- Where Cattails Grow: A Review
15.4.23 - 14.5.23
Where Cattails Grow, a month-long show at Straits Gallery curated by Jacintha Chan, is rooted in a simple but compelling concept: that nature can be a space for rest and reflection. The eight exhibiting artists respond to nature in separate ways—some treating it as the subject (as in Siew’s these plants are looking silly, they’re acting kinda goofy), some as backdrop (as in Mansor’s 40), some not at all (as in Osprey’s Nina (Family Portraits))—but they are mostly informed by similar impulses of longing, healing, and self-discovery, impulses which stem from a place of vulnerability, and which require safe spaces in order to come into being. Chan goes one step further to cushion the gallery as a ‘restful green space’, quite literally, as she plants minuscule moss benches around the artworks; the curatorial ingenuity, marked by an attention to place, brings the gallery space into meaningful conversation with the art it hosts, thereby imbuing the show with a spirit of co-creation and parity as found in nature. Thus the gallery, otherwise isolated in an industrial compound where everything else is a bleak grey, is transformed into an oasis.
