Dear friends of Art Outreach,
As we near the end of 2022, we reflect on the many ways in which the year has grown our community of beneficiaries, patrons, and art-lovers. We are grateful for your unwavering support that has enabled us to continue our education and community programmes, and ramp-up our efforts in bridging connections within the art ecosystem.
The ARTLink Community Programme expands to serve the seniors
This year, we had the privilege of presenting our first-ever ArtLink programme for seniors, engaging the lovely folks at HOPE Centre with two activities that explored facets of screen-printing and block-printing. While we have run our artist-led ArtLink workshops across 9 welfare homes in Singapore for many years, 2022 marks a key milestone in the programme as we partnered with HOPE Centre in their seniors drop-in programme. Organised as a way to prevent senior isolation, the HOPE Centre programme provides seniors with the opportunity to socialise with their peers. Arts and crafts are among a suite of activates that are offered to the elderly participants.
It was a pleasure for us to have the chance to engage a different audience. While language barriers proved a little challenging, the fun and engagement put everyone at ease. Many of the seniors were familiar with block-printing, and they welcomed the opportunity to try their hand at screen and block-printing. A big thank you goes to the people at Hope Centre, and the new senior friends we made! We had such a good time running the workshops for you.
Unlike the first two years of the pandemic, we are grateful to have been able to serve over 12,000 students with the resumption of some of our Assembly Programmes in schools and our ArtLink Community Programme in children’s welfare homes.
HEARTH flourishes in its third year and introduces HEARTHside Chats
We hosted our 4th edition of HEARTH this year and we were pleased to be able to mount 10 art showcases, support 29 art practitioners and welcome over 2,300 visitors. We introduced micro-grants for the first time that we awarded to successful HEARTH applicants, and many expressed appreciation at being able to defray the expenses for art materials and the installation of shows at HEARTH.
It has also been so rewarding for us to grow HEARTH beyond an art space offering, into a flagship presentation that supports practitioners with professional development resources. We presented our inaugural HEARTHside Chats with Cultural Medallion recipient Milenko Prvački and Art Outreach Chair Mae Anderson, that offered advice on how to sustain a fulfilling career in the arts. The 90-minute discussion proved very interesting as many questions were fielded with great candour by Milenko and Mae.
Some of the questions include: “How do you sustain your creative process as an artist over long periods?”, “How do you find and nurture your audience, price your work, and communicate with agents and collectors?” and “How do you communicate the ideas behind your work in a way that is true to you and compelling to the market?”.
If you missed the chance to attend the session, you can access a full recording of the conversation on our YouTube channel.
Art Encounters: Bye and Buy!
We bid a heartfelt and fond farewell to Art Encounters, our 3-year programme with the Singapore Tourism Board that features 3 repurposed shipping containers that travelled all across the island as mobile galleries and an artist studio. The programme draws to an end with a 10th and final edition titled Synapse Intarsia. Celebrating the community of artists who have played an integral role in making the initiative so memorable, we have released an exclusive selection of artworks from past editions on our webstore, that you can browse and buy.
Your purchases will go directly to supporting the artists that we featured, with a small portion of the proceeds benefitting Art Outreach. Please celebrate and support our community of artists and the art programmes we run through your generous shopping!
Something wonderful this way comes!
We adapted the line from Macbeth to express our excitement over our new space. We can’t wait to move into larger premises that will better support a slew of exciting new programmes that we have planned!
The countless memories from our 12-year residence at 47 Malan Road will forever be etched in our hearts, and we look forward to making new and meaningful memories with all of you in our new space. Along with the grand reveal of the location of our new home, look out for the announcement of the winners of our 6th IMPART Art Prize winners at the start of next year.
A Gift of Art
As you plan your festive celebrations and gifting, please consider presenting the gift of art in support for local practitioners, and for public programmes that offer access and education to contemporary art.
Art Outreach is an IPC (Institute of Public Character); Singapore tax payers will enjoy 250% tax benefit on your donations. If you’d like to buy a gift of art in someone’s name, we would be happy to send a specially designed e-certificate to the recipient with your message and a short write-up of what your kind donation supports. This service starts at a minimum of a SGD 20 donation. Thank you.
We wish you all a joyous holiday season and here’s to a very happy 2023 ahead!
The Art Outreach Team
Colin, Eve, Dina, and Ruth
& Our Terrific Interns
Ann, Emma, and Zee
Acknowledgment
HEARTH is made possible with the support of the Sands Cares Accelerator, a three-year non-profit capacity-building programme by Las Vegas Sands Corp.
Image Credits
ArtLink Community Programme (Seniors), HOPE Centre (Singapore), 2022. ArtLink Community Programme, TASEK Jurong, 2022. Photography by Colin Wan. Courtesy of Art Outreach Singapore.
Nathan Tan, Jasmine See Yu Ting, Isabelle Lim Rui Xin and JX Soo, Blue Imprint: FEEDfragileBACK, HEARTH by Art Outreach, 2022. Installation view, Finbarr Fallon and Samantha Chia, UNIT, HEARTH by Art Outreach, 2022. Installation view, Anuska Sarkar, Arrvinraj Balasubramaniam, Nur Khairunnisa Binte Aziz, Thanchanog Ho Mai Chin, and Soon Xiao Qi, Distracting Distracted Distraction, HEARTH by Art Outreach, 2022. HEARTHside Chats: In Conversation with Cultural Medallion Recipient Milenko Prvački, The Arts House, Gallery 1, 2022. Photography by Colin Wan. Courtesy of Art Outreach Singapore.
Installation view, Bridget Tay and Nazrin Ramlee, Synapse Intarsia, Art Encounters by Art Outreach, 2022. Photography by Colin Wan. Courtesy of Art Outreach Singapore.
Detailed view, Ashley Yeo. Seraph, 2022, Art Encounters: Till the Last Blossom, 2022. Photograph by Colin Wan. Courtesy of Art Outreach Singapore.