ShanghART Singapore is pleased to announce a lineup of special events for Singapore Art Week 2017 and Art After Dark in conjunction with current exhibition “Welcome to Birdhead World Again - Singapore 2016”.

Acclaimed photography duo BIRDHEAD (SONG Tao and JI Weiyu) began their six-month Southeast Asia residency in July 2016, travelling through Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Singapore. The works created during the course of their residency are currently exhibited in ShanghART Gallery Singapore at Gillman Barracks and comprise Birdhead’s first solo exhibition in Southeast Asia. The exhibition will be extended to 26 February 2017.

For the two special events, Birdhead recreate the cultural immersion and exchange they experienced during their travels, inviting audiences to engage in the atmosphere of camaraderie and hospitality they experienced, as well as giving insight and context into the process of creation of their works. ShanghART Singapore will host both the following events with the artists in attendance:

BIRDHEAD Artist Talk

Welcome, Southeast Asia, to Birdhead World

13 January 2017 (Friday), 3pm - 4.30pm

Blk 6 Lock Road, #02-09, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108934

ShanghART Gallery will host artists Birdhead and Robert Zhao Renhui in conversation with Shanghai-based curator of Asian art Biljana Ciric and collector Hallam Chow. All are welcome.

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BIRDHEAD x Papacurry Performance

Followed by BIRDHEAD Autograph Session 

13 January 2017 (Friday), 5pm - 8pm

ShanghART Singapore, 9 Lock Road, #02-22, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108937

The performance will be staged in collaboration with filmmaker-turned-chef Chayuti Janrakangtong (Papacurry) from Chiang Mai, recreating the sense of camaraderie and friendship with Chayuti that resulted in the creation of a key series for the exhibition “Welcome to Birdhead World Again - Singapore 2016.” The program also creates a fortuitous cross-cultural triangle between Thailand and Singapore via the Chinese photography duo.

Following the performance, the artists will be present for an autograph session to sign complimentary commemorative prints of a souvenir photograph taken in Robert Zhao Renhui’s studio during Birdhead’s residency in Singapore, which for Birdhead, exemplifies and memorialises the hospitality they experienced during their travels through Southeast Asia.

Japanese curry and refreshments will also be offered to public for no charge. All are welcome.

About BIRDHEAD
Birdhead have been working in the medium of analog photography since they were established in 2004. Consisting of duo Song Tao (b. 1979) and Ji Weiyu (b. 1980), their aleatoric moniker was borne of a computer prompt. The prolific duo has since assembled a huge body of work, taking around 15,000 photographs a year and constantly experimenting with analog photography, collage techniques, and other mixed media. Birdhead have been exhibited in museums and galleries all over the world. Their works are in the permanent collections of the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation in Switzerland. Birdhead were also nominated for the inaugural Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2013. ShanghART presented Birdhead’s first solo exhibition in 2005.

Recent exhibitions include: BIRDHEAD - Art Unlimited Art Basel 2016, Basel, Switzerland, (2016); BIRDHEAD - Welcome to BIRDHEAD world again, Zurich, Switzerland (2016); Welcome to BIRDHEAD World Again, ShanghART h-Space, Shanghai (2015); New Photography 2012, MoMA, NewYork, U.S.A.(2012); Reactivation - 9th Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art, Shanghai(2012); The 54th Venice Biennale - ILLUMInations, Venice, Italy (2011); China Power Station - part 4, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, Italy (2010); The World of Other's: A Contemporary Art Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai (2008); China Power Station II, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway (2007). And their solo exhibitions include: Welcome to BIRDHEAD World Again-Beijing 2012, ShanghART Beijing, Beijing(2012); BIRDHEAD: New Village, EX3 Centro per l'arte Contemporanea Firenze, Florence, Italy (2011); Artist File 2011 The NACT Annual Show of Contemporary Art, National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan (2011); Welcome to the World of BIRDHEAD Again-2010, Guangzhou; Lianzhou (2010); BIRDHEAD 2006+2007 Photography Show, BizART, Shanghai (2007).

About Robert Zhao Renhui
Singaporean visual artist Robert Zhao Renhui (b. 1983) works mainly with photography but often adopts a multi-disciplinary approach by presenting images together with documents and objects. Renhui’s work include textual and media analysis, video and photography projects. His recent exhibitions include the Arles Discovery Award 2015, Singapore Biennale 2013, Centre of Contemporary Photography (Melbourne) and Photoquai 2013. His work has also been awarded The Deutsche Bank Award in Photography (2011) by the University of the Arts London, The United Overseas Bank Painting of the Year Award (2009) Singapore. In 2010, he was awarded The Young Artist Award by the Singapore National Arts Council. His work has also been featured prominently in Artforum International, ArtAsiaPacific, European Photography, Pipeline, Archivo, Fotografia and Punctum.

About Biljana Ciric
Biljana Ciric is an independent curator. She is currently research fellow at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Norway and curator-in-residence at the Kadist Art Foundation (Paris) where she curated the exhibition Habits and customs of_____are so different from ours that we visit them with the same sentiment that we visit exhibitions. She also curated Encounters with Pompidou within the exhibition Museum On/Off, Centre Pompidou (2016). Recent exhibitions include Just as Money is the Paper, the Gallery is the Room (2014) presented by Osage Art Foundation (Hong Kong), One Step Forward, Two Steps Back—Us and Institution, Us as Institution (2013) presented by Times Guangzhou Museum (Guangzhou), and a Tino Sehgal solo exhibition (2013) in UCCA (Beijing). She was also co-curator of the 2015 Third Ural Industrial Biennale for Contemporary Art (Yekaterinburg, Russia). In 2013, Ciric initiated seminar platform From a History of Exhibitions Towards a Future of Exhibition Making, and she regularly publishes in Broadsheet and Yi Shu among other magazines. Ciric was also a jury member for a number of awards, including the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award (2013), and was on the nominating council for Vera List Prize for Art and Politics(2014/2015). She has been nominated for the ICI Independent Vision Curatorial Award (2012).

About Hallam Chow
Hallam Chow has been involved with Chinese art since the age of ten, due to the influence of his grandfather, the late Edward T. Chow. A U.S. trained lawyer, Chow began supporting and collecting contemporary Asian art when he returned to Hong Kong in 2006. His efforts include establishing the Luo Zhongli Scholarship Award, granted to young graduates of Chinese art academies, and the Mr and Mrs Edward T. Chow Memorial Teaching Assistantship at Columbia University for architecture students from Asia. Chow has lent valuable support for museum exhibitions and seminars at Shanghai MOCA, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and Asia Society, Hong Kong, and recently donated a significant collection of Southeast Asian artworks to the new M+ art museum in Hong Kong.

About ShanghART Singapore
Established in Singapore in 2012, ShanghART Singapore is ShanghART Gallery’s first overseas gallery located in contemporary arts cluster Gillman Barracks.