2019
We were appointed as the official branding and exhibition designers for the Singapore Pavilion at the 58th Venice Art Biennale 2019. The exhibition, titled Music for Everyone: Variations on a Theme by artist Song-Ming Ang references a series of music concerts organised by Singapore’s Ministry of Culture from 1971 to 1985, responding to state directives that deploy the arts as a means of nation building during this period. Ang’s works both reproduce this historical context, as well as employ manners of improvisations to provide an alternative encounter with music. They also draw on principles of conceptual art and experimental music, playfully but rigorously focusing on the act of creation via simple ideas and elementary techniques. Through Ang’s works, we see a counterpoint in which the proposition of “Music for Everyone” is expanded to include what could conceivably be created by the everyman, or ‘everyone’. By injecting elements of playfulness in his works, Ang’s seeks for an art that is egalitarian, beyond state-prescribed musical forms and conventionally held notions of worthy art.
The typographic treatment in the exhibition identity takes on a playful tone, a nod to the themes of improvisation evident in the artworks. Comprising of deconstructed musical staves, the visual language references that of movement and flow, visually reminiscent of music that is free from traditional rigours and rules.
Spatially, the exhibition takes on an appropriately quiet and elegant design, focusing the attention of passers-by onto the narratives of the works and letting the processes speak for itself.
Photo credits: Olivia Kwok & courtesy of the artist.
