STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery presents Material Moves, a major exhibition that brings together four of Singapore’s most important artists; Han Sai Por, Goh Beng Kwan, Ong Kim Seng and the late Chua Ek Kay, in a celebration timed to the nation’s 60th year of independence. All four are Cultural Medallion recipients, and each has played a defining role in shaping Singapore’s art scene. But this is not a retrospective. Instead, the exhibition stages a reencounter: 53 works on paper that recast these familiar figures in new light, pushing them into realms of experimentation that depart from the media that first established their renown.

Curated by Adele Tan, Senior Curator at National Gallery Singapore, the exhibition is anchored in STPI’s role as a workshop for innovation, a place where even the most established artists can take creative risks. For Tan, the project was an opportunity to show these figures not as static pioneers, but as vital, contemporary voices. “Very often at the National Gallery they are presented as second generation, pioneers of our art history,” she reflected at the press preview. “But these are still living, thriving artists. I wanted to have a language that showcased them differently.”

The exhibition takes its name from the idea of “material moves”, the ways in which physical experimentation in print and paper sparks new directions in practice, but also the way art itself can move us. As Tan noted, the title carries multiple registers: it is about literal movement, about artistic shifts, but also about emotional resonance. “The works speak more powerfully together than apart, creating an emotional movement throughout the exhibition,” she explained.

Han Sai Por, long celebrated as Singapore’s foremost sculptor of stone, draws directly on her sculptural instincts to create hand-moulded paper works, relief intaglio collages and collagraphs. These works extend her lifelong meditation on the relationship between nature and the human world. A series of cast paper reliefs depicts grasses shifting through different times of day; subtle variations of palette suggest dawn, dusk, and the constant rhythm of the natural cycle. Han has spoken of her practice as an expression of organic vitality, and here she channels that sensibility into a new medium, transforming stone’s weight into paper’s lightness.

Goh Beng Kwan, Singapore’s great innovator in collage, also embraced unfamiliar techniques during his STPI residency. His works build on decades of layering found materials with cultural and personal resonance, but now he brings in unexpected elements: psychedelic tones, fluorescent pigments and flocking that bristle with texture. Displayed in a specially lit space, the works pulse with energy, surprising for an artist in his eighties but consistent with Goh’s career-long restlessness. As Tan put it, “Fluorescence and flocking are unusual for his generation, but they demonstrate that Goh is still innovating well into his eighties.”

For Ong Kim Seng, best known for his luminous watercolours of Singapore and beyond, the challenge came in the material itself. At STPI he was handed mulberry bark to paint on, a surface that resisted the transparent washes of conventional watercolour. “When the colour started to bleed, I thought—this is not watercolour painting anymore,” Ong recalled. “You have to find another way to paint.” His solution was to reimagine landscapes in serial chromatic variations: Chinatown rendered in brown, green, off-blue, like garments draped over a familiar body. He cited both Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup cans and the rainbow-hued Old Hill Street Police Station as inspirations. For Ong, these works are not only exercises in colour theory but also deeply personal acts of memory, evoking Mount Faber where he spent his childhood and still trains for long-distance treks today. “It gives you the feeling of people living thousands of years ago,” he mused, “but also the feeling of now.”

Though he passed away in 2008, Chua Ek Kay’s presence is central to Material Moves. The exhibition features works from his 2003 and 2007 STPI residencies, the latter among the final pieces he created. These demonstrate his restless shift from ink into lithography and woodcut, revealing an artist still exploring, still asking questions. They are joined by two rare early paintings from 1990, on loan from the National Collection, which hint at the uncertainties of a young artist experimenting with collage and abstraction at the start of his journey. For Tan, Chua’s works embody both doubt and discovery. “They remind us that even celebrated artists wrestle with uncertainty, and that this too is part of artistic life,” she observed.

The exhibition design amplifies these themes of movement and materiality. Inspired by coastlines and literal drifts, the galleries trace a rhythm between wall and floor, with works placed in unexpected configurations—at times resting on shelves, at times pulsing under special lighting. At intervals, visitors encounter fragments of poetry by Singapore-born, Australia-based poet Boi Kim Cheng. Born in 1965, the year of Singapore’s independence, his words add another layer to the SG60 reflections, speaking of distance, longing and the passage of time. “The poetry aids the reading of some of the works,” Tan said, “adding to that sense of conflict and dynamic, of watching from afar.”

For STPI, the exhibition is also a statement of purpose. “Since opening its doors in 2002, STPI has been committed to providing a unique infrastructure and resources for artists, facilitating innovation in their practice,” said Executive Director Emi Eu. “This exhibition is a testament to how these pioneering Singapore artists, in collaboration with our Creative Workshop team, have pushed the boundaries of their artmaking to new heights through the mediums of print and paper.”

Timed to a culturally significant milestone, Material Moves reaffirms the vitality of Singapore’s most celebrated artists, not as monuments of the past but as creators still moving, still remaking, still surprising. As Ong Kim Seng suggested, what emerges is both ancient and modern at once, a reminder that the act of artmaking, even after decades, remains a journey of invention.

Photo Credit: STPI

Material Moves runs from 16th August to 5th October 2025 at STPI. More information available here