Tamares Goh (TG): Some formative memories of yours in art were formed at Esplanade.

Lai Yu Tong (LYT): As a kid, I took part in Esplanade's children's art competition in 2003 and 2004. I remember being at the Concourse and drawing together with hundreds of other children, all of us sprawled across the floors. Later in life, I began visiting the exhibitions here religiously, especially during my army and art school days. I always loved the Esplanade Tunnel in particular. I found it to be a rather romantic space where you could watch people's lives happen briefly in front of you as they pass you by. In 2018, I remember seeing lan Woo's exhibition at the tunnel, Emotional Things, and feeling a way that I haven't felt from an exhibition before. Funnily enough, I just learnt that he was one of the judges of the children's art competition! I guess Esplanade holds a kind of magic for a lot of us, partly owing to its relatively long history in a country where spaces disappear or change quickly. The space holds a lot of memories and you can feel it.

TG: When I visited your studio last year, you already had a vision for a project at the Esplanade Tunnel; what was it about this specific location that first inspired the idea?
Also, notably, these works were created between 2023 and 2024, which leads me to wonder what was happening in your life then and how that period influenced your focus on the fleeting things you encountered.

LYT: As a mental exercise, I had been thinking about what work would present at the Esplanade Tunnel if one day I had the opportunity to do so. It is perhaps my favourite exhibition space in Singapore, but a difficult one for an artist to work on. I always felt that when the right work is being presented there, you could enter the tunnel and come out of it as a different person.

I took my time to develop this work over two or three years. It started sometime around when I began collecting stamps and frequenting an old philatelic shop that I liked very much at Peninsula Shopping Centre. I was also collecting scraps of archival matboard from the frame shop where I work part-time. I wanted to make a work incorporating both of these materials and a box of soft pastels I had just bought.

In the few years of making this work, I got engaged, got married, bought a house, renovated it, and moved houses. My studio was and still is in a home shared with my wife, so this series was made across two different studios, on the various tables that we had. The drawings are made with reference to images that I took on my phone, capturing things that / had encountered in person during this span of time.

TG: While you layer pastels, you use a kneadable eraser as your primary drawing tool rather than for erasing. I see a poetic irony happening, in using a tool meant for removal to create something lasting, perhaps echoing the theme of "passing through" the Esplanade Tunnel? Similarly, the soundtrack features "industrial hums" like fridges and air conditioners that we usually try to ignore; does this soundscape represent the background "static" of our lives, or is it meant to ground us in the mechanical reality of the world?

LYT: You're right that materially the drawings are very fleeting. The soft pastel that I use to make them is powdery and clings onto the paper precariously. I repeat a process of applying soft pastel powder onto the paper and making a negative drawing of the subject by erasing with a kneadable eraser. Each time I repeat this, a faint impression of the previous erasure is left behind like a lingering ghost that guides me as l attempt the drawing again. I must try several times because this technique of rubbing on soft pastel powder with my fingers and then drawing with a kneadable eraser is very imprecise. But I like it, as it forces the drawing to take a long time to appear on its own, as a sum of inaccurate moves and failures. It is almost like developing an image in a darkroom.

TG: Since the exhibition is meant to be a site of memory, what do you want people to take away from these collective exchanges?

LYT: With regard to the sound, the "static" that you mentioned is very appropriate, as it evokes a haziness and fuzziness that is present in the drawings too. I was initially drawn to the whirring sound from the air conditioner while sitting in the Esplanade Tunnel. I felt that it just needed to be tuned to a D chord, and then it'd be perfect. Then I decided that I wanted it to also feel like you're inside a fridge, a nice-sounding one. I guess there is something morbid about that, which invokes death. It does also draw attention to the mechanical reality of the world, a condition that l am not too fond of but yet somehow connects us all as city dwellers. There is something magical about listening to the same sound sound in a space together with strangers. For the tunnel, I imagined this soft rumble and hum that could bind us.

TG: Finally, there is a strong emphasis on being there in person, both in the things you choose to draw and the handmade wooden benches you've built for the space. Why is physical presence so important for this show, and how do you find a balance between these everyday household objects and the concept of living and dying?

LYT: Good point. I had always felt melancholy towards empty chairs because of how they evoke absence. With the benches that I decided to make by hand on my own, I am experimenting with how the absence of the artist can be felt. I was curious how it would feel for an audience to sit on furniture made by the artist.
With my forays into furniture, it has been nice to offer something that people are invited to touch or sit on alongside other artworks that are not meant to be interacted with in this manner.

I have always felt that things made by hand, whether they are drawings, pieces of handicraft, or handwritten letters, are such heavy and emotional stand-ins for people who are now absent from our lives. I want my works, whether the drawings, the furniture, or the soundtrack, to have that same weight and presence.



Interview courtesy of Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay: https://www.esplanade.com/whats-on/festivals-and-series/series/visual-arts/the-world-postcards#synopsis