This week, don’t miss out on ArtScience Museum’s upcoming blockbuster exhibition Virtual Realms: Videogames Transformed, where they reimagine video games as a 21st century artform, with six interactive large-scale installations designed by some of the gaming world’s top names.
Over at Cuturi Gallery, check out emerging artists Aisha Rosli and Xu Yang’s dual exhibition on how each artist reposition the female body away from the male gaze in order to touch on contemporary issues faced in society today.
Finally, The Projector puts on Pink Screen, its annual LGBTQ film festival in conjunction with the upcoming Pink Dot rally.
The annual Pink Dot rally is a little over a week away, and key among its lead-up to the event is Pink Screen – the LGBTQ film festival curated by The Projector and presented by NBCUniversal’s Out programme. This year, there are a total of nine films available, ranging from high-profile works like Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (pictured) to the tender coming-of-age drama House of Hummingbird. Like many festivals, it’s a mix of in-person as well as virtual screenings (you can rent them on The Projector’s streaming service, Projector Plus), which means you can already start enjoying the festival from the comfort of your home. Check out the full line-up here.
On now till July 3
If you’re one of those who still think of video games as the purview of geeks, you might want to change that ossified mindset – the gaming industry is a massive international juggernaut that was one of the few industries that positively thrived during the pandemic and shows no signs of stopping. Fashion houses have been trying to gain a foothold into the gaming industry in recent years (because it’s such a cash cow) and now, the ArtScience Museum’s latest blockbuster exhibition, Virtual Realms: Videogames Transformed, seeks to re-imagine videogames as a 21st-century art form.
Curated and organised by London’s Barbican Centre in co-production with ArtScience Museum and Melbourne Museum, this highly interactive exhibition showcases large-scale immersive installations by six of the world’s leading videogame developers – names include Kojima Productions (makers of the hit game Death Stranding), Enhance (Tetsuya Mizuguchi and team behind Rez Infinite and Tetris Effect), thatgamecompany (authors of the meditative games Sky: Children of the Light and Journey), Tequila Works (the studio that made Deadlight and RiME), Media Molecule (creators of LittleBigPlanet and Dreams) and David O’Reilly (artist and creator of the games Everything and Mountain).
Visitors can expect stunning visual and tactile effects – for example, the first installation in the series looks at synesthesia – a neurological phenomenon in which the boundaries between the senses are blurred and where sounds can be ‘seen’ and visuals can be ‘heard’ or ‘felt’.
P.S. Rhizomatiks, the media designer behind this installation, has previously created the world’s first live-streamed 360º virtual reality performance for the likes of Bjork. Check out the full line-up here.
On now till January 9
As highlighted in our January 2021 issue, Cuturi Gallery has quickly made a name for itself in the Singapore art scene with its roster of young, emerging artists. Their latest exhibition, Reframing the Looking-Glass, features two such names – Aisha Rosli, 24, from Singapore and Xu Yang, 25, from China. The two artists reposition the female body away from the male gaze in order to touch on contemporary issues faced in society today: for example, Aisha Rosli‘s popular figurative paintings (pictured) are each a projection of the artist’s mindscapes onto canvas through the use of confined spaces and anxiety-ridden bodies.
Chinese artist Xu Yang‘s candy-coloured, 18th-century Roccoco painting-inspired fantasy, on the other hand, are a response to her personal history of growing up in China, where self-expression has always been heavily controlled and monitored. She migrated to England to study arts and there, the artist found solace in the London drag community which encouraged and celebrated self-expression. Freedom of expression takes the form of constructed identities, pink unicorns and lavish dresses in Xu Yang’s paintings as a way to reposition women’s bodies away from the male gaze and to challenge and rattle the social order.
On now till June 3 at 61 Aliwal Street