Top image: A Secret Garden (2013). Site specific installation by Yeo Chee Kiong

Not just a key highlight of Singapore Art Week 2015, Prudential Singapore Eye is also the first major exhibition dedicated to Singapore’s contemporary arts that kick starts the celebration of the country’s 50th anniversary.

Bottles and Fans (2010). Sound installation by Chen Sai Hua Kuan

Doubtlessly serving as a barometer of the nation’s current art scene, the 17 artists have been carefully picked from over 110 submissions by an international curatorial panel. They include Chen Sai Hua Kuan, Chia Ming Chien, Angela Chong, Adeline Kueh, Jane Lee, Sean Lee, Gerald Leow, Charles Lim, Justin Loke, Samantha Tio (Mintio), Kumari Nahappan, Ho Tzu Nyen, Donna Ong, Jeremy Sharma, Jason Wee, Lee Wen, and Yeo Chee Kiong.

Several artists such as Charles Lim, Ho Tzu Nyen, Jane Lee and Jeremy Sharma not only enjoy an international following but have also represented Singapore at numerous biennales, such as Venice Biennale, Shanghai Biennale and Liverpool Biennale.

And we were like those who dreamed. Part of a series of seven cabinets by Donna Ong

The exhibition explores a myriad contemporary themes including identity, history, fiction, as well as personal and national narratives.

In Yeo Chee Kiong’s “The Secret Garden” for instance, visitors are invited to enter a ‘rainforest’ and “experience the darkness in broad daylight”. Says Yeo, “This piece of work resembles my childhood memories when I was almost lost inside a rainforest during a camping event. I would like to recreate that experience by ‘planting’ the rainforest inside the art gallery.”

Wires – Chaos #3 (2010). Photography by Chia Ming Chien

Also of note, Chia Ming Chien’s photo series offers a different perspective to the street wires that are often criticised as despoiling the cityscape in many developing Asian cities.

(Left) Beyond The Blue by Jane Lee; (right) Concrete Euphoria, Housing Development Board Flat, Singapore (2008). Photography by Mintio

Yet another photo series, “Concrete Euphoria” by Mintio explores the ever-changing mega cities of Asia. These contemporary landscapes are produced entirely within the camera (no digital imaging was involved) where the camera is used as a tool to translate the experience of being in a physical space into a fantastical two-dimensional map that plots out the interlocking systems of the city.

Master Plan (2012). Installation by Jason Wee

Then there’s Jason Wee’s “Master Plan”, a powerful culmination of the artist’s recent sojourn at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Wee’s architectural models evoke a city’s ‘master plan’ as a monochrome and an abstraction, a model city but one with a menacing and slightly melancholic blueprint.

Prudential Singapore Eye will be held from 17 January – 28 June 2015 at the Art Science Museum as part of the Prudential Eye Programme. For more information, visit marinabaysands.com/ArtScienceMuseum.