Shopping and art come together at church-turned-gallery Sculpture Square in a $60,000 facelift that is giving the 139-year-old dame a new lease of life.
The building in Middle Road underwent the revamp to mark its 10th anniversary last month as a gallery. Sculpture Square is a non-profit independent arts organisation.
In addition to the existing gallery in what was the original chapel, a building next to it formerly used as office space now houses a small upper gallery, an art and design shop, a reference library and an artist studio.
The shop features a range of art and design pieces ranging from postcards costing as little as $1 each to paintings going for $8,000 each.
Visitors can also buy quirky pop-art items such as local artist Casey Chen’s Taxi Lamp or his cushions shaped like instant noodle packets.
Chen is also gallery director. He runs Sculpture Square with centre director Tenny Kwan, 45, who also manages the gallery space ARTrium at the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts.
Their appointments, and the subsequent renovations, come after arts company The Old Parliament House Ltd, which runs arts venue The Arts House, took over the management of the space in March last year.
Chen and Kwan hope to turn the conveniently located gallery into a destination where artists and the public can meet to create and collect art.
Chen says: ‘There is often such a stigma to local art. We often get comments like ‘Singapore art got standard, meh?’ But then, we find that people rarely get the chance to see local artworks. We aim to change that.’
The 38-year-old, who used to work for a design company, adds: ‘To understand the balance between art and business is key. We hope that the gallery will be a space where the public can come to learn more about making art and collecting art.’
In its last exhibition, which ended last Saturday, about 50 emerging and established artists showcased their works for Sculpture Square’s 10th anniversary show. It attracted about 1,400 visitors and 11 artworks were sold.
The next show will be a glass art group exhibition titled Palimpsest. The month-long event will start next Wednesday and will feature works from artists such as Chris Yap, Ng Siok Hoon and Richard Lim.
The idea for Sculpture Square’s new look began when its chairman, Dr Richard Helfer, approached The Old Parliament House Ltd two years ago to take over the management of the space.
Dr Helfer, a hospitality veteran who founded hotel group Raffles International, was one of the founding board members of Sculpture Square when National Arts Council chairman Edmund Cheng set up the gallery in the former Baba church 10 years ago.
He says: ‘We felt that there could be economies of scale in resources such as marketing and administration if small arts centres were centralised. Such savings could then be used for better or more interesting programming.’
So far, the team has managed to reduce its overall administrative costs by more than half.
But some things will remain the same. The gallery will continue to run six core exhibitions a year on about $100,000 from the National Arts Council.
Centre director Kwan says: ‘The focus will still be on 3-D artworks, with an emphasis on local artists.’
Artist Jeremy Hiah, 37, is all for the change.
He says: ‘There is now more space for the artworks. Also, the shop is a great idea as a platform to sell local artworks and help build rapport between local artists and the public.’
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