2022-2024 archives

2024
Artblovk Pop up Gallery and DPLMT will participate as part of Design Festa Gallery's  Halloween [Horror Show] exhibit in Harujuku, Japan.
 Bringing together a potpourri of styles from emerging visual artists in Singapore and Southeast asia, the 2024 collection of horror-themed vignettes will be exhibited alongside Japanese artists amidst the backdrop of vibrant Harujuku street culture.

Pricey (Collateral Damage Studio), untitled, 2024, 14.8 x 21.0 cm, Digital illustration

Poopiepuff (Collateral Damage Studio), Halloween, 2024, 14.8 x 21.0 cm, Digital illustration

Tweeds,Pretty girls always smile, 2024, 14.8 x 21.0 cm, Digital illustration

Parincashmony, untitled, 2024, 14.8 x 21.0 cm, Digital illustration

Erikartoon, Horror cartoon, 2024, 14.8 x 21.0 cm, Digital illustration

Sarah Thursday, Azrael (Halloween Ver.), 2024, 14.8 x 21.0 cm, Digital illustration

Azridjokoloro, Jawbreaker, 2024, 14.8 x 21.0 cm, Pen and watercolour on paper.

acupofmoon, A father's wrath, a mother's love, 2024, 14.8 x 21.0 cm, Digital Illustration.

Comet girl, Vampire, 2024, 14.8 x 21.0 cm, Digital illustration

The Dollhouse is an exploration of fate, mortality, and growing up from a feminine lens. Are the experiences of girlhood truly as fleeting and ephemeral as one would think?
Artblovk-pop-up gallery takes over Krafer's Paradise Sim Lim Square in the heart of Singapore’s Bugis district under the creative vision of curator Comet Girl. 
Through an inter-generational triptych of artists from a myriad of disciplines and backgrounds, Comet Girl, Hatsune Neneko and halcyn transform a space into a tableau of manufactured sweetness of modern day pop culture, with an undercurrent of decay.
This free exhibition presents a thoughtful and poignant experience for art enthusiasts of all walks paired with a sharing session by the creators. The show will take place as part of
Singapore Art Week 2024, held from 19 to 28 January 2024.

Hatsune Neneko, Those I want to protect。守りたいものがある。, 2023, 28x36cm, Fineliner pen and acrylic gouache on paper panel. 

Comet girl, powder room II, 2023, mixed media installation

halcyn, The Feast, 2023, 84x119cm, Acrylic & Oil on board

2023
[PUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER] is a takeover of art at Basheer Graphic books outer wall, bringing underground wheatpasting art to the forefront with an entirely manually produced selection of works inspired by Southeast Asian pulp and horror graphic print art, in particular [SIKSA NERAKA], an indonesian publication from the 50s-90s.

A peculiarity of the time, SIKSA NERAKA (Hell torture), was an officially sanctioned graphic novel series with brutal imagery widely available at newstands all over Southeast Asia. hailing from a time before digital printing, early copies were crudely made and disappeared from the public eye after it's heyday. Artblovk Gallery has invited visual artists from the region to interpolate their own interpretations of horror art reflecting the values of SIKSA NERAKA in a guerilla pop-up Halloween display. 

Marrying raw graphics with traditional printmaking techniques of monocolour silkscreen printing and wheatpasted poster art, the show brings uncensored guerilla art to the forefront and argues for the need for physical art spaces to allow artists to flourish unchallenged in an increasingly restrictive digital landscape.  
Participating artists
Comet Girl
Ye Zhen
Azridjokoloro
Explosive minestrone
Sarah Thursday 
Tweedles
Pumpkin Unicorn
A Good Citizen

Tweedles

Pumpkin unicorn

Sarah Thursday

Explosive Minestrone

Through a series of lighthearted, bright and illustrative works, [The Fool] takes viewers on a neon-tinted adventure through the works of homegrown illustrator Comet Girl. Like its namesake, The Fool represents improvisation, spontaneity, new beginnings and limitless potential. Challenging viewers to rethink their fear of failure and need to ascribe deeper meanings in art, the exhibition is an invitation to create for the sake of creation, without the fear of consequences. Part of Singapore Art Week 2023.

A reception will be held on 6 Jan 2023 from 7pm till late with an opening by Comet Girl. Guided tours will be available throughout the day for visitors.

Comet Girl
Comet Girl (b. 1994) is a self-taught artist and illustrator based in Singapore. With a fascination with people and the human condition, her works are a representation of her curiosity and fixation on loneliness, sexuality and repressed emotions. She is also inspired by scientific illustrations, pop culture of the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s and shojou manga. 
Through the use of bright colours and a modern illustrative style, she invites the viewers to be involved with each piece by coming up with their own interpretations and stories alongside the original meanings.

Studio Neon
Studio Neon, based in Singapore’s iconic Haji Lane, is the exploratory brainchild and event space of local visionary PrettyFreakyFantasy.
Idris Johor, better known by his moniker PrettyFreakyFantasy (PFF), has been instrumental in shaping the identity of Bali and Haji Lane since 2006, via with his IG-worthy psychedelic murals and eye-catching installations for a chain of F&B outlets located at the pre-war shophouses.

