Page 29 - Studio International - November 1968

what sort of perceptions or experiences gave you the material for sculpture that art? You couldn't have seen a great deal of European art, especially not much
you knew was truly yours? European sculpture of the first importance. How did you re-act to Western
I ought to explain that at the time I was doing pieces like the tri- art when you got to know it?—How did it figure in your work?
angular rhythmic sculpture I described, I had left St Martin's and As a matter of fact, I grew up with very little art in Singapore. When
was working at the Slade. I had been at St Martin's for two years. I came to England and began doing art I began looking. My desire
Ideas like the wedges in rhythm were developed at the Slade. The to work in art was an internal and personal thing, and had not much
policy of the Slade then was to leave one much more to one's own to do with my early cultural environment. I suspect that my empathy
devices than St Martin's. I used to explore the museums and is temperamental; I prefer an art that has quietude and contain-
libraries on my own. I discovered Brancusi and the Matisse backs. ment. This describes classical Western art, the art of the Greek
These things seemed a great gift; they excited my own feelings and orders and of Brancusi and Matisse, as much as it does the art of the
brought me closer to finding a sculptural form for those feelings. This East. But this quietude and containment is more often to be found in
was very different from mere art study. Eastern art than in Western.
When I first began to be familiar with Western art I found much of
Were Brancusi and Matisse part of your academic study? Were they con- it aggressive. Think of Michelangelo! But I was able to enjoy this
sidered at the Slade? Western robustness; I didn't find it intimidating. I came to under-
Not at all. The Brancusi book was in the Library, but nobody ever stand that it was capable of delicate effects as well as forceful ones.
mentioned him to me. What was important was falling into the habit Michelangelo's Pieta is one of the most moving depositions I have
of looking at things for one's self, going to the works. I was lucky to ever seen. But sculpture of all times and societies deals with many of
have discovered this; freedom and opportunity came together. When the same basic issues and shares attitudes or declares quite opposite
I travelled back to Singapore on visits to my family, I used to stop positions about such matters as the relationship of space and mass.
off wherever I could to see whatever there was—Athens, the The obvious differences, subject matter and superficial treatment,
caves of Ajunta and Ellora. When I first saw the cycladic often hide important similarities and sympathies. For me, the
sculptures, it was a fantastic feeling of confirmation I felt. I'd had the experience of sculpture, West and East, taught me what sculpture is
dim sense of some such simplicity, some such silence, but I never about. Experience gave me the motive to go on.
imagined the full impact these works made, their great scale from,
as it seemed, practically nothing. They were almost immaterialized What line did your development take once you left the Slade?
in their translucent marble. The elements in the sculptures grew in dimension, in size rather than
in scale at first, so that the obvious material to use became laminated
Were you influenced—sympathetic would probably be a better word—to art of a blockboard. Natural logs were too small for the areas I wanted to
particular time or culture? Were you, are you, for example, particularly cover. Blockboard could be built to any required thickness. At this
related to Chinese art, being Chinese, or to the art of the Orient? point, too, the forms became flatter—some of them were only 2½ in.
Not Chinese art specifically. But I have a great empathy for Eastern thick. Candy, which I did in 1965, is a fair example of these interests.
art of the past—for instance, to the non-verbal experience of the Zen R.R., done the same year, is another. I wanted a frontal confronta-
Garden. tion with this piece. Walking round this sculpture will provide an
explanation rather than a discovery. R.R. is the first piece where I
Were you wholly conscious of this empathy when you came to England to study use recession, in the form of three successive planes. The silhouette

far left. Echo, 1967
painted steel, 30+ in. high
left, Day, 1966
painted steel. 85 in. high
above, Step, 1966
painted steel, 36 x 50 in.