Group exhibition featuring:
Aiya Balingit, Lawrence Canto, Keb Cerda, Ronson Culibrina, Jayvee David, Dale Erispe, Johanna Helmuth, John Marin, Pow Marin, Jett Osian, Yani Unsana, Olan Ventura
Yavuz Gallery is pleased to present Working Animals Seabound, a group exhibition featuring the works of Filipino artist collective The Working Animals Art Projects. The exhibition kick-starts Art Trek 13, an annual programme of the Embassy of the Philippines Singapore.
The Working Animals Art Projects consists of a group of young artists, whose journey for the past few years has been steadily progressing, individually in multiple directions as the artists explore their own themes, materials and techniques, but regularly converging in a showcase of the diversity of voices that young and emerging Filipino artists has to offer. In this edition of celebrating their shared vision and channelling their creative energies in a synchronised fashion, they adopt an overarching theme a term that bespeaks both of an origin and destination, of an intersection of defining boundaries and exploring what lies beyond, and of the dynamic and meaningful exchange between the inside and the outside.
The word “seabound” conveys on the one hand being surrounded by seas, a geographic reference to an area whose limits are locked not by land but entirely by water. This sense accurately describes the collective’s origin, the Philippines—their archipelagic nation bounded by the mighty seas and sharing no land interface with neighbouring countries. It foregrounds the locality that informs and shapes their artistic practices, and intimates the world to which their diverse creative impulses respond to. It frames a shared environment and suggests common realities arising from seemingly disparate assortment of artistic outputs, forging their links and connections stronger.
On the other, the term may also refer to a stance of embarking on a journey towards the sea, to going beyond the boundaries of a locality and navigating a wider realm beyond it. This meaning highlights this iteration of the group’s creative exercise as an overseas engagement—their second to date—another fulfilment of their vision to participate as a collective in the larger, global contemporary art scene. Through this, the group continues to ground their practices to be sensitive to their roots and origins, but at the same time orient their perspectives to be outward-looking and resonant with other social environments and realities.
This show is curated by Ruel Caasi, in collaboration with Yavuz Gallery x The Working Animals Art Projects, and is part of Art Trek 13. Leveraging on Singapore’s status as one of the art capitals of Asia, Art Trek enables the Philippine Embassy to bring Filipino artists to Singapore while promoting stronger people-to-people links and better understanding and appreciation of the Philippines through its arts. Art Trek, which is on its 13th year, has been sustained through the years through the collective efforts of curators and gallery owners, as well as benefactors, art lovers and talented Filipino artists who have become our cultural ambassadors in Singapore.
