The Singapore Art Museum and Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) Foundation have announced the winners of the 2018 APB Signature Art Prize, reports ArtAsiaPacific. The triennial prize is comprises the Grand Prize, Juror’ Choice Awards and People’s Choice Award. Vietnamese artist Phan Thao-Nguyen was awarded the Grand Prize for her multimedia installation Tropical Siesta (2015–17). The two-channel video is accompanied by oil paintings on X-ray film and is ‘centered around writings by French Jesuit missionary and father of the romanized Vietnamese script, Alexandre de Rhodes, and the artist’s investigation into the blurring of fact and fiction’. She will receive a SG$60,000 (c. £33,000) cash prize. The Jurors’ Choice Awards went to two artists: Singaporean artist Shubigi Rao and Thai artist Thasnai Sethaseree will each receive SG$15,000 (c. £8,000) for their respective works Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book. Vol I: Written in the Margins (2014–16) and Untitled (Hua Lamphong) (2016). Indonesian artist Gede Mahendra Yasa’s work After Paradise Lost #1 (2014), a Batuan-style painting, won the highest number of public votes and was awarded the People’s Choice Award of SG$10,000 (c. £5,500).
The judging panel for the fourth edition of this triennial prize comprised chief curator of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, Mami Kataoka; Bose Krishnamachari, president of the Kochi Biennale Foundation; Joyce Toh, head of content and senior curator at Singapore Art Museum; director of the National Gallery of Australia, Gerard Vaughan; and artist Wong Hoy Cheong.
The APB Singapore Art Prize exhibition (which includes the works of all winners and finalists) is on view at the National Museum of Singapore through 2 September 2018.
3 July 2018
