SINGAPORE – An impromptu journey by ferry down the Malacca Strait has inspired an unlikely pair of artists to collaborate on an exhibition responding to the region’s distinctive tropical environment.

Unlikely because the “natural habitat” of the artists could not appear more different: Simryn Gill’s family home in Port Dickson opens up to a mangrove forest, while Charles Lim Yi Yong grew up on the coast of Singapore at Kampong Mata Ikan, where his grandmother picked seashells.

These experiences have influenced their art and respective presentations at the Venice Biennale.

Gill, 65, zoomed in on land-dwelling flora in Here Art Grows On Trees for the Australia Pavilion (2013), while Lim, 50 – a former Olympic sailor – tapped his lifelong fascination with the open sea for Sea State at the Singapore Pavilion (2015).

But the two have found their perspectives complementary rather than contradictory, having presented collaborative work in shows such as the Istanbul Biennial in 2022.

As the two inaugural fellows at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Gill and Lim are teaming up to present a work-in-progress show aptly titled The Sea Is A Field. It opens on Jan 12 at 37 Keppel Road, in a temporary space adjacent to SAM’s office building at Tanjong Pagar Distripark.

The video, image- and text-based works are a result of the expedition taken by the duo and curators Selene Yap and Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol in August 2023, from Port Dickson, through Indonesian ports along Dumai, Sekupang and Batam, all the way to HarbourFront in Singapore.

The exhibition unit, kept in its raw state and partially exposed to the elements, opens up physically and symbolically to the port on one side and the railway on the other.

Lim explains that the region’s unique relationship to the sea is partially due to the shallowness of the Sunda Shelf. He says: “When you are in Sumatra, sometimes in the middle of the sea, you will see somebody standing there as if he were in the field, because it’s so shallow.”

As they journey down the Malacca Strait, Ms Yap points out that the landscape also gradually shifts – mangrove swamps can transition into Brutalist-looking swiftlet housing before the horizon fills with the tall chimneys of oil refineries.

Lim, a frequent sailor in these waters, makes a more physiological observation. “When you fall in the water in this region, the temperature of the water is the same as your blood’s temperature. You can stay in the water indefinitely – as long as you can float, you’re not going to die.”

That is why, he says, many of the area’s indigenous people have a special relationship with water, an element that the average Singaporean might not feel much for.

“Blood Heat” is the keyword he has been toying with, and this project might well be one part of his next decades-long artwork after Sea State, ongoing since 2005.

“It’s basically saying that our sea is very different from the sea in, say, Brazil – even though they are also tropical.”

In this series, Lim is concerned with people’s everyday contact with water. “Once you can stay in the water for an indefinite period of time, your whole relationship with water is flipped.”

Book It/The Sea Is A Field
Where: Level 1, Block 37, Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 37 Keppel Road
When: Jan 12 to April 21, 10am to 7pm; open till 10pm during Singapore Art Week on Jan 19, 20, 26 and 27
Admission: Free
Info: str.sg/MddW