It’s a week to the end of Singapore Biennale 2011 and I finally made my way down to the Old Kallang Airport, one of the event’s four venues, to check out the various works exhibited within its premises.

As I made my way around the old airport terminal, one of the series of artworks that caught my eye was that by Bulgarian artist, Nedko Solakov. Playing with the space and the elements present in the old airport’s control tower stairway, the artist, using a felt-tipped pen, scribbled tiny words and markings all around.

Old hooks left on walls told a story of what it could have been used for:

Windows and the scenes outside of it, presented an opportunity for often humourous comments:

And yet, they also reminded us of the curse of development:

Every element in the space, even the smallest of items, were explored, and this invited me, the viewer, to want to find every single marking that was made.

One of my favourites: it made me wonder whether the misspelling of Avant-Garde was a calculated mistake as well

The story behind the creation of the series, however, was to me even more intriguing than the artwork itself, for the following reasons:

1. The Artist, Nedko Solakov, has never stepped into Singapore.  In fact, the “real” artist (rather the person who did the actual writings and drawings) in this instance is Singaporean artist and filmmaker, Liao Jiekai.

It is said that Solakov, who fears flying, invited Liao to create his work for him. Liao spent a few days in Bulgaria with Solakov, came back to Singapore and worked on this work, incorporating both Solakoy’s style in the use of space, and the former’s understanding of Singapore.  The irony, of course, is that the artwork, titled “The Flying Method of an Artist with a Fear of Flying (or how to make a signature site-specific work from a long distance)”, would be held in an airport.

2. Overly hardworking exhibition cleaners, some time in March 2011, accidentally cleared some of the feathers and dust that were supposed to be part of this exhibition, and inadvertently altering the original artworks. What is left instead, are the scribblings, without a context of what should have been there.

Pardon the blurriness of the photo

To learn more about Nedko Solakov, visit his website here.

The Singapore Biennale 2011 ends on 15 May 2011. If you have yet to visit, go soon, before even the writings on the wall, get removed.

On a side note, Liao Jiekai’s award-winning movie, Red Dragonflies, is now showing at Illuma Filmgarde for a limited time only (special thanks to Yi-Sheng for the heads-up).