in Process

NGS Gallery Reflection

I particularly enjoyed the exhibition ‘An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season’ as it really highlighted the many issues that we face as a society. My favourite work which I will be talking more about is 3GHz by Clara Lim, a recent ADM Interactive Media graduate.

Her work is a social commentary on the problem on mass consumerism and our excessive consumption due to the rise of technology and media. This comes at a time where our wasteful habits have negative environmental impacts in our current state of environmental degradation.

This multi-media installation features a microwave from a discontinued brand, with a video montage of advertisements from the 1980s and a 2007 video from Media Development Authority (MDA) to reflect Singapore’s enduring pursuit of technological advancement.

What I really liked was the image montage of different advertisements, also likely from the 1980s with their aesthetics and their slightly problematic content.

Another thing Clara did to emphasise how much advertisement culture is embedded in our lives is by giving a simple and short statement describing the video ad. With just the statement, we are able to visualise how the ad would look like, even without seeing the video. We are so used to having advertisements integrated into our lives, that we may not even be aware of the amount of advertising messages we consume unwittingly.

I think the strength in this work is that is really is evident how much promotional media we consume unwittingly in our day to day life, and in turn how that could influence the way we purchase items mindlessly. However, I think a down side of this is that there is a lot more potential for the artwork to properly highlight how this increased consumerism can lead to increase in waste. Currently, the link to wastage in materials is not very evident and could be more so if there were more items like the discontinued microwaves piled up in a corner so that there would be a heap of rubbish from used products. If the items in the pile and the items in the printed advertisements co-relate, it would be better.

About the Artist

Clara Lim is known for her trademark color – purple – in all her works. She also uses the format of multi-media for her previous works.

This is one of her previous works – We’re Good, 2019 that was featured in the gallery at ADM.  She seems to use similar mediums for all her works. There is not much else on her since she is a new artist.