Ang Song Nian - As They Grow Older and Wiser — Build DECK: Breaking New Ground in Southeast Asia's Arts Scene

About The Artist

Ang Song Nian (b. 1983, Singapore) works with materials and traces of human behaviours made visible within landscapes through photographic documentations and installation. Intrigued by the narration of thoughts and ideologies through visuals, he has always favoured a microscopic approach to concepts, a style which he always employ to open up details in his practice. His works questions the relationship of human interventions and invasions on landscapes.

Ang’s recent solo exhibition, Artificial Conditions: Something To Grow Into premiered at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in 2019. His other earlier solo exhibitions include Hanging Heavy On My Eyes, exhibited at both DECK (Singapore) and the Sunderland University Priestman Gallery in 2017, As They Grow Older And Wiser at the Bangkok University Gallery in 2016, as well as A Tree With Too Many Branches in 2015. Group exhibitions include Unearthed at the Singapore Art Museum and Engaging Perspectives at the Centre for Contemporary Art (Singapore).

He has exhibited in the Photo Espana Festival (Spain), Lianzhou International Photo Festival (China), Gallery Jinsun (Seoul, South Korea), Hanmi Gallery (London) and the Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs (Lleida, Spain).

His works has been awarded the Grand Prize in the 41st edition of the New Cosmos of Photography award organized by Canon Inc. in 2018. He was also the winner for Photography in the Noise Singapore 2012 and was selected for eCrea Award (Spain, 2010) as well as the Association of Photographers Awards (UK, 2010). In 2012, he was awarded the International Graduate Scholarship for his graduate studies at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

Ang currently lectures in the Photography department at the School of Art, Design and Media at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is also the founder of THEBOOKSHOW, a platform which started in 2014, that works towards providing opportunities for artists and photographers interested in the self-published photobook medium.

As They Grow Older And Wiser | 2017
By Ang Song Nian
Archival Photo Print | Edition 3/3 | 100 x 80cm | Framed

“Once, I was told that each of them will grow to reveal beautiful stories on their own as they grew older and wiser.
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Our never ending and voracious appetite for this need to control our environment has resulted in this interesting little pot of nature, which we have wilfully claimed ours – something to play around with.
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While after all the possibilities that have been created, we sometimes arrange them en masse and pass them off as what we will then like to perceive as natural all over again.
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As They Grow Older And Wiser leads us in to human-controlled landscapes and the limits of possibilities to the construction of an induced natural environment through potted plants..” - Ang Song Nian, 2017

Reflecting the commodification of nature – tailored and mass produced, As They Grow Older And Wiser is an ongoing series that looks at Mona’s voracious appetite for manipulating nature into crafted delusional landscaping. This series leads us into human-controlled landscapes and the limits of possibilities to the construction of an induced natural environment through potted plants.

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