Hanart Square Until August 21

National Columbarian of Singapore, an enormous flat bed of 45 scaled paper Singaporean monuments, offers a quiet meditation on the lost landscape of a city’s history. It is a rebellion whispered in the far right enclave of the vast white crisp space of the newly opened Hanart Square gallery. The considerable creative feat of artist Michael Lee is almost lost as the white paper models vanish against the newly painted gallery walls.

This eerie and ethereal quality permeates all of Lee’s attempts to capture and communicate the position of the built edifice in the modern world. The large personified prints of Second-Hand City illustrate the worries and woes of forgotten buildings that possess individual stories beyond their utilitarian function. Superimposed subscripts layered over the sliced profiles of architectural designs act as explanatory conversations with each building as they relay their often innocuous and naive insecurities. The effect is as amusing as it is impactful. There is a comic effect to the voice of the structure, but there also is a conscious and dark undercurrent of wasteful victimisation and abuse.

It is in this dichotomy that Lee enforces his ethos. The mixture of architecture and social conscience through installation, sculpture, video and print is both strange and thoughtful. The video piece in the opposite enclave to National Columbarian of Singapore seems a somewhat garish and unnecessary distraction from the careful contemplation of an otherwise well-rounded and beautiful show.

Mary Agnew