Portraits of History

Exhibition from 28th – 29th April 2012
Opening Hours: 11:00am – 8pm
At the Viridian Arthouse • The Foothills Fort Canning Park opposite Liang Court, entrance via River Valley Road (Formerly the old swimming pool complex)

Reconstructing images through old photographs using watercolor medium and creating vignettes with digital photography, turning them into snippets for digital posters, as memorabilia for keeping and enjoyment.

Merging traditional watercolor paintings and the digital medium, Meng Foo explores history through photographs he had captured over 30 years, re-living the nuances of past experience, with each stroke he recalls history and shares those experiences by reframing them through digital photography.
Through watercolor, as a traditional mean, the photographs are reinterpreted with his particular expression, emphasis, coloration and biases, which perhaps becomes individualized, and one wonders if this process could reinforce or dilute the encapsulation of history within watercolor as a documentary medium. Would the photograph or the watercolor painting attract more attention, or perhaps digital photography could position history as having more currency and gain popularity among the younger generation?
In fact, digital photography is used to its advantage of flexibility, it enlarges, frames, repeats and re-colors. It enlarges the nuances so much that, one begins to see pixels and colors, the image dissolves and becomes secondary, unless one steps back to see from a far. This signifies the dilution of history through the process of consumerism focusing on the particular which trivializes, simplifies, distorts, excites and be consumed.

Download pdf Portraits of History Poster