ART: SINGAPORE
Jean-Pierre Roc-Roussey and Pierre Matter
French painter Jean-Pierre Roc-Roussey and sculptor Pierre Matter are creating portals into fictional universes at Singapore’s Opera Gallery. The two’s works share distinctly otherworldly traits but whether it’s the same world is up for debate. Roc-Roussey’s acrylic-on-canvas paintings are a fantastical gateway into visions where strong heroines brandish swords while riding stallions and elephants emblazoned in the artist’s bright colours (he makes his own paints from scratch). Matter opts to use sculpture to dream up sci-fi beast/machine hybrids. And the eccentric nuances of both worlds are even more pronounced when shown side-by-side together.
Opera Gallery, 2 Orchard Turn, 4-15 Ion Orchard. Open Monday to Friday, 11.00-20.00; Saturday and Sunday, 10.00-20.00. Until 7 December.
operagallery.com
ART: LONDON
Rä Di Martino: Authentic News of Invisible Things
Italian artist Rä Di Martino stages Authentic News of Invisible Things – her ever first exhibition in the UK – at London’s Cøpperfield gallery this weekend. The selection on show combines photography with staged scenes to play with reality and fiction in order to expose the absurdities of war. Di Martino achieves this by focusing on historical images of dummy tanks – mock-up models of military vehicles used by armies that create the illusion of bolstered numbers at the battlefront. One work uses an image of civilians gathering curiously around a dummy tank abandoned by the retreating Germany army in Lille during 1918, the spectacle of war being as luring as ever.
Cøpperfield gallery, 6 Copperfield Street. Open Wednesday to Saturday, 12.00-17.00. Until 12 February 2015.
copperfieldgallery.com
FILM: BRISBANE
Brisbane Asia-Pacific Film Festival
Broadening its horizons beyond a city-centric event, Brisbane’s annual celebration of film has been revitalised this year to encompass a region-wide scope (now being called the Brisbane Asia-Pacific Film Festival). Centred around the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, the 16-day festival across multiple venues will feature over 75 films from areas ranging from China to the Pacific Islands and Russia, not forgetting Australia of course. Screening this weekend at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) is Ruin, a film by Australian writer-directors Michael Cody and Amiel Courtin-Wilson that follows two young lovers on the run in Cambodia. Chinese filmmaker Heng Yang’s latest slow-cinema feature, Lake August, will also show at Goma and is the director’s take on the tedium of small-town life.
Showing at venues across Brisbane. Check website for programme details. Until 14 December.
bapff.com.au
DESIGN: PHILADELPHIA
Vitra – Design, Architecture, Communication
Collab, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s committee of design professionals presents an exhibition honouring iconic Swiss furniture company Vitra from this weekend. The event includes more than 100 pieces of furniture, design-based objects, models, photographs, and videos that tell the story of the family-owned company that works across everything from design collaborations to architectural commissions and educational outreach projects. The highlights are many, but look out for “Wooden Dolls” designed in 1963 by American textile and industrial designer Alexander Girard and also the famed 1945 plywood elephant from another US design giant, Charles Eames.
Philadelphia Museum of Art: Collab Gallery at the Perelman Building, 2525 *Pennsylvania Avenue. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10.00-17.00. Until 26 April 2015.
philamuseum.org
MUSIC: GLOBAL
Fryars: Power
Some of the biggest pop hits often come from much less outspoken voices – those backroom writers and producers who slave away making songs sound perfect (and often end up making a lot more money than the song’s singer, too). London artist Fryars, aka Benjamin Garrett, falls into the latter category. Having penned hits for the likes of Lily Allen, his own work on debut album Power is a more odd take on pop – a jittering, digitised, dancier interpretation of some of the genre’s warmest personalities. George Harrison might have liked to have written “Don’t Make It Hard On Yourself”. Scott Walker probably wouldn’t have had anything to do with “China Voyage”, but you can’t fault Fryars for giving it a shot. And he can always sell the song to the man himself.
‘Power’ is available now.
fryars.co.uk
