What makes some of these local or global creatives tick? In this weekly column, multidisciplinary artist and musician Jeremy Sharma shares his favourite things.
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1. Leslie Low: This is the latest record by singer-songwriter Leslie Low. It is kindly autographed with a note by him for being involved in a digital project that I organised.
2. A Bird Whistle Toy: This beautiful bird-whistle toy with a handwritten note by the inimitable toy pianist Margaret Leng Tan, who was a student of John Cage. It says: “For Jeremy, Uncaged”.
3. Lai Yu Tong: This is a newspaper painting by the artist Lai Yu Tong, who paints over newspaper cuttings, this one shows a fence. He would have liked this image of his work with mundane objects here.
4. Time, history and lives: I have been fascinated by time, history and the lives of others in recent years and this is another work of a group of Malay men in the 1970s or 1980s. It is by artist and curator Zulkhairi Zulkiflee. I like that the colour of the image goes with the green of the plants.
5. David Bowie: Another image of David Bowie when he came and performed in Singapore for the first time in 1983, captured by my colleague and artist/historian Gilles Massot. Bowie was brought to our shores by the poet Goh Poh Seng.
6. Photography Prints: My interest in collecting photography prints lies in the camera’s mediation in history and how they speak to me. This one is of presumably a woman’s bathroom and this is just outside my toilet. It is by Isabell Hansen.
7. Crystals: Under another abstract print by Liu Liling, lies some rocks and minerals on the headboard of my bed. I’m not an expert but it’s from someone who cares deeply about these bearers of well-being.
8. His Cat: That’s my tabby. I have never seen a more mild-mannered nor more beautiful cat than this one.
9. Books: I always have a stack of books near my bed when I cannot sleep or when I wake really early.
10. Film Stills: A set of film stills printed by my curator Kenneth Tay. We were looking at scenes together from Cathay-Keris made films in the late 1950s to early 1960s — the golden period of Singapore filmmaking — while working together on “Slander!”, an exhibition for Singapore Art Museum’s Mini Mobile Museum that is currently ongoing at Singapore’s regional libraries. This image features a still from Orang Minyak, a horror flick about a bogeyman clad in oil and soot.
Once you’re done with Jeremy Sharma’s obsessions, click here to catch up with our June/July 2021 issue.
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