CANVAS HOUSE

CANVAS HOUSE is a conservation shophouse redesigned in collaboration with Ministry Of Design. It is part of the first set of homes in Figment’s flagship Case Study Homes series, launching Feb 2020.

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About Ministry of Design
About CANVAS HOUSE
About theKANG
About Ezzam Rahman

About Ministry of Design

Ministry of Design (MOD) is an integrated architectural, interior design, and branding firm.

Created by Colin Seah to question convention and redefine the spaces, forms and experiences that surround us, MOD’s explorations are created amidst a democratic studio-like atmosphere and progress seamlessly between form, site, object and space.

MOD prefers to start far upstream and design holistic experiences rather designing solutions. This translates into a wide variety of possible downstream design applications and media: be it architecture, product design, interior architecture, branding, graphics, landscape or even the weaving of diverse disciplines into a single project.

Committed to their vision of designing holistic experiences, MOD helmed CANVAS HOUSE as both interior designers and artists, creating three pieces for the house: Shadows, Layers, and Dream.

Photo Credit: Ivan Tan

About CANVAS HOUSE

Historic dwellings like our conservation shophouses are repositories of memories, with previous lives and a past of their own. Ministry of Design explores history and our relationship with the past, present, and future through the concept of layers in CANVAS HOUSE at Blair Road. 

Blurring the boundaries between space and object, visitors and residents are welcomed with a layer of white that invites them to disentangle from the present and remember both the past and the future. The house rhythmically reveals parts of its past, with Shadows of old timber as well as Layers of revealed brick and intricate details of pre-owned furniture. At the same time, MOD invites visitors to imagine a future with Dream, a text-based neon piece with a quote by Thomas Jefferson that encapsulates MOD’s approach to CANVAS HOUSE.

About theKANG

CANVAS HOUSE also features work from theKANG (Kang).

theKANG is an accessory artist in Singapore, specialising in the use of upcycled and unconventional materials. His focus is on highlighting the potential of scrap and waste materials, manipulating them into higher objects of beauty. He is currently working extensively with plastic bags, heat-fusing them into a durable and versatile leather.

theKANG started out in 2013 making fashion accessories and has since branched out into creating bags, lighting and homewares.

As a self-taught artist and designer, theKANG is all about experiential learning; largely through experimentations with textures, patterns and forms. With every piece he creates, he strives to reflect a sense of thoughtfulness and sophistication.

Like the rest of CANVAS HOUSE, the material he uses has a past life that is reimagined to create something new. For CANVAS HOUSE, theKANG handcrafted luminaire pieces using fused plastic made from cling film. Keeping to the theme of layers, the cling film was layered and then ironed and heated to create a waterproof, leathery material. theKANG experimented with the material and form for months to four lighting pieces that will be featured on the ground floor.

About Ezzam Rahman

The launch of CANVAS HOUSE on 15 February will feature a site-specific live performance art presentation by Ezzam Rahman.

Ezzam Rahman is a multi-disciplinary installation and performance artist. He was awarded a joint winner of the Grand Prize for the President’s Young Talents 2015 and the People’s Choice Award by the Singapore Art Museum.

In 2016, Ezzam was awarded the Goh Chok Tong Youth Promise Award by Yayasan Mendaki and the prestigious Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council, Singapore. In 2017, he presented in Singapore Inside Out in Australia by the Singapore Tourism Board. In 2018, Ezzam was invited by Frieze Art Fair in London, part of Frieze Symposium in a panel discussion on, A Brief History of Performance in South East Asia.

Ezzam Rahman sees his artworks that take forms in sculptures, installations or performances as an unfinished glimpse into basic human emotions. They are improvisational objects in which the constructed of readymade are used to question our own making of the world through memories, feelings and senses. Most of his artworks and research are time-based ephemeras, inviting viewers to question the value and worth of impermanence. Ezzam relies on our instinctual desires for beauty, abject poetics and seduction through unconventional visual aesthetics, may they be in various materials and presentation to the presence and absence of his breathing body.

Ezzam will be presenting what i need may not be what i want from you, a durational live performance art presentation, in CANVAS HOUSE on 15 Feb.

Title – what i need may not be what i want from you

Medium – 80 porcelain spoons, stainless steel spoon, granite mortar and pestle, vintage medicinal glass jar, satin – nylon – cotton threads, body paint, ceramic rice bowl, matte enamel on wooden stool.
Dimension – Variable / Performance Art (Site specific)
Year – 2020

what i need may not be what i want from you, is a durational live performance art presentation by Ezzam Rahman. In this presentation, Ezzam uses 80 porcelain spoons, grinding them using familiar household objects such as a mortar and pestle, back into small shards and dust, then painstakingly collecting and containing the precious remnants in a medicinal glass jar. Ezzam’s durational performance depicts the repetitive everyday laborious actions of ‘work’ and the spoons are a representation of relationships within family units, social status and class systems.

Read more about our CASE STUDY HOMES here:

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