Jim Amberson

Singapore

Originally from the US, Jim Amberson moved to Singapore in 1998 and has been actively collecting Southeast Asian contemporary art for more than 15 years. His interest in the region extended to him acquiring a Masters of Arts in Southeast Asian studies from the National University of Singapore and publications that include Deep S.E.A.: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia and The Little Red Dot: Becoming A Red Hot Home for Art.

"I purchase works specifically to create a dialogue with other pieces in my collection."

Jim Amberson

More insights

from Jim Amberson

What's exciting about contemporary art

00:00 / 02:33

Creating dialogues across the collection

00:00 / 00:59

Advice for young collectors

00:00 / 03:09

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About the Artists

Moffat Takadiwa

Moffat Takadiwa is a Zimbabwean artist born in 1983 in Karoi. He is currently based in Harare and graduated from Harare Polytechnic College, Zimbabwe with a Bachelor (Honors) in Fine Arts in 2008.

Takadiwa creates large-scale sculptural pieces out of discarded materials such as computer parts, toothbrushes and even toothpaste tubes. His choice of material highlights issues around consumerism, inequality, post-colonialism and the environment.

As an artist from the post-independence generation in Zimbabwe, Takadiwa has exhibited his works both locally in Zimbabwe institutions as well as internationally. Some of his exhibitions include thread (2019) at the Long Beach Museum of Art in the United States, The Extreme Present (2019) at the Gagosian in New York, Ex Africa–storie e identità diun’arte universal (2019) at the Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna, Italy, and a solo exhibition Say Hello to English (2017) at the Tyburn Gallery in London.

Photo via Omenka Online

Maria Taniguchi

Maria Taniguchi is a Filipino artist born in 1981 in Dumaguete City. She graduated from the University of the Philippines with a Bachelor in Fine Arts as well as from Goldsmiths in London with a Masters in Fine Arts in 2009, and is currently based in Manila.

Taniguchi works with a large range of media, including painting, sculpture, pottery, video and writing. Her work focuses on composing, constructing and framing with reference to the craftsmanship and history of the Philippines.

Her most prominent ongoing series of brick paintings take form in large canvases of different sizes, all with a structural grid format. This meticulous and process-driven body of work aims to explore the systems and structures of making art.

Her most recent exhibitions include Who Writes? (2019) at Galería OMR in Mexico, Floating World (2020) at Galerie Perrotin in Hong Kong, Collectors Plus (2020) at Silverlens Gallery in Manila, and her second solo exhibition at Carlier | Gebauer in Berlin (2019).

Photo by ArtNet

Sopheap Pich

Sopheap Pich is a Cambodian artist born in 1971 in Battambang. During the Khmer Rouge regime, he left with his family to Thailand for refuge before immigrating to the United States. He graduated from University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a Bachelors in Fine Arts in 1995 and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a Masters in Fine Arts in 1999.

His sculptures are mainly made of local Cambodian materials such as bamboo, rattan, burlap and earth pigments that are inspired by bodily organs, vegetal forms and abstract geometric structures. They focus on the themes of time, memory and the body.

In 2013, Pich had his highly acclaimed solo exhibition Cambodian Rattan: The Sculptures of Sopheap at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, marking it as the first solo exhibition given to a Southeast Asian contemporary artist for the museum. His recent exhibitions include the 2017 Venice Biennale, Minimalism: Space. Light. Object. (2018) at National Gallery Singapore, Expanses (2018) at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in New York and RECLAIM (2019) at Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo.

Photo via Crow Collection of Asian Art