SEPTUM 2023

Supper House

Text by Kelley Cheng

Water has existed since the beginning of life. In Genesis 1.2, even before God created man, “The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” With water, came man - it is the origin of man and many things, including art, as painting needs water in different ways, even the simple act of washing/cleansing your hands after a session of painting.

Across cultures and religions, water is a symbol of life, and in fact, human beings rely on water to live. Often used as a metaphor of birth, creation, purity, wisdom and death, water flows through our lives from beginning to end, and our relationship with water is not just physical but spiritual.

In this new series of paintings by artist Yeo Shih Yun, water too is the driving force behind her creations. An artist who is no stranger to using water-based medium such as Chinese ink, Septum sees the artist experimenting with a new kind of paint and a new method of painting, applying her paint using industrial sponges, instead of brushes. The final artworks are a result of not just sponging paint on the canvas, but the masterly control of how much of the water-based medium is allowed to seep through these sponges. And as how water is also closely associated with birth/rebirth, Septum marks another new chapter in the career for the established artist, pushing her boundaries with her techniques, medium and expression.

In the same vein as her usual abstract expressionist approach, the paintings are intuitively created with the element of surprise often coming from a collaboration, another signature of the artist, whereby she pulls herself out of her comfort zone by either immersing herself in an unpredictable situation or inviting an unexpected “guest” into her works, sometimes almost to deliberately create a hurdle for her to overcome, as new problems often lead to new solutions. Some of her past “collaborators” include trees, toy robots and other artists of course. For Septum, she has chosen a writer, two performance artists, a dramaturg and a designer as her collaborators.

After the paintings were completed, writer Euginia Tan was invited to respond to the paintings with words. Each poem is crafted to respond specifically to each painting. Encouraged by the artist to react intuitively rather than logically, abstractly rather than functionally, the poet took an unconventional approach of infusing a visual layer to the words. Much like the physical act of the artist moving across the canvas and allowing the paint to settle, the words seem to take on a kinetic energy and settle fluidly into a formation on the pages.

Septum as a new series for Shih Yun is familiar and surprising at the same time. Bearing her signature of bold strokes and strong composition, but with fresh colours and a new found fluidity, the artworks once again demonstrated the artist’s philosophy of rejecting preconceived ideas and allowing her strokes to go with the flow.