What It Really Takes to Get Shortlisted for a Major Art Competition

SHORTLISTED! UOB PAINTING OF THE YEAR 2025

Girl on a swing - memory Leak

90 x 60 cm Mixed media on wood

I painted this from a childhood memory of my old house in Surabaya, I was about 6 years old. I painted this after my father passing away just weeks after he celebrated his 88th birthday earlier this year. It was a painting that is part of my larger series of sound painting, which are works done plein air and in studio on wood. I think almost every child growing up in Singapore and Indonesia can remember what it feels like to be on a swing. This is for all the children in our lives and still living in all of us to invest in keeping that spirit alive. We forget easily, and the world is a big pity and sad party without us being children.

Description:

This is a sound painting of a girl on a swing, based on my own childhood memory when I was young. The figure is undefined on purpose because over time we lose details of our childhood memories, and yet there are vivid memories of the feeling of being on a swing, a core memory that stays with all of us as young children.

Artist bio:
I am a Singaporean artist born in Indonesia. My practice spans drawing, painting, and plein-air work, shaped by a life of migration and cultural hybridity. Travel is central—not just as movement, but as a way of seeing. My work moves between observation and abstraction, exploring identity, place, and belonging. I often incorporate text and signage to extend the narrative. I’ve exhibited in Singapore, Tokyo, Paris, Jakarta, and Brisbane, and participated in residencies in Spain, Colombia, and Vietnam. I hold an MA Fine Arts from LASALLE and continue to teach there.

What I aim to do is to create a stunning composition with a heart. That means the work is personal, and yet it’s universal. It shows my technical skills as well as my story-driven composition, that can resonate universally. This is quite a hard feature to come up with, and the success rate is very low, in the meantime, I must keep making work that feel communicative and expressing my three key adjectives, Bold, Simple and Quirky. More on that later.