The artistic director of the third Singapore Biennale, Matthew Ngui, has a lot of experience in the field of biennales, both as a participating artist and more recently as a curator. He was part of curatorial team for the Singapore Biennale in 2008, and has exhibited at the Sao Paulo, Venice and Gwangju biennales in 1996, 2001 and 2002 respectively. Ngui is one of four artists who represented Singapore at its first participation in the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 and he is also the first Singaporean artist to exhibit at Documenta in Kassel in 1997. Trained in sculpture, Ngui focuses on installation, video, performance, site-specific works and public art.
Ngui brings this background to the forthcoming Singapore Biennale, Open House. He says: "I would like the focus of the Biennale to be on Singapore and other countries as sites, homes and nations, where the role of art is to engage and re-present realities through its unique creative processes that often give new and fresh insights into the spaces we inhabit. Hence on site in Singapore we hope to engage artists with the public as participating and audiences starting from the very process of art making in both private and public spaces."
Ngui's curatorial team includes Russell Storer, Curator of Asian Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery and Trevor Smith, Inaugural Curator of Contemporary Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts.
Image: Matthew Ngui, Artistic Director, 3rd Singapore Biennale, 6 March - 8 May 2011
