Location: Spottiswoode Park (access path opposite Spottiswoode Residences)
*Visitors will not be able to enter the structure currently.

--------------------

Rattan Eco Sprawl: Manifesting the Forest nestles in the lush greenery of a quiet spot in the neighbourhood. Constructed primarily from rattan, its wavy forms weave in elements from the natural world including mountains and mounds where insects dwell. Such formations have also inspired sacred monuments like the Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Live plants encroach the work’s exterior while a glimpse into the interior, with its lowered ceilings and narrowed passageways, suggests care, not just for plants and species that inhabit it, but also for the mind. Witnessed here is the same jostle between natural and manmade elements in the area: tree roots pushing their way through concrete pavements, destabilising fences and bollards, etc., as if nature is attempting to reclaim its territory.

Rattan Eco Sprawl reflects on this entanglement of nature and urban development against the backdrop of a fast-changing Singapore landscape. It serves as a vessel for sonic encounters, embracing both manmade noise and the serenades of nature. Through engagements with rattan and wood artisans, an ecologist, and nonhuman residents, Rattan Eco Sprawl acknowledges the fragile, intertwined relationship that we share with nature, driving a collaborative need to bring old and new knowledges together for a sustainable future.

About the Artist
Zen Teh is an artist and educator interested in the interdisciplinary studies of nature and human behaviour. Her art practice spans across photography, sculpture and installation art. As a research-based artist, Teh has initiated numerous collaborative projects with artists, art professionals and scientists over the years to investigate the impact of rapid urban development in Southeast Asia. Teh has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Singapore and the region, including National Museum of Singapore, Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and ArtScience Museum, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Korea, Taiwan and Germany and invited as a guest speaker at environmental conferences such as UNESCO-UNITWIN 2021, ASEAN Powershift 2015 and Hanoi Innovation Week 2016 on Sustainability. In 2021, Teh received the Young Artist Award by The National Arts Council, Singapore’s highest accolade for artists under the age of 35.

DEEP CUTS transforms the materials and surfaces of the artist’s studio into a striking visual narrative. Drawing from the surroundings that shape the artist’s practice, as well as the industrial character of the mural’s site, it reassembles fragments of raw, utilitarian materials and textures into a cohesive composition. Structured like a graphic novel, the work features panels connected by action lines and a rhythm that guides the viewer’s gaze.

The title, DEEP CUTS, refers to niche or lesser-known media that have dedicated followers, reflecting the artist’s appreciation of the visual motifs that inspire his painting practice. This mural explores the aesthetics of both print and digital media, adapting the process of mediums like woodblock printing, Ben-Day dots, CMYK halftones, pixel art and ASCII graphics. By amplifying and distilling the marks of these intricate details, the work blurs the line between recognition and abstraction, inviting viewers to reconsider how variations in scale across physical and virtual spaces can affect our interpretation of an image.

As part of the process of creating the mural, photographs of distressed metal containers, paint splattered walls, as well as high-resolution scans of textiles were digitally manipulated to accentuate different formal qualities. For example, paint drips were given a halftone treatment, dissolving the image into clusters of smaller dots. Similarly, the warp and weft of textiles were abstracted into simple lines of varying widths. These techniques are commonly used in silkscreen printing and graphic design to create the illusion of depth or gradients.

Taken together, this exploration of perception aligns with the artist’s broader practice, which investigates how images and artistic mediums are interpreted. Working with materials such as aluminium, textiles, and employing collage as a technique, Ian’s practice focuses on formal concerns like texture, colour, and line quality, while engaging with their cultural associations. Themes of youth, defiance and self-expression emerge in his work, drawing inspiration from the vibrant energy and visual style of various subcultures. These references add both vitality and introspection, balancing subjectivity with a collective resonance.

DEEP CUTS reimagines the mundane as extraordinary, encouraging a deeper engagement with the visual world. The fragmented imagery invites viewers to pause, reflect and find meaning in the subtle abstractions that permeate their everyday experiences. Through a blend of observation, memory and imagination, the work reshapes how we perceive and connect with the spaces we inhabit.

Greener Pastures turns the industrial space into one of contemplation. It draws on cuboid forms, such as the containers, pallets, and boxes that define its surroundings. Positioned above the cargo lifts at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, the installation renders utilitarian shapes into a flowing pattern that explores themes of movement, function and identity. By emphasising the rhythms of the site, it captures the alignment, repetition, and spatial relationships between everyday objects, while inviting viewers to see the beauty in geometric precision and underlying order.

