Art What!: Search and Discover – The Joy of Collecting at The Private Museum

The Private Museum (TPM) Singapore will be presenting Search and Discover: The Joy of Collecting – Selections from the Yeap Lam Yang Collection. TPM revisits its foundation of bridging the private and the public in this year’s final and largest exhibition that forms part of the museum’s 10th anniversary programming, featuring an array of private collections in Singapore.

Michael Lee, God’s Villa (2011)

Co-curated by Aaron Teo and Beverly Yong, the exhibition features 65 carefully-selected works by 35 artists from the Asia- Pacific region from the Yeap Lam Yang collection that spans over three decades. While the works are categorically small— the exhibition’s curatorial theme intentionally limits the size of the works to 60 cm by 60 cm—there is nary a ‘smallness’ in their significance. Each work is precious and treasured, each a symbolic step into the collector’s foray into the art world as a patron and supporter of the arts.

From left: Kirsten Coelho, Tall Bottle & Oil Can (Prospect #12) (2012) Kirsten Coelho, Cobalt Canister (2017)

Artists featured include architecture-inspired Michael Lee, porcelain artist Kirsten Coelho, Taiwanese artist Ni Jui Hung, Shanghai artist Ni Youyu, the late Lee Wen, watercolourist Chang Fee Ming, Indian artist Atul Dodiya, and Chinese artist Shi Hu, among others.

Shi Hu, Untitled (1998)

Search and Discover: The Joy of Collecting unravels the process of exhibition-making and reveals the joy of art- collecting—the discovering and revisiting of artists and their works; and embodies a rekindling of old relationships and the forging of new ones. Yeap’s apt reminder that “there is good art everywhere waiting to be uncovered” is an invitation to all viewers to chart their individual, personal journeys in search and discovery of art and artists, new or familiar.

Search and Discover: The Joy of Collecting runs at The Private Museum from 22nd October to 23rd December 2020. For more information, visit their website here