'Singapore is often known as a Garden City, but this is an impersonal image of anonymous trees and gardeners. Our project aims to boil this generic image down to specifics by exploring the concrete, personal connections that Singaporeans have made with trees. After all, what is loving nature without loving the individual plant?

Through our interviews, we found that people relate to plants in touching and occasionally surprising ways. For example, a group of Buddhists have been circling a rubber tree for an hour a day, for the past few years, as a form of walking meditation and to absorb the tree’s “energy”. A mangosteen tree has been sheltering a man for 20 years, since he saved it from the bulldozers. Another woman cries when her trees don’t fruit.

Besides featuring in individual stories, trees are living, breathing markers of history. The trees in our collection are of different ages. Some are old native species from pre-colonial times, when Singapore was mostly a freshwater swamp forest; others are younger trees that their owners planted from seeds.

The images on show are influenced by vintage hand-tinted Singapore postcards. In fact, Singapore, very old tree is named after the title of one of the oldest postcards in the National Archive, a 1904 picture of an unspecified tree.' —from publisher

Inside the box, you get a booklet containing the stories of the 30 trees in the project, 30 postcards of the trees, a map of trees of interest in Singapore and poster of one of the trees.'

—from publisher

Access level

Onsite

Location code
MON.ZHR (Closed Stack)
Language

English

Publication/Creation date

2020

Edition

2

ISBN / ISSN

9789811449468

No of copies

1

Content type

artist monograph, 

artist book

Singapore, Very Old Tree (no.1-30)
Share
Citation
Rights statement

In Copyright

What does this mean?

This item is covered by one or more copyrights. It is available for research only or use within Hong Kong’s fair dealing rules. Please do not copy, re-use or reproduce this item without the permission of the copyright holder.

Singapore, Very Old Tree (no.1-30)

Relevant content

B2-HR_DSF0880 (2)
Guided Tours | Countering Time
Programmes

Guided Tours | Countering Time

26 Nov 2024–18 Feb 2025

countering-home list
Countering Time
Programmes

Countering Time

27 Sep 2024–1 Mar 2025

Please note that AAA’s website will be down for maintenance on 4 Dec 2024 from 8pm HKT (12pm GMT) for around an hour. For enquiries or assistance, contact us at webmaster@aaa.org.hk.