Sections painted in varying shades of green connect the structured cuboid forms, creating a vivid contrast against the industrial landscape. These green elements evoke a longing for balance, symbolising the “greener pastures” often hidden within urban spaces dominated by steel and concrete. The deliberate interplay between rigid man-made structures and the organic rhythm of nature suggests a quiet hope for harmony and renewal. It reflects an ongoing tension between progress and preservation, prompting viewers to consider what has been lost and reimagined in the constant transformation of modern urban environments.

The title of the work references the idiom, “greener pastures,” which means a better or more promising situation. The relocation of Singapore Art Museum from its former sites at Bras Basah Road and Queen Street, as well as the upcoming move of the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) from Tanjong Pagar, Keppel, and Brani Terminals to Tuas Port, were decisions that were likely made with the aim of achieving better outcomes. As the urban landscape continues to evolve, the title suggests that every decision along the way is made with the intention of moving towards greener pastures. With the Greater Southern Waterfront masterplan unfolding, the future of Tanjong Pagar Distripark remains in flux. Within this context, Greener Pastures speaks to both positive growth and the unpredictability that persists, even with a plan in place.

Fiona’s work is grounded in precision, repetition and meticulous processes. Her labour-intensive pieces serve as meditative explorations of time, value and the act of making itself. This creative ritual becomes a way to explore order and rhythm while also questioning the spaces we occupy and the systems we build. In this composition, the repetition of cuboid forms reflects the cycles of labour and transport that define the site, while the trailing elements introduce moments of reflection and regeneration, quietly weaving through the structured forms and gently unfolding across the space.

Location: Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Block 39 Side Facade (facing Block 37)

--------------------

Sea of flags engages with the history and identity of Tanjong Pagar and is a tribute to the memory of the district’s massive development over two centuries. The flags that make up the installation are an assemblage of material swatches colour-matched with physical objects and digital images of the area. Consolidated from over 400 colours, these swatches are derived from the landscape and architecture, natural and man-made materials that have defined the vicinity’s industries of the past.

The colours of crimson, orange, pale yellow and brown, highlight the fruit plantation history of the land in the 1800s, where gambier, nutmeg and mace, pepper and pineapple were once cultivated. Land reclamation from as early as the 1840s and the construction of wharves and docks substantially transformed Tanjong Pagar’s coastal landscape – several hills such as Mount Wallich, Cursetjee Hill, part of Mount Palmer, Keramat Hill, Bain’s Hill and Guthrie Hill were levelled to reclaim land from the swamps.

Moving like a ripple with the wind, Sea of flags’ presence on the reclaimed land where Tanjong Pagar Distripark stands today signifies the fleetingness of the physical world where spatial boundaries are indeterminate. Constantly shifting and blurring, they evoke the capricious movement of the surrounding sea.

About the Artist
Grace Tan (b. 1979, Malaysia) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer with an interest in geometry, material and construction. From creating wearable fabric artworks under her kwodrent series, she has evolved into sculptural objects and site-specific installations. Tan was awarded the President's Design Award for Building as a Body in 2012 and the Young Artist Award in 2013. In recent years, she has worked on large public art commissions in Singapore such as Woven Field at Downtown Line, Little India Station (2015), PLANES and CURRENTS at Marina One (2017), SYMMETRY at DUO (2017) and n. 333 – State of Equilibrium at Raffles City (2018). Tan has shown widely in Singapore, Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

Production Credits:
Artist Assistants: Lewis Ten, Li Si Yi, and Mervyn Chen

Location: Tanjong Pagar Distripark Block 39, Level 2 corridor, staircase and service balcony facing port

--------------------

At Block 39 of Tanjong Pagar Distripark, delicate floral garlands, pollination trails and nutmeg fruits embellish an exterior staircase and passageway. When first applied, the stencilled motifs in lime plaster and ground nutmeg emit a fleeting fragrance, reminiscent of how sailors in the 16th century claimed to detect the Banda Islands by their scent. Since the 6th or 7th century, nutmeg has been a rare and exotic spice from the “Far East” that influenced European taste and culture. Commercial nutmeg products today may seem unremarkable, but as one of the vestiges of Singapore’s colonial economy, it is synonymous with the promise of wealth, albeit one that turned out to be flawed.

Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) was imported into Singapore in 1819 by Stamford Raffles in a bid to transform the island into a botanical research powerhouse of the British empire. The 1840s saw a period of “nutmeg mania” where large swathes of dense virgin forest lands were cut down for the cultivation of nutmeg trees in order to carry out the vision that “this island should all be cleared and cultivated; in fact become a large Garden.” One of these ambitious gardens was William Montgomerie’s residence, which was located amidst a 13 hectare nutmeg plantation with 1,800 trees in Duxton Road.

