Amanda Lapus Santos and Billy Soh

Evaporating Memories

“The game of memory is won or lost on one criterion: Do you leave the formation of memories to happenstance, or do you decide to remember?" - Gabrielle Zevin

This duo exhibition between Billy Soh, an experienced contemporary artist, and Amanda Lapus Santos, an abstract-expressionist painter, was born out of a shared interest in the art of cyanotype printing. Cyanotype is a ‘slow-reacting photographic light-sensitive process, which produces a cyan-blue print used as a monochrome imagery applicable on a range of forms such as blueprints.’ Through experimentation on different cyanotype techniques, Soh and Santos wished to explore stories of objects and spaces that have drastically changed or have disappeared entirely. Shared anecdotes of childhood memories, snacks and family dishes, places of amusement, of worship- all reveal a juxtaposition of cultural pasts in Singapore and the Philippines, and their parallels. The process involved unearthing old photographs and recounting childhood nostalgia, and essentially discovering ways of bringing these blurred memories ‘to light’ on both canvas and paper.

Rhapsodies in Blue, the collection of works made by Santos, is what the artist considers as her 'treasure box' of things that fascinate her, stir whimsy, even worry and longing, all in the shades and complimentary hues of blue.

Volatile Landscapes is a body of work by Soh that displays his many years of technique-honing with the volatile liquids and chemicals, and exposure timings involved in this particularly versatile art of printmaking. Among these works of geometric shapes, valleys, waves, and photographs of old Singapore, is his award-winning piece I Lift Up My Eyes to the Mountains, which garnered the UOB Painting of The Year 2019 Highly Commended Award.