Adeline Kueh’s practice pivots on the interstitial spaces between private memory and public remembrance – embodied in the fragility of small, intimate objects. An abiding concern for her are the ways in which particular sewing techniques may hold significance for acts of storytelling, for narratives heard, told and retold as a bulwark against the attritions of personal and communal amnesia. The chief motif in Minute diamonds of moisture – a phrase from Thomas Hardy’s Tess d’Urbervilles, which the artist had read in her teenage years – is the fabric rosette, commonly found in homes across Southeast Asia. She recalls them from her youth in Sarawak, Malaysia; they were crafted from bits of scrap cloth, and used as adornments on tablecloths, runners, blankets, and even sold for extra income. “My mom became a seamstress after she left school early”, she notes, “to let her brothers go to school, and nothing went to waste in our home.”
Here, the rosette is incorporated into a site-sensitive installation with glass beads, and accented with marks that approximate the appearance of moisture and mildew. The latter is not merely a tongue-in-cheek response to the humid, tropical climate of Southeast Asia, and its depredations on the otherwise pristine environs of white cube spaces (including the present site), but also serves as a visual metaphor for the slow yet relentless decay of our mortal memories. Kueh observes that the work ultimately “speaks of excesses, resilience and the sheer impossibility of containment."
- Louis Ho, Curator, The Spectral Faith of Our Minor Flirtations,
11 November – 22 December 2023, FOST Gallery, Singapore
Here, the rosette is incorporated into a site-sensitive installation with glass beads, and accented with marks that approximate the appearance of moisture and mildew. The latter is not merely a tongue-in-cheek response to the humid, tropical climate of Southeast Asia, and its depredations on the otherwise pristine environs of white cube spaces (including the present site), but also serves as a visual metaphor for the slow yet relentless decay of our mortal memories. Kueh observes that the work ultimately “speaks of excesses, resilience and the sheer impossibility of containment."
- Louis Ho, Curator, The Spectral Faith of Our Minor Flirtations,
11 November – 22 December 2023, FOST Gallery, Singapore
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Installation view at FOST Gallery
Minute diamonds of moisture Swiss voile and organdy rosettes, beads, acrylic paint Dimensions variable 2023 |