Gridded Currents

Ever heard about land reclamation? It’s the process of adding land on coastlines or even creating new islands in the ocean. It’s a phenomenon that almost all Singaporeans know about as their limited city-state has been expanding ever since its first project back in 1822 at South Boat Quay. Although we might not regard the vast waters to be a part of our direct urban environment, our seas and oceans have been reshaped by modernization just like our lands. Gridded Currents at Kukje Gallery is an exhibition that explores the changes cause by capitalistic agenda’s through various works done by four different artists (Nina Canell, Charles Lim Yi Yong, Runo Lagomarsino and Ayoung Kim). Of the collection is Nina Canell’s Sedding Sheaths, which are debris-like sculptures scattered around the gallery floor. Collected from a recycling plant, the remnants of the left over fibre-optic cables look alien to us as these are objects that are extremely distant from our realities. Yet, the irony is that these are the cables hidden deep beneath the oceans that keep us constantly connected with the rest of the world. Charles Lim Yi Yong’s SEA STATE series depicts the changes occuring on the coastlines of his hometown Singapore. A film piece shown on the second floor of the gallery is a mesmerizing, slow paced video that focuses on the construction of new land. Watching the tons of sand from containerships being passed through the conveyor belts and thrown onto what is new land, has an intriguingly calming effect. What is left, after flattening, is a pristine desert-like landscape—which brings to mind a hopeful future to Singapore. Gridded Currents artistically depicts the realities of our ocean in ways many of us have not encountered, a face of an environment embodied by global capital transactions.