Every year, Affordable Art Fair Singapore nurtures talented young Southeast Asian artists and provides them with a stage to shine in front of 1000s of art-loving Singaporeans. This year, we’re hosting the eighth edition of the Young Talent Programme 2019 in collaboration with our long-standing partner, ION Art.

Seven emerging artists have now been selected by the Young Talent Programme committee and they can’t wait to meet you at the upcoming Singapore fair (22 – 24 November, F1 Pit Building).

Following the fair, three finalists from the seven emerging artists will be selected to move onto the second phase of the programme; a ten-month mentorship with our programme curator, leading up to a solo show at ION Art’s stunning gallery. Don’t forget to vote for your favourite, the artist with the most votes will receive the People’s Choice and perhaps even take one of the mentorship spots!

Of course, we just can’t wait until the fair to unveil the line-up! So here’s a quick introduction to all the talented artists and their creative practices:

MEET THE SINGAPORE YOUNG TALENT FINALISTS 2019

DAISY TOH

Using ceramics as her medium of choice, Daisy loves the progressive transformations the medium goes through, from experimentation, conceptualisation and eventually creating a finished product. And it’s this journey of craftsmanship that Daisy aims to represent within her work – reflecting the human touch needed within hand crafted works to ensure each piece is unique.

Daisy uses her practice to document her feelings and experiences, finding the repetitive and rhythmic motion of the practice therapeutic. Whilst ceramics are a traditional medium, Daisy’s work injects a bit of contemporary flair.

JAKOB ZUYTEN

Jakob Zuyten is a self-taught photographer originally from Sweden. After taking an introductory course in photography during high school, Jakob started experimenting within the medium and was soon hooked. Having gained some commercial experience, freelancing in Gothenburg, Sweden, then moving onto fashion and press photography in Paris, he has recently shifted to fine art photography.

He says, “Two years ago I was searching for a new challenge and decided to pick up an old 35mm film camera. This pushed me to think very differently about photography and opened a whole new chapter in my career”.

Today, Jakob lives and works in Penang, primarily using a manual camera, which he feels shows a more honest depiction of the world as the photographs are unedited and raw compared to its digital counterpart.

LOUISA VIOLET

In her series of works titled ‘Pandemonium’ (artwork below left), Louisa takes a three-dimensional approach to creative mediums, combining elements of sculpture, music, performance and photography. Through her work, Louisa aims to showcase and dramatise existential turmoil which exists in an artist.

In her works, the artist is trapped in a never-ending cycle of processes and thoughts in order to create art. To emphasise this, Louisa plays with shadow and light, the forms becoming frozen through repetitive practice and the final work becomes an epitaph that represents the commotion of the human condition. 

NURIDAH ROSTAM

Nuridah’s creative process (artwork above right) is a form of self-healing art therapy which helps her to deal with thyroid cancer, creating a constant distraction to keep her positive energy going. Using traditional textiles processes like knitting and crochet, the processes of which she finds meditative, her practice evolved into experimental free-motion sewing to create small, delicate patterns.

The repetitive textures represent stories, human connections and themes like “becoming”, “uncertainty” and “fragility” due to their unedited and unexpected outcomes, the threads of which are seemingly endless.

PORRAMET JITTAKSA

Porramet is inspired by identity, gender and inequality which she expresses through her works. Recently, she has decided to incorporate various type of flowers into her works to represent her idea of sexuality, the fragility of the feminine as well as “a delicate mind”.

SHAZWANY AZIZ

The realms of the known and unknown in the everyday intrigue Shazwany. When creating, she considers herself to be both an observer and a participant, taking inspiration and metaphor from physical movements, which capture fleeting moments in daily life.

Themes such as time, space, location and unspoken ideas are expressed through her drawings, prints and paintings. Her drawings represent motion and movement – the physicality of drawing also starting and ending in movement. In this way Shazwany’s work can carry on without completion, a continual creative process, movement never ending. 

ZESTRO LEOW

Zestro’s masculine yet aesthetically soft ceramic sculptures chemically experiment with the science behind the medium, pushing the boundaries of the traditional processes. Using the rawness of clay, Zestro deconstructs and explores the functionality of ceramics, to the point at which it becomes obsolete, searching for balance in the chaos of the surfaces and forms.

Strongly influenced by the beliefs and aesthetic ideas of Eastern culture, he questions ‘once the religiosity is stripped off, are relics made of bricks and stones all we have left?’ As he questions his art practice in relation to the value of ceramic craft, he looks deeper into the influence of his inner world.

We’re hugely impressed by these seven young talents and are excited to see the exhibition at the Singapore fair! To help one lucky participant be crowned as the People’s Choice winner, don’t forget to vote for your favourite – not only will they hugely appreciate it, you’ll also be supporting the future career of an emerging artist.

Main Image:
Daisy Toh, Unblued, 2018, ceramics, each piece 8 x 8 x 20 cm, SG $1,700.

Featured art from first to last:

Daisy Toh, Unblued, 2018, ceramics, each piece 8 x 8 x 20 cm, SG$1,700.

Jakob Zuyten, A Growing Silence #2, 2018, photograph, 80 x 60 cm, SG$300.

Louisa Violet, Pandemonium, 2019, photography, 42 x 59.4 cm, SG$500.

Nuridah Rostam, Becoming, thread, 45 x 35 cm, SG$1,500.

Porramet Jittaksa, The garden where Venus and Mars can live together, 2019, photograph, 163cm, SG$3,000.

Shazwany Aziz, Lucid Series II, 2018, mixed media collage on paper, 15 x 15 cm, SG$99.

Zestro Leow, Time Paradox, 2018, ceramic, 15 x 15 x 29 cm, SG$900.