Stand to Attention

Near-abstract works by Singaporean artist Genevieve Chua straddle 2D and 3D spaces and invite viewers to actively engage with them

- MICHELE KOH MOROLLO

Using painting, installation, and photography, Singaporean visual artist Genevieve Chua explores concepts of tension, in particular control, resistance, and encroachment. Through muted, tonal colours, subtle mark-making, and custom canvas designs with jutting, bulging, and undulating edges, she challenges the boundaries of the traditional canvas and the medium of painting to create works that exist somewhere between 2D and 3D; works that protrude into the gallery space, inviting viewers to engage rather than passively observe.

Chua’s practice took a big turn when she kept company with fellow painters at London’s Royal College of Art.

“I realised we used the same vocabulary, and it was then that I had the revelatory understanding that a pictorial space can also have a turn of phrase in the way that someone speaks in first or third person. I have a continual urge to pivot my works in different directions, in more than two dimensions even,” says Chua who sees her art as an avenue for people to experience materiality in our current, tech-dominated, screen-based world.

Her works have a minimalist quality that echoes architectural form through the play of light and shadow. She describes her artistic approach as “near-abstract”, a term coined by British art historian Briony Fer to describe abstract works that reference natural objects or objects that exist in reality.