The fruit of deceit is a site-specific response to the history of Tanjong Pagar and its evolving identity. The notion of nature as a commodity is foregrounded here against the physical site of the old Keppel Harbour and present-day Tanjong Pagar Distripark—logistical nodes from different eras that facilitate the circulation of materials, goods, ideas, people and capital.

The gesture of overlaying the grimy surfaces of the building with a decorative stratum of nutmeg images subverts the identity of the place, while also creating new meaning. Applied deliberately in a repeated pattern, the surface embellishment is a human designed representation—an intervention to mark and colonise the space through the introduction of a foreign element. The nutmeg motifs in The fruit of deceit were taken from 19th century natural history illustrations that typically show a ripe nutmeg with the “red mace shining through the ruptured husk” and small inconspicuous lobed flowers. A plant that has both male and female reproductive organs but in separate individuals, the overabundance of female flowers functions as a trickery as only the lesser male flowers provide pollen. Nutmeg floral biology has no relation to its cultivation history in Singapore, but the concept of “pollination by deceit” uncannily parallels humanity’s precarious attraction to nature by terraforming the earth for the sake of “improvement.”

Nearby, in Grace’s other work, Sea of flags, 28 out of the 398 flags display colours referenced from the seed, mace, kernel, and skin of nutmeg. Each colour comes with a HEX code and corresponding RGB code, which was then printed onto a PVC sheet and made into a flag. The fruit of deceit extends this colour compendium of Tanjong Pagar through alluring visuals of the nutmeg, alluding to its slighted history in Singapore’s development.

About the Artist
Grace Tan is a multidisciplinary artist and designer with an interest in geometry, material and construction. From creating wearable fabric artworks under her kwodrent series, she has evolved into sculptural objects and site-specific installations. Tan was awarded the President’s Design Award for Building as a Body in 2012 and the Young Artist Award in 2013. In recent years, she has worked on large public art commissions in Singapore such as Woven Field at Downtown Line, Little India Station (2015), PLANES and CURRENTS at Marina One (2017), SYMMETRY at DUO (2017) and n. 333 – State of Equilibrium at Raffles City (2018). Tan has shown widely in Singapore, Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

Artwork impression courtesy of the artist.

In an increasingly algorithmically motivated and automated world, how does one identify a real user among automated users? Are we now automated users ourselves? The CAPTCHA codes plastered across the building may be challenging to read, but when they are eventually verbalised, they ring alongside the humdrum of surrounding traffic – the colliding and skewed letters abuzz with movement of vehicles in and around.

Located at: Blk 39, Building Facade, Tanjong Pagar Distripark

Public outdoor work. Accessible at all times.

Location: Tanjong Pagar Plaza, Blocks 4 and 7

--------------------

Referencing Singapore’s acknowledged status as a “little island”, Little Islands attempts to subvert the notion of limited space through artistic interventions which offer a visceral experience of spaciousness to the viewer. The artworks across three sites in Tanjong Pagar Plaza offer different experiences of “island life", revisiting and reinventing our relationship with Singapore as an islandstate.

At the Residents’ Corner of Block 4 on Level 1, the work considers “island” in its most literal form: a geological landmass surrounded by water. The work at Block 7, Level 3, considers our past, as we gaze back to early 20th century scenes with restored views of historic shophouse architecture, allowing us to visualise the passage of time. The visual intervention at Block 4, Level 3, offers a whimsical take on an incongruous, floating island hidden in the far reaches of Tanjong Pagar Plaza, reflecting the plaza’s reality as an old 1970s public housing estate, standing firm amid newer, taller and shinier buildings.

Amid the bustle, Little Islands beckons you to stay a while

About the Artist
Isabella Teng Yen Lin (b. 1990, Singapore) is an artist working across painting, drawing and public installations. Her practice focuses on anamorphic artwork, or optical illusions, that transform everyday spaces into imaginative realms and prompt a perceptual shift through humour or encounters with the unexpected. Her projects examine the nature of perception through the intersection of line, text, space and illusion. Teng’s works have been shown at Esplanade Theatres by the Bay, The Private Museum, National University of Singapore, and ASEAN Culture House, Busan.

Little Islands is supported by HDB Lively Places Programme.

Production Credits:
Production Manager: Pierre Pourville
Mural Art Specialist: Grace Chen
Artist Painters: Peng Ting, Goh Hong, Yunita Rebekah, Iqbal Roslan, Jasmine Yeo Jia Min, Vicky Kok Hui Yi, Kimberly Teo, and Ma Win Sandi Kyaw, with contributions from the residents of Tanjong Pagar Plaza
Work-at-Height Specialists: Meah Anis and Rahman Md Lutfar