Date & Time
Exhibition period: Mon 23 Nov 2020 – Mon 22 Nov 2021
Time: Exhibition goes live at 4:00pm on Mon 23 Nov 2020
Location
Admission
Free
Type
ExhibitionThis online exhibition showcases works produced by the participants of Baby Tropical Lab (BTL), a collaborative effort by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and LASALLE College of the Arts to provide an immersive art learning experience for junior college students from the Art Elective Programme (AEP).
BTL is adapted from Tropical Lab — an annual workshop led by Cultural Medallion artist Milenko Prvacki that brings together postgraduate students from some of the world’s leading art institutions to LASALLE for a two-week period of intensive artistic experimentation and research.
Over the course of BTL, student participants are faced with the prospect of self-directed artistic experimentation and research, and challenged to create art beyond the classroom and their comfort zones. Their artistic practices are enriched and refined through critical discourse and the exchange of perspectives, made possible by the promise of collaborative learning alongside like-minded peers, established art practitioners and experienced industry professionals.
This seventh edition of BTL is the first to take place entirely online. While the uncertainties surrounding the pandemic have contributed to the shift in format, the workshop is also drawn to the notion of uncovering new ways of seeing, thinking, feeling and creating amidst a global crisis.
This year, rather than congregating physically as a fraternity, the AEP student-artist community will check in and out of shared virtual spaces to attend mini workshops, participate in planned and self-initiated dialogue, all the while developing works of art ‘behind the scenes.’
About this year's theme: In Spite Of
In the maelstrom of COVID-19, arts activities all over the world have come to a standstill. Arts practitioners are facing interruptions, forced to virtualise and even succumb to losses. The arts are on hold, in absentia, on a wait list.
Nevertheless, even as change takes place in environments, atmospheres, time, social lives, methodologies and working media, artists continue to consume, digest, deliver and revel in their creative practice. They are fueled by imagination, dreams and ideas as their main creative activity.
The student-artists of the Art Elective Programme have certainly not paused in creating work these past months. In this vein, Baby Tropical Lab (BTL) 2020 draws inspiration from LASALLE’s Image and Sound In Spite Of… in posing this question to its participants: how and why does one exercise a creative voice in a time of social distancing, disorientation and inner transformation?
BTL does not envision artworks in a gallery or on stage as conventionally understood. It proposes a space of sharing and connection, filled with heartfelt image, sound, movement and text, in spite of…