Comet Girl, the Fool, 2022, 71x91cm, Digital Illustration

2022
[Party of Five] is a Halloween visual art exhibition by Artblovk pop-up gallery, featuring an illustrated smorgasbord inspired by role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, final fantasy and more!
[Party of Five] invites not only ground breaking young illustrators based in Singapore, but also creators in arts and the industry to design an adventurer avatar in any medium, be it an illustration, written text or even sculpture, which will be randomly grouped together in parties of five to respond to an Ai-generated artwork as a 'final boss' of sorts.
Inspiring, cheeky and wondrous, the exhibition aims to question audiences how narratives are formed through the presentation of randomised, juxtaposed artwork, and invites participants and visitors alike to construct a narrative framework through the experience of the gallery and its dialogue between the grouped artworks.
Participating artists:
Anboshan

​​​​​​​
Open call artists:
Euginia Tan
Haider Amir
Benjamin Lin
Amberleey

Kenfoo, Franky, 2022, digital illustration

 Tropikaldaze , Shrouds of the Tropics, 2022, Digital illustration, 21x29.7cm

 Eddie Ching (1983), The Paladin (Luis Royo), 2022, AI-generated art (Midjourney)

DIASPORA is a visual art exhibition helmed by Artblovk pop-up gallery and co-curated by Eddie Ching and Lim Cheng Tju. DIASPORA builds upon a narrative of the evolving conditions of visual artists in a time of turbulence and uncertainty. It is an invasion and a blurring of public and private space through art interventions. 
Featuring Illustrators and visual artists such as A Good citizen (Dan Wong), Comet girl (Cherie Sim), Azridjokoloro and other young local talents, DIASPORA investigates the movement of visual art from natural to digital territories and into uncertain spaces.
Held at Bras Basah Complex in Basheer Graphics Bookstore, #arttakesover a part of the space and invites audiences to participate in discovering art and its mediums to begin a conversation on the nature of visual art as part of Singapore Art week 2022.
More information: https://www.artweek.sg/events/diaspora
About Singapore Art Week 2022
 As Singapore’s signature visual arts season, Singapore Art Week (SAW) represents the unity and pride of a diverse and vibrant arts community. In its 10th edition, SAW 2022 will be a celebration of the Singapore visual arts in its decade of growth - in the practices of Singapore artists, in the formats of presentation and in the spaces these will inhabit.



Comet Girl, Pink 1, 2021, Digital artwork

A Good Citizen, Orange man, 2021, Non Fungible Token installation (Still) 

COMIC STRIPS
What happens when sequential art is adapted to a new medium? Curator Lim Cheng Tju explores how comics are changed in the digital domain and how older methods of creating comics have to adapt in an era of portable devices becoming the dominant platform for media consumption. A commentary on relevance and the struggle of traditional artist platforms and technology.
Artist: LOO FANG KAI
Comix-Man (漫画侠) was a monthly one-pager that ran in Lianhe Zaobao from 3 November 2019 to 7 November 2021. The pitch was: Superhero/wuxia story where the characters and interactions are inspired by art and comics. 
01:
The initial plan was to pencil and ink traditionally, and use the computer only for colouring and lettering. However, I was dissatisfied with the results, and decided to redo everything digitally. I like to tell myself that if I hadn't been so quick to give up on traditional, if I had refined my pencils, approached the inks more deliberately, planned the values more carefully, I should have been able to produce an acceptable page. But maybe this is arrogance. The truth is probably that I am just overly dependent on digital tools. I often find myself mentally trying to press a non-existent Undo key when I draw traditionally. The ease of adjusting things on software has both devalued and degraded my ability to place a line on paper accurately. Of course, digital tools are fast, forgiving, can mimic all kinds of traditional mediums, and have opened up myriad possibilities such as animation and interactivity. As always, pros and cons...

02:
Quiz time! Are the coloured streaks fired by the antagonist made of 1) Light, or 2) Paint? The streaks combine to form white, so the answer has to be 1) Light. This is called additive colour mixing, and it is how TVs and screens work. When all the wavelengths of light are mixed together, we get white light, like in Newton's prism experiment. The opposite is subtractive colour mixing, which applies to paints and inks and other pigments. The more colours of paint we mix together, the darker and blacker we go. What really blew my mind when I was learning this stuff is that in the world of light, yellow is not a primary colour! We get yellow light by mixing red and green light. The primaries of red, blue, and yellow that we learn about in art class apply only to pigments. When it comes to light, the primaries are red, blue, and green. Why, then, you might ask, does the antagonist's attack contain yellow? Was the artist 1) Trying to comment on the dissociation felt by artists trying to navigate between digital and traditional realms, or did he 2) Only realise this issue when writing this paragraph? Jokes aside, it is indeed a challenge to straddle digital and traditional. In the case of this comic, I would say that the greatest difficulty was with adapting the layout for online viewing. Even if I had stuck strictly to the grid and ensured every single panel was the same size, therefore avoiding size issues when rearranging vertically, there would still have been loss of flow.

03:
For this issue, one of my objectives was to mock the perception that some people have of digital work being somehow inferior to traditional work. Upon reflection, however, I came to realise that I was also guilty of such thinking. While I believed that all methods were aesthetically equal, deep down a part of me did consider skill at traditional tools and techniques to be of a higher "level". Perhaps one day when deadlines and practical concerns are no longer a factor, I'll step out of my comfort zone and see if I can prove myself wrong. Until then, any method that gets the job done is a good method...
Artist: Sam Lay
Diaspora takes place in Basheer, located in the iconic Bras Basah Complex affectionately known as 书城. It is next to the National Library and so it is at the heart of books and reading in Singapore. This selection of cartoons by Sam Lay is a humorous peak at how our relationship with reading and books have changed. But hopefully the joy of reading, browsing and buying books will continue. 

Artist: FsC (Foo swee Chin)
Foo Swee Chin is one of the most sensitive comic artists in Singapore and it reflects in her works. COVID times have necessitated greater usage and dependence on technology. But Swee Chin's comics remind us of the importance of being grounded to love, nature and everyday living. 

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