Art Garden

What can I say, Art Garden 2013 at Singapore Art Museum at 8Q (8Q is a separate building from the main SAM) totally exceeded my expectation. Maybe it's because it offers more than what I initially thought it does. Who can blame me when the picture posted at SAM website and pictures by two friends who had been there were all taken at the Fairy Tale Room. I thought the Fairy Tale Room (I don't know their real names so I'm just going to give them my own names) WAS Art Garden. You know, like a garden of arty fairy tales? So when I reached the place and saw that the Fairy Tale Room wasn't exactly big, I thought to myself, this is it?? Luckily I didn't verbalise it or I would have looked like a complete bimbo. In fact, there are other rooms over four floors.

Fairy tales with a local spin

The next room was the Whimsical Room, a black-and-white room interspersed with bits of red and blue. You could do some artwork with hot air balloons (I think, we didn't stop there at all) but the children went straight for the games inside. I think the room was a homage to games in the past and the children had fun tossing hoops, spinning a wheel, pulling a stretchable slinky, making paper birds fly and moving wooden cat puppets. My daughter's favourite had to be the chair which looked like its four legs had given way. She kept sitting on it, and asking me to sit on it, and saying, "Uh oh!"

Spinning the wheel with her friends 

I love the black-and-white artwork on the walls

I think I could have spent forever in the Whimsical Room, taking picture after picture but the heat stopped us. It was so hot in both the Fairy Tale room and Whimsical Room that it felt like being in a sauna. I thought the air-conditioning wasn't switched on but it was! So after a while, we escaped to the nursing room which was just beside the Whimsical Room. Aaah... what a respite from the hot and humid rooms. 

The room was much cooler and it was spacious! There were two sofas, a big toddler-friendly sink, two low tables and some low stools. There's a divider with an armchair for mothers who want to nurse privately. The guard told us that the children could eat there and so the little girl and her friend had some food there while the mothers chatted for a while. Men are not allowed inside though.

By then, the air-conditioning in the different rooms was working well and so it was bliss again. There was a room on the second floor that was screening movies but we skipped that and went to the third floor. There was the Dark Room but I totally forgot to take pictures there, or maybe the pictures are in my camera. I'm just going to describe it and you would have to use your imagination. 

The room is dark except for the many luminescent deer on the upper walls. There's also a big stag head with giant antlers. They are made of many, many strings that criss cross each other to form those pictures. I thought they were fine tubes that emit blue light, but hubby said that they are normal white strings that glow in the dark because of the special light that was shone onto them. Oh cool! Needless to say, I was mersmerised and so was the little girl. She wanted so badly to touch the deer but she couldn't because there was a barrier.

The last room that we went to was the Gothic Room. I didn't get good vibes from the room and I thought it was kind of scary. You could put on the 3-D spectacles to see the 3-D paintings, wallpaper, cartoon and sculptures but there were all morbid in nature. In what way? In scary dolls, animals with weird proportions, weird faces and melting-mouse cartoon kind of way. The children were not disturbed at all, maybe because they have not grown any fear for those. 

The room was after all about the fear of growing up or something like that. In fact, the little girl wanted to touch this huge stuffed half-elephant-half-man monstrosity in overalls that had fangs instead of tusks. I approached it with much apprehension, let her touch it for a second, then whisked her away. Even the music in the room was haunting. Or maybe I just cannot appreciate morbid art.

I was glad a wooden rocking giraffe caught her attention from the elephant monstrosity and she later went on to do some stamping with her little friend. After doing some stamping, she asked me to stamp too. The stamp is the kind that teachers use to stamp for parent's signature so it brought back old memories. Each stamp you make gives a loud sound. So when she passed it to me, I gladly stamped in quick succession. Hubby said I stamped like a true blue teacher. Hahahahahaha!!!!

The mini teacher stamping away 

There was another floor which we didn't go to. I heard that it has some static art display. Anyway it was almost dinner time and we were hungry. The little girl wanted to touch the elephant again and so I brought her to the kid-friendly one in the Fairy Tale room with a mahout seated on it. It was almost empty then, unlike earlier with children running around and pushing each other on the rainbow stairs till the little girl was scared to go onto it. Well, it was a public holiday, after all. Note to self: Go on a weekday.

A fun day with her little friends

I very much want to go back there again as I love the Whimsical Room. There is also an art station in every room for the little girl to doodle, colour or stamp away. Not only is the place free, but it's only a few MRT stations away from my house. It's just a 2-minute walk from the exit of Bras Basah MRT station. Before the exhibition ends on 1 September, I foresee us spending a few more (weekday) afternoons there.