Sound”, an intensive filmmaking production course. She recently completed her MFA in Dramatic Writing at Tisch Asia on a Media Education Scheme Scholarship.

Earlier this year, Li Lin received the honorary award from the Singapore Short Film Awards for her outstanding contribution to the Singapore short film scene. Li Lin has made two feature films, the critically acclaimed “GONE SHOPPING” in 2007 which was partially funded by the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board and well received “FOREVER” in 2011 which was funded by the MDA’s New Feature Film Fund and supported by Iceberg Design.

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FEATURED PERFORMING ARTISTS

COLD SHOULDER (soundmakers)
Hi, we are Cold Shoulder. We love making sounds. Sometimes it resembles music. Ask us anything but what we play, because most days we aren't sure. Whatever it is, we sincerely hope we're going somewhere with this. Thank you for having us, SPORE Art Salon!








AMBER LIN (poet)

http://www.anbarsky.wordpress.com/
Amber enjoys being a contradiction. You could probably spot her screaming at zombies, or strangling adorable stuffed toys. She considers herself pretty well adjusted to the strict eduction system in Singapore, but outside the lines of social expectations and traditions, she's found various shades of her personality that just can't be ignored.

Amber strongly believes that dancing, singing and writing have helped her keep sane and loves telling, and being told, stories of any medium. She hopes that one day, she'll see the Northern Lights, Love will hold her hand and people will stop asking her why she dislikes chocolate. Currently studying performance in Lasalle College of the Arts, she tries her best to be a good student, daughter, friend and human being.


WENDELL JOHN FRANDO (performer)


... FULL DETAILS COMING SOON - CHECK BACK!

April in a Wink - AFTERMATH

We had an absolutely lovely time at the SPORE Art Salon's 17th Edition late last month - many thanks to all who came out that night to contribute to the high energy buzz, with a lot of effort coming from our wonderful host Lea, who put such a delightful spin on her 'in-betweeners', incredibly spontaneous model Roy Tan, our extremely talented featured artists Ian Fuller, Ansel Ashby, Don Shiau and Deborah Emmanuel.

Photographs are here - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.426085544068969&type=1 , courtesy of Soefian Suradi, and very kindly, Abhishek Cherian George shared his as well - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.439218342771847.122553.100000510562355&type=1

ALSO!! Some selects by 'Ham' for Found a Talent - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.439260656084791&type=1

Thanks for sharing the love, everyone!

We're Seeking!

SPORE Art Salon : April in a Wink!

Wow, the months are whizzing pass us and it's April... the first quarter of 2012, DONE!

It doesn't seem too long ago that we had our 5th Edition of April Showers, and amazingly, rather unconsciously too, we have managed to coincide the return of spoken word artist Deborah Emmanuel in our 17th Edition, a year after her debut! So come, and be treated to an evening of narration drawn from real-life experiences - we wonder ! Also, we're excited to hear the wild, fictitious stories of Ansel Ashby, and welcoming solo musicians Ian Fuller and Don Shiau who will be presenting original music live, for the very first time! To finish it all off with a cherry on top... we have familiar face Lea McGowan, who will be hosting the 17th Edition, and putting a good performance-esque spin on things!

See you then!

WHERE: BluJaz Cafe (12 Bali Lane)
WHEN: Tuesday 24 April 2012, 7:30PM onwards
FB Event Page : https://www.facebook.com/events/246771755421634/

 

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FEATURED MODEL



ROY TAN
http://www.youtube.com/user/groyn88001
Tan is a healthcare professional passionately interested in documenting local LGBT history. Tan started all the Singapore LGBT-related articles in Wikipedia in 2005 and ported every article removed by deletionists to SgWik. He has also recorded and amassed the most comprehensive collection of local LGBT videos on YouTube. Tan intended to organise Singapore's first gay pride parade at Hong Lim Park in 2008 after the government legalised protests there. This later morphed into Pink Dot SG, an event which supported the "freedom of LGBT people to love" and which later spread worldwide. Together with fellow citizen Tien Kim Chuan, Tan marched in Singapore's first and only gay Chingay contingent when the public were allowed to form their own marching group in 2010.


FEATURED PERFORMING ARTISTS

Lea McGowan

LEA MCGOWAN (host)
A performing artist since childhood, Lea McGowan enjoys experimenting with different mediums, going from ballet and dance to stand up comedy, singing parodies and playing the ukulele. You might recognize her from Season 5 America's Got Talent, when she performed ballet and acrobatics with her then partner, Rudi Macaggi. Originally from Austin, Texas, Lea traveled around the United States: living near Philadelphia, studying Psychology and Dance Theater at University of Tampa, Florida, training with LINES Ballet in San Francisco, California, Houston Ballet in Texas, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. In her work Lea draws from a wide range of influences including pop and world cultures. She worked as a freelance dancer/acrobat, model and performing artist based in New York, New York for three years before coming to Singapore a year ago. Lea is an enthusiastic supporter of the Singapore arts community.
"Live Love Laugh"

Don Shiau

DON SHIAU (musician)
Don’s been writing songs off and on for over a decade, but few have seen the light of day. It’s a familiar story: life got in the way of art. First, there was the grand teenage rock dream; followed by tentative and hopeful solo performances in university; then some difficult and abortive band projects; and finally the steamrolling of creativity in the corporate world.
But it’s not over, thanks to that quirky phenomenon known as one’s 30s: that sweet spot between naïveté and maturity; freedom and responsibility; poverty and abundance. Now firmly in that zone, Don’s decided to dust off some of his old tunes and start playing them to unsuspecting audiences. Maybe, just maybe, proper recording sessions await.
What kind of music does he actually write, though? His cryptic answer: “I’d be a hipster. If only I was skinny enough”.

Ian Fuller

IAN FULLER (musician)
http://soundcloud.com/ian-fuller-4skn
"Music has been a major part of my life since I can remember. I started making electronic music only recently after time with an original blues band and a lot of lo-fi acoustic bedroom production.

I'm experimenting with live vocal loops and am excited to play my first electronic live set."

Ansel Ashby

ANSEL ASHBY (storyteller)
http://aawandering.blogspot.com

Ansel Ashby is an aspiring author and recent graduate. He moved out to Singapore six months ago to teach. Reading old fairy tales began his interest in “story telling”. These tales were originally passed on by word of mouth, father to son, mother to daughter. It was only much later that they were ever written down. It’s becoming a lost art.

Fascinated with the written word in general, Ansel has written 1 (very bad) novel, several (decent) fairy tales, many short stories, 1 screen play, and lots of poetry all unpublished. In addition, he truly enjoys food and wine, well booze in general. While he hasn’t been writing much fiction lately, he contributes regularly to TheLocalNose, a Singaporean Wine Blog. Some day he hopes to own a little winery of his own where he can play in the dirt, and, of course, write.

Deborah Emmanuel

DEBORAH EMMANUEL (spoken word artist)

http://www.deborahemmanuel.com

Deborah Emmanuel has been telling stories since she could talk. Her first story was that there was a microscopic pterodactyl living inside her ear, which when she was reading would not allow her to hear the dinner bell. Since then, she has used drama and creative writing to tell other stories which have reached out to many people.

Her first time on stage was at age 4 in the kindergarten circus musical, in which she desperately wanted to be a ballerina, but was made to wear a hairy bear suit instead. Since then she has played several human acting roles, and appeared as an educational speaker and performance poet on many occasions. At the SPORE Art Salon Deborah will use Spoken Word to share narratives from her life and experiences. She hopes that her true words will sound in your soul, and that maybe you take a little bit of her alive with you.