VICTOR OVER TIME

35 years after they broke convention as renegade art students, Phillip Lim catches up with eminent artist SUZANN VICTOR to reminisce about past escapades and how far the artist has come.

- PHILLIP LIM

At the Established Artist section of the recent Art SG, I strolled past the works of international renowned artists Gorge Baselitz, Takashi Murakami, Ai Wei Wei, searching for a friend's - Suzann Victor - one of Singapore's most prominent artists. And I found it, a bunch of shiny aluminium eggplants with metal chains hung over a couple of nails on the wall. There was no description except a label: "Cast Life", Suzann Victor. It took me back to 1988. The only way then to exhibit art works, especially by students, was to enter art competitions and hoped the jury panel would select yours. A group of La Salle students decided to break this convention. Without permission or permit, they displayed their paintings on the ground along the busy thoroughfare outside Orchard Point. They brought their art to the public.

This caught the attention of Joe Lim, a frame shop owner, who was impressed with what he saw. He offered to sponsor the exhibition space to properly present their paintings, air conditioned with proper lighting.

The students were Suzann Victor, Daniel Wong, Khairul Anwar Salleh and me. This was unprecedented, a sponsored exhibition of art-student paintings of mainly abstracts. It was also refreshing in the art scene back then. Art school education meant sitting down to draw still life. Then, a recent UC Berkeley fine arts graduate, Whang Yee Ling, joined the school faculty. She introduced Abstract Expressionism and the paintings of Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning and Hans Hofmann.