Material Moves
16th August – 5th October 2025
STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery
41 Robertson Quay
Singapore 238236
STPI’s upcoming exhibition, “Material Moves”, brings together four of the nation’s most celebrated artists to mark a milestone year with a bold departure from the familiar.
This August, as Singapore commemorates its 60th year of independence, STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery will present Material Moves, a group exhibition featuring four titans of the nation’s modern art scene. The show, running from 16 August through 5 October 2025, gathers new and rarely seen works by Han Sai Por, Goh Beng Kwan, Ong Kim Seng and the late Chua Ek Kay — each a Cultural Medallion recipient whose artistic legacy has helped shape the country’s creative identity.
132.5 cm, Variation 4 of 9. © Ong Kim Seng / STPI. Photo courtesy of the artist and STPI –
Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore.
Curated by Adele Tan, Senior Curator at the National Gallery Singapore, the exhibition brings together 53 works on paper, all of which signal a marked departure from the artists’ more canonical practices — respectively rooted in sculpture, collage, watercolour and ink.
Now well into their eighties, Han, Goh and Ong returned to STPI in 2024 for residencies that prompted unexpected turns in their practices. For Han, a sculptor long associated with weighty stone forms and organic textures, the shift came in the form of hand-moulded paper, collagraphy and intaglio relief — techniques she used to evoke the lush, native flora of her homeland in bursts of experimental colour.
Goh, known for his expressive collage works, embraces abstraction with a newfound intensity: vivid colours, swirling textures and psychedelic flocked surfaces mark a dramatic evolution, echoing a sense of inner movement. Ong, by contrast, looks outward — painting on mulberry bark paper to recreate disappearing scenes of Singapore’s old quarters, steeped in nostalgia and bathed in light.
Chua Ek Kay, who passed away in 2008, is represented through a selection of prints from his 2003 and 2007 residencies at STPI. These works, among the final ones he completed, trace his transition from traditional ink to lithography and woodcut — and will be exhibited alongside two rare 1990 paintings on loan from the National Collection.
57.5 x 1.5 cm, Variation 1 of 6. © Han Sai Por / STPI. Photo courtesy of the artist and STPI –
Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore.
At its core, Material Moves is a study in transformation — not just of materials, but of mindset. “By revisiting the act of printing and papermaking, these artists are stepping into unfamiliar territory that has the potential to either feel like a point of experimental liberation or an episode of crushing anxiety,” said Tan. “Yet this motion of returning to the blank page has yielded something truly extraordinary for each artist, allowing us to witness something raw, unexpected and uniquely interesting.”
More than a commemorative gesture, the exhibition underscores STPI’s role as an incubator for contemporary printmaking and artistic reinvention. It is also a rare opportunity to witness four of Singapore’s foundational voices in conversation — not with the past, but with possibility.
Material Moves open on the 16th of August until the 5th of October 2025 at STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery
©2025 STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery
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