Marni + Martin

Back in March, I travelled miles away to Stockholm to surprise my friend, Marni. We arrived early in the morning and went knocking on her door. Surprise!! Her husband, Martin, during a quiet moment told me later on that, everyone else(the other girls) had always visited Stockholm over the years but I was the one she wanted to see.

I spent 10 days in cold, cold Stockholm. My first venture into Europe, it wasn't so much a culture shock, but more a temperature shock which I got used to over time. I had my first experience with snow. I didn't shoot as much as I would have liked to, cos my hands remained in my pockets to keep warm for most of the time, but I did still shoot a lot. I will get around to uploading the shots here eventually. I had just gotten round to these shots that I almost forgot about.

I wanted to shoot the two of them as I didn't get to shoot them prior to their wedding in 2013. These were shot behind Martin parents house. There is definitely something about the light in a cold country, it is so nicely difused compared to the harsh natural light of Singapore. It was overcast for most of the trip but the sun came out briefly, and I took advantage of it. More after the break. 

Ashley

I met Ashley just not too long ago at work, we've got her on our acting talent roster for our shows. It's always cool to get along with someone you work with that you end up being friends and hang out a lot more. 

Sometimes I run, sometimes I write...

It's safe to say, I've neglected this site. What's sadder though, is that it translates to neglecting art which in turn means I've neglected my soul. Which is only partly true. Well, ok, more than half true. We get so caught up in our responsibilities of our jobs, we neglect our truest passions. But still that couldn't be further from the truth. I am still able to create in my mind. Create with thoughts, words and executions. The learning and creating never stops.  I may not draw as much, save for an etsy order here and there. I may not shoot as much, this one the saddest truth of them all but it can still be justified... Maybe.

I have, however, started writing again. When I say I write, I write poetry. Those poetic sentences which when carried by a melody became songs I wrote for my old band. To anyone who's wondered about THAT band...

It ended because it became an obligation. The love for it was no longer there. Words no longer served as a vehicle carrying its message over a sea of sound. They were merely fillers to a cavity. They held no meaning for me, which would mean singing them would be lacklustre. And having a body of work you're not proud of just leaves you with this gnawing feeling that just eats away at you. I let it die. We let it die. The countless hours of work we put into recording that album. It still exists. Somewhere.

Then there was the thought of changing this name altogether. Hello embrace. I have to say though, mad life changes have happened in recent months. I felt I didn't want to be warm and fuzzy and love encompassing like a "hello embrace", I wanted to be crude and evaporatingly sexual(heh. I know right?), like my alter ego that existed in my mind. But after the dust of the madness of drinking every night and serial Tinder swiping and conversations with strangers, settled. I found myself back to where I started. Except it's not exactly a bad thing. It was a reminder of who I truly was at my core. That I was still this person who centers herself around love and lets love be her reason for being. So the name stays.

Lululemon mural project

It's been some time since my last post and I had been meaning to post this. Late last year, I was commissioned to do a mural for Lululemon to coincide with their opening of their flagship store. We had to pick one of the lines from their manifesto. It was a daunting challenge as I hadn't done anything of this scale before and it came during my final weeks of school, so it was a stressful time. 

After much delay and bad weather, I got it completed with the help of some friends and it was a nice way to end the year. The mural is along South Bridge Road at the start of Boat Quay. 

*The above photos by Michael Tay

Kindred. Where were you fest.

Last weekend, Where were you fest happened at Substation Guinness Theatre. The show saw 20 local bands from the 90s reuniting to play for one night or for some to get together to make music again. I, however came only to see Kindred play 'cos emo violence is forever.

Streets of Selegie

#streetsofselegie_helloembrace

Street series shot in the Selegie area and around it using the iPhone. 

Steel wool -ing you.

There's always something new you see on instagram that makes you feel inspired to try out. I came across Norrisam's feed and showed it to a friend and we did some research on it. Steel wool photography. Who'd have thought that that scrubby thing you use to clean your frying pans would be used for anything else other than cleaning? I had a chance meeting with two other guys I saw attempting the very same thing at a rooftop a few weeks ago and they told me what I needed to get…and so we did.

Last weekend. it poured and it really did dampen our spirits. We occupied ourselves with led lights but we really wanted to play with fire…and few hours later, we just went ahead with it. Not really a cool idea to be wearing shorts and your favorite trainers…

It was pretty scary at first…but I got the hang of it. We only did four runs before we heard an old drunken man moaning. We're gonna try again in two weeks.

Everybody Street

A few months back, I found myself in an artistic quandary. I felt the subjects of which my photos were mostly based on; of walls, of doors and empty streets, lacked life. No pun intended. I was beginning to think that they were lacklustre. And I knew there had to be more that I could do because it's not like I could keep shooting the people I knew everyday…

And then came this image on my instagram feed; someone I was following was saying that everyone should watch the documentary, Everybody Street. The image seemed interesting enough and I was compelled to click the link on profile. And I came to a trailer on Vimeo.


I was intrigued and liked it so much, I immediately paid for the video download. It was done so awesomely well and I realized it was done by the same lady who did Beautiful Losers which I had watched a few years back featuring some of my favorite artists.

The documentary was inspiring, to say the least. Street photography was something that I had always thought about doing but didn't have the balls to, let alone the mindset and had been procrastinating. But in comes the iPhone, and with how (glorious) I am at stealthy shots, I was reborn. Haha. My phone battery drains pretty quickly this way, but I carry two power banks with me for that reason.

I've restarted my flickr account and have been uploading my shots there.

It's not all street cred worthy(yet), but I hope to get there.

Library.

On the 10th floor of the National Library, there's a place called The Retreat. Just a little garden above the streets where it is quiet. Of my years coming to the library, I never knew. Til I was passing the time and ventured up the escalators. This wasn't shot from that floor, I shot this from the 8th where I spend a lot of time in the Arts & Humanities Reference Library, going through book after book in hopes for some inspiration for new projects. I wonder how often they update their catalogue, but I hope soon cos I am running out of books to peruse. 

Knuckles and notch.

I had the pleasure of meeting the people of Knuckles and Notch, a risograph printing company last week at their humble studio in Normanton Park. Risography isn't particularly a new printing process, it's been around since 1986, coming out of Japan. It has only in recent times, emerged in our little country through Knuckles and another company, Push Press which is based out of Aljunied.

For those unfamiliar with risography, here is my non-technical, layman description of it. It starts with a machine that's quite like a digital photocopier but designed for inexpensive high volume printing. The printed result is almost silkscreen print-like. With limited colors, what makes it stand out from normal xerox machines, is that it prints luminous colors like pink or bright orange, and even gold. You can see what I mean from the first image above or from my previous entry here.

I'll be working with them on some prints I want to get done, so stay tuned for updates.

New site.

It's finally up and running. The only hard part was to compile what I had lost and some, unfortunately had been lost. It's hard to determine what types of image storage would be reliable. They said CDs were reliable and now not all of them are. But I have what I have and I'll move on from this knowing that.

I had been longing to create a proper site for what seemed like forever. And now that I have time off, I got to it. The archives will grow and I hope some recognition will come along with it. Even if it may be small. But I did it. And now I can move on to other projects. Yay.

Overhaul

In the midst of doing a serious overhaul of this site, re-structuring and figuring out how best to showcase my works and archive all the work I've done the past fifteen years or so which is made up of a lot of photographs. So not a lot of updates for now, but here's a photo of Alleycat being a busybody while I was re-shooting my old works last week.

To stay updated, you could just follow me on my instagram.