(N.B. This is a continuation of last week’s post, here.)

I should clarify something.  There are, quite plainly, a host of amazing merlion artworks out there that aren’t making it on this list.  This Japanese tourism commercial, these origami designs, this American tattoo – they’re all incredible.

And yet they don’t count.  They don’t form a part of the local discourse the same way a work by a Singaporean or a work created in Singapore does, however bad the actual quality of the art.

But as I was saying, there’s plenty more cheese…

6. Merlion Tower by James Martin (1996)

http://www.sentosa.com.sg/en/attractions/imbiah-lookout/the-merlion/

For most of us born in in 1980 or earlier, this merlion is ugly.  It’s an interloper, a pretender, stealing what little glory the original, platonic merlion had and blowing it up into a 37-metre tall, glass-reinforced-concrete, laser-eye-shooting monument to hubris on Imbiah Lookout.  It’s bad enough from a distance (those teeth! Those tacky lights!), worse close up (the surface isn’t smooth; it looks like an amateur papier mache project), and horrific inside (there are multimedia videos narrated by the ghost of a Portuguese sailor, claiming that the merlion appeared out of the ocean before little Malay kids promising to be the guardian of the island, which of course completely supplants actual Malay legends, way to be culturally sensitive, douchebags).

However, it’s revealing to examine the website of the Australian sculptor who designed this eyesore.  He specialises in portrait busts: in fact, his only other public commission is a heroic monument depicting Ozzie soldiers who died in the Vietnam War.  Given the rough-hewn yet realist nature of his other pieces, you can see what he was trying to achieve with the Merlion, making it slightly more realistic with its canines and its tousled mane while amping up the stylisation of the scales.  And he couldn’t just copy Nang Seng, you know – a 37-metre version of the old merlion would have been even uglier.

And anyway, you know what?  When it shoots lasers from its eyes at night, it’s so tacky it comes out on the other side and becomes kinda cool again. No excuse for the Gaudi-inspired walkway, though.

7. Mike by Lim Tzay Chuen (2005)

http://www.biotechnics.org/1limtzaychuen_mike.html

Those of you who follow Singapore contemporary art will groan at this one: Tzay Chuen’s famous for being the most conceptually eccentric of our practitioners, creating improbable, often unrealisable, and utterly invisible work.  He crafts proposals: may I fire a bullet into the ICA, may I invent an imaginary floor of this exhibition space, may I spray the interior of City Hall with expensive artificial pheromones.

Often, these proposals are rejected, and thus take life only as bureaucratic correspondence and critical essays.  No problemo!  His is an utterly Singaporean form of art: the gesture of challenging the system causes the system itself to generate the masterpiece.

Anyhow, Tzay was picked to represent us in the Venice Biennale: his proposal was to ship the entire megaton mass of the merlion statue over to Venice.  (Similar things have been done before: the statue was shifted from the mouth of the Singapore River to its present location in 2002).  The work didn’t go through, and visitors to the pavilion were greeted instead with blown-up prints of the statue’s behind, a volume of documentation of the project, and volunteers bearing free bottles of Tiger beer.  The crazy thing is, most tourists ended up thinking the actual merlion was very beautiful.

(I’d thoroughly recommend checking out the documentation at the National Library.  It contains great essays by Alfian Sa’at and Peter Schoppert – the latter of whom has posted his insightful precis here.)

8. Lyo and Merly by Cubix International, 2009

http://www.singapore2010.sg/public/sg2010/en/en_news/en_media_releases/en_20091121_mascot_debut.html

You’ll all remember these triumphs of design from the Youth Olympic Games last year – nor do I use that term with complete cynicism, given that all the plush toys of these mascots sold out within the first week of the games.  Certainly, they’re veritable Botticellis compared to our ambassador to the Shanghai World Expo, Little Durian Star.

What fascinates me about these two is how gendered they are: according to their Wikipedia page, Lyo is a super-butch boi who plays basketball, jams on the guitar and guzzles chilli crab; while Merly is a girly-girl who loves singing, swimming and returning seashells to the sea.  And yet Merly, the merlion cub, has a mane – making her not just biologically male, but also quite hormonally precocious.

So is Merly is a teenage FTM transgender mascot?  If so, represent!  It’d certainly explain their odd wrestling photos together.

9. Siah Lah! I Love Merlion by Ming and 1819 Supermovement (2007)

http://1819supermovement.com/collabs/ms_contactsheet.htm

I’ve loved the work of Ming (or Caleb Ming, as he now calls himself) since I met him at an old edition of Rojak – he was doing a series called Singapore Uniquely, taking gorgeous photos of average folks in Singapore against iconic backdrops: a madrasah girl in Marine Parade, a tourist in Little India, a chandelier sales uncle in Balestier, a breakdancer in the Esplanade tunnel.

For some reason, all the links to that period of his practice are dead – I can’t find his M1 Fringe Festival 2007 portrait shots, or his Objectifs Films publicity images.  Siah Lah! I Love Merlion remains as one of the last surviving examples of this style of his.  He’d joined forces with short-lived patriotic arts and design platform 1819 Supermovement, who’re responsible for a fair number of cheesy merlion stickers and posters themselves.

He went to Japan to take these shots, conning innocent citizens and gaijin to pose for photos with stickers declaring love for the merlion.  And sure, maybe they knew nothing about Singapore, maybe they had no idea what a “マーライオン” even looked like.  But the project begs the question: if they dare to say they love the merlion – why can’t we?

[There is no 10th work, as the artist has asked for it to be removed on the grounds that he doesn't like its quality.]

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But wait!  How about some honourable mentions?

一. Merlion by Mr Brainwash (2010)

Created from rubber tyres by the French street artist for the F1 races in Singapore.  Image from Daniel Ueda.

二. Diverse Harmony by Veasna Tith and Vichaya Mukdamanee (2010)

Presented at the Arts House by a young Cambodian and Thai artist (respectively), sponsored by SIF. Image from Kelvin Lim, suggested by commenter Elizabeth Koh.  More images here, information here.

三. Singapore Theatre Festival Posters by Various (2006, 2009)

These were commissioned by W!ld Rice, but I don’t know who designed them.

四. Forgotten Merlion by Ghazi Alqudcy (2007)

Forgotten Merlion

Not strictly about the merlion but I love it!

五. Lightning Strike by God (2009)

Oh, come on.  It’s interventionist art!  Do you really want to argue semantics with the Omnipotent?  Art by Teo Yi Chie, image via Asia One, video footage via Wayang Party, jokes via us, the Singapore population.