The ancient medium of Chinese ink has been beautifully employed by Singaporean artist Quek Kiat Sing to portray the familiar and contemporary in her enchanting exhibition Shadows of Ink. By using recognizable subject-matters Kiat Sing hopes this will allow the audience to see just how creative and relevant Chinese ink, as a modern medium, can be.

Shadows of Ink is comprised of a selection of Kiat Sing’s smaller series of works produced over the past three years.  Included is a series the artist created specially for the Vermont Studio Centre in 2008, which studies the intrigue and simplicity of the silhouette. Additional to these will be those where Kiat Sing focuses on the playful Japanese sub-culture fashion of Cosplay, and gestural ink paintings of families embracing Singapore’s cultural festivities.

At 38 years old, Kiat Sing has gained recognition through local awards such as the United Overseas Bank Painting of the Year Competition and the Dr Tan Tsze Chor Art Award. She represented Singapore at the ASEAN Cultural Week in Vietnam in 2004 and participated in the China ASEAN Youth Artwork Creativity Contest in China in 2006. Most recently Kiat Sing was one of Singapore’s finalists at the 2010 Sovereign Asian Art Prize of Hong Kong, and at present, lectures part-time at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.
 
About the Artist

Kiat Sing completed her Bachelor of Social Science degree, with honours, in Political Science at the National University of Singapore in 1997.  She subsequently obtained a Bachelor of Arts, with a distinction in Fine Art, at the University of Technology, in Perth.

During the past 18 years, the artist has exhibited extensively throughout Singapore and further afield in Japan, Thailand, the United Kingdom and China. Shadows of Ink represents Kiat Sing’s fourth solo exhibition, and her first with Chan Hampe Galleries.