Groundworks

Built on the belief that artistic practices benefit deeply from iterative process and sustained feedback, Groundworks introduced mentorship, studio visits, and technical feedback to strengthen each artist’s ability to develop ambitious digital works and articulate their practices effectively. The programme offered each artist an honorarium of SGD 2,000, and an additional production budget of up to SGD 1,000. Participating artists were selected via a public open call, and they were: Roger Ng Wei Lun, Meg Severino, Tristan Lim, rushamc, Jo Ho.

Throughout the programme, the artists received feedback and guidance from mentors Debbie Ding, Julia Kaganskiy, Doreen Ríos, ARTFACTORY, and the Groundworks curatorial team. Artists were invited to approach the showcase with flexibility, placing the emphasis on experimentation and development rather than a singular outcome.

The programme culminated in a public showcase, bringing together new works by all five participating artists. Developed over two months of continuous experimentation, feedback, and iteration, the works address central preoccupations for each artist, as first articulations of a new direction, or extensions of ongoing lines of inquiry.

Roger Ng Wei Lun presents a speculative prototype, VIRGIN 001, developed by fictional company CHILLI (Cloud Halt & Intervention for Localised Low-precipitation Initiatives), a Singapore-based startup offering climate control as a service. Rooted in the chilli bawang, a ritual to ward off rain and practiced in countries such as Singapore and Indonesia, Ng devises a kinetic sculpture constructed from a linear motion system, 3D-printed designs and custom electronics. The device is activated by absorbing ‘heat’ from a chilli, orienting its kinetic components skyward, casting energy to dispel oncoming rain clouds. Framed through the visual language of startup culture, the work places indigenous practice in direct confrontation with the hypertechnologies of weather modification and geoengineering, and the politics of atmospheric sovereignty. 

In Bawat Tingin, Meg Severino questions the overlap between devotional systems and surveillance infrastructure. The sculptural installation presents three relic silhouettes in varying stages of deterioration, referencing devotional objects altered through repeated touch and worship. Each figure is embedded with a miniature camera and TFT screen displaying live and simulated video feed, as Severino traces the shared grammar of watching and being watched. In a lineage of artworks fusing sacred iconography with the cold logic of technology, the all-seeing eye of devotional imagery finds its secular heir in the surveillance camera. Here, the structures of worship and behavioural regulation do not oppose one another but quietly converge, suggesting that the machinery of control wears a devotional face. 

What happens when video game artefacts enter our material world? Tristan Lim builds on fantasy and video game lore to construct Vessel 01 (Wailing Nulls) and Vessel 02 (Transient Ring-Bearer). In Vessel 01, Lim takes the orb, a common object in video games carrying the power of foresight and prediction, and imagines it materialised. An aluminum frame, referencing Southeast Asian lintels and early 2000s UI aesthetics, houses bas-reliefs depicting familiar Singaporean scenes: HDB blocks, hawker centres, everyday life, all distorted and pulled toward the centre like an unfolding prophecy. In Vessel 02, Lim turns to the ring, a ubiquitous symbol across fantasy and video games of power. The ring is transformed into interconnected aluminum fragments embedded with silicone, tracing the silhouette of a humanoid figure caught mid-stride, stepping forward, carrying the weight of memory and purpose into the unknown. 

rushamc’s Reverberant Bodies investigates the aural architecture of endangered heritage sites in Singapore, originating with the Golden Mile Complex. Rooted in rushamc’s 29-year relationship with the complex, the work archives the intangible “reverb” of vanishing spaces, reconstructing their acoustic textures through original composition and site-specific field recordings. Through binaural headphones, visitors encounter the distinct sonic signatures of the Golden Mile Tower spiral staircase, and the fifth floor of the Golden Cinema (formerly The Projector, and now Filmhouse, where the artist works). Motion tracking modulates the soundscape in response to visitor movement, allowing audiences to physically navigate these disappearing spaces through sound. Periodically, the individual listening experience gives way to a collective one, as the gallery transforms into a shared memory chamber, enveloped in the acoustic residue of spaces on the verge of erasure. 

Jo Ho’s Body Doubles is a series of object-sketches that take the smartphone as their point of origin, referring to its shape, scale, and the behaviours it prompts and records. Assembled from latex, cast resin, acrylic, and repurposed phone accessories, the objects are scattered across the room, suspended, tucked into corners, mounted mid-gesture, as though left behind abruptly, still running while their users have gone. Through their layered surfaces, ghostly traces of scrolling, tapping, and swiping play on loop, gestures of digital communication rendered visible but illegible. What remains are placeholders for absent bodies, stand-ins for users who have disappeared, leaving behind a body double in the algorithmic portrait the device builds of us.

Groundworks is the culmination of sustained experimentation, mentorship and iterative development, built on the belief that ambitious artistic practices require time, feedback, and the room to take risks. What emerges is not a definitive statement but a series of openings. 

This programme is supported by the National Arts Council’s Arts x Tech Lab initiative. The Lab nurtures Singapore’s arts x tech community, ultimately driving new artistic endeavours and bridging arts and technology conversations to develop Singapore’s vibrant arts scene.