Where: The Arts House at the Old Parliament House
What: School of Technology for the Arts Graduation Show 2009
Who attended that day: Yusri/Shaggy, Jannah, Brandon (time: 1800hrs)
For the STA's pioneer batch who missed out on the Grad Show 2009, do not fret! Here comes the review!
The moment we stepped into the Arts House, there wasn't any face-blasting, loud-crazy & uber-enthusiastic STA students to greet their visitors into the Arts House's Grad Show. There was the STA staff: Amy Khoo (Assistant Director of Academic), Laurence (Assistant Director of Administration), Wendy & Delia, at the seating corner in front of Arts House. It was nice for them to greet us and have a little chat and catch up with us!
Inside was pretty solemn, quiet affair and a little less hyped up. Based on the ambience, we gotta thank Arts House for its calming welcoming. In the Gallery, more staff awaited us! There was Eeshaun, our resident artist and Luke Chen, our resident cool dude! It was fantastic atmosphere, apart from talking about what have we been doing after graduation, etc.
We moved on to the Playden. "Security" was tight and there were students who asked if we were STA students/graduates. Politely, we made our way through the doors and were greeted by EMP, rocking the house with R&B and Hip-Hop.
15 minutes before showtime, we were ushered to take a seat. But of course, I was waiting for Wei Wen & Harng to come. Both of them had booked out from Camp that day and were late, excusable!
Harng was uber-late for some reasons.
Show begun with the hosts of the night, Trish & Mike. While Trish was the life of the party, Mike sounded quite nervous. The show began with STA's Director, Dr Victor Valbuena to kickstart the show.
The first item of the night by Chris' Hello Storybook Ending G302 project. This was an ensemble of acoustic session from their project. A whole 15 minutes of singing, feels like I'm in a very cheap lounge or something. No visuals on the walls, just the moving lights blinding us. Halfway through, smoke machine started to fill the air in the Playden, like a crowded lounge with people smoking all together.
The whole 30 minutes was filled with that acoustic performance, a short film called Taped Conversations and finally, another live band performance tied in with a short film. My verdict: It was utterly dull. A 30-minutes ensemble of musical works was a very vague graduation show, not when there are invited guests to the show!
Above is one of the installation at the Gallery by Diploma in Sonic Arts. A project called Koto by aspiring Music men - Sharime (say Shar-ree-mee), Sai & Hasif. Fabulous piece of work but an unflattering display of a fabulous musical piece.
Zero effort in the display, zero effort on artists' short writeup on the wall, zero effort on the management's take to spice up the whole gallery spaces. In short, it was an utter failure in the Exhibitions department.
Moving on... We had refreshment by a Vietnamese restaurant. Lovely food, lovely staff. That was the pleasant point for the night. Full Stop.
Got bored shitless. We decided to eat out instead and posed next to Eeshaun's fantastic vintage Porsche (say pour-sha).
Commentary on Grad Showcase: It was nice enough to showcase STA's 'talents' at the Arts House, but the disappointment lies in the effort to involve the rest of the STA's works. Though there were ample displays, it wasn't enough to feed the visitor's experience walk-through the Gallery with the looping video, panels of photography and costumes arrangement. What we saw in the Arts House (from the exhibitions to the showcases) was a repetition from the booklet, Next Stage Vol: 2 along with the DVD.
Commentary on Grad Show Booklet & DVD: Back home, when reviewing the DVD, it was dejavu! Again! What was seen at the showcase was an exact replica of the one from the DVD. It felt like the projects were so limited, and I don't feel the total strength of creativity and effort in the content. Again, it was the same groups of submission, people and contents. Utter-blah! Whatever happened to the rest of the cohorts? Could they have not submitted their works to the committee or the committee did not approach the teams to submit? Are there any conspiracies in the whole compilations? The questions are still remained as that.
Commentary on the whole: Emotionally, we gotta give a big round of applause to the committee for putting together a successful Grad Show at the Arts House. From nailing the location to the setup to the technical shows to the nice Next Stage Vol 2 booklet. A job well done for the past months of preparations and pulling a group of students to work on it. However, what could have been better is that the committee should have put in more effort in the display set-up, visual elements, door gifts, programme of the day, a short write up of Grad Show (for public) and a warm group of Front-of-House, student volunteers, event helpers and Event Manager. Aesthetically, thanks to Arts House for the minimalism. Full stop. It will always be fun & lively when there are a group of happy people roaming around to entertain the guests even if they have work to do and still be a gracious hosts, to back up for the lack of aesthetic displays.
After all, these kids will still go far...