This week, don’t miss out on the student-organised RIF – Rock and Indie Festival taking place at Lasalle College of the Arts. We promise it’ll be a great place to check out both established and promising newcomers that will likely only get bigger in future.
Over at Cuturi Gallery on Aliwal Street, their latest exhibition focuses on spotlighting an expanded reading of the female gaze in art, showcasing works by artists Marla Bendini and Victoria Cantons. Lastly, film buffs should check out Fatal & Fallen, a new festival at the Asian Film Archive that dissects the trope of exploited women in East Asian films.
The male gaze has long dominated many arenas, including the fine arts. Cuturi Gallery‘s latest exhibition, You Can Tell Me, aims to subvert and move the needle forward in the conversation around gender through deeply personal paintings by two very different artists: Singapore artist Marla Bendini and British artist Victoria Cantons.
Despite their marked differences in cultures, ages and settings, Marla and Victoria, who both identity as transgender, symbiotically engage with the historicity of the female gaze in painting. Marla, for example, is known to incorporate her struggles with gender and body dysmorphia through her poignant works (pictured here: Pillowtalk _ It Is Safe To Look Within, oil on linen, 190 x 170cm, 2021).
More details here.
September 18 to October 3 at Cuturi Gallery, 61 Aliwal Street
Fatal & Fallen is a new programme at the Asian Film Archive attempting to put a new reading on a specific trope in films: deadly, fallen, and delinquent woman as pictured in East Asian films in the ’70s and ’80s.
Often overlooked, these examples of cinema feature the underworld of prisons, brothels, and even homes as sites of crime, sexual desire, and revenge. Typically perverse and extreme, the films reproduce patriarchal and misogynistic representations of women as deranged, delinquent, and racy.
Expanding further on the topic, curators Jade Barget and Elizabeth Gabrielle Li will also touch on the circumstances of the region during that time period – cue post-war depression, struggling dictatorship, foreign military rule, the Cold War, and rapid industrialisation – as a means of lending an informed and new perspectives on the problematic representation of women in these films.
Standouts include Woman of Fire (1971), which stars veteran Korean actress Youn Yuh-Jun – you might be more familiar with her recent work in family drama film Minari, which netted her the Best Supporting Actress award at the Oscars earlier this year.
Read more about the programme and get your tickets here.
On now till October 3 at Oldham Theatre, 1 Canning Rise
Live music gigs have been sorely missed so we’re eager to check out RIF – Rock and Indie Festival. It’s a relatively young music festival led by Lasalle College of the Arts students and seek to promote the local music scene through a showcase of original and independent music by emerging acts as well as the school’s alumni and current students.
Now in its fifth year, the festival takes place this weekend where you can catch a well-curated lineup of established names like Caracal and Forests as well as up-and-comers such as chanteuse Kitty Purnazz (pictured), pop songstress Kotoji, crooner Houg and more.
Tickets are free but do register here (and check out the full lineup) before you head down.
September 17 to September 18 at Lasalle College of the Arts, 1 McNally Street