Biennale / Gardens by the Bay

Today I went to see some of the art pieces exhibited as part of the Singapore Biennale 2006. The first thing I realised is that many people do not know how to pronounce the word Biennale correctly (including myself at first). It's pronounced as Bian-narl-lay. I guess I got it right after listening to the word being repeated over a hundred times on TV mobile on my bus ride there.

We went to the Art Museum, National Museum, and the main Biennale booth at SMU. I was hoping to see lots of shocking contemporary works, but frankly, I wasn't very impressed. In fact, the pieces that I really liked were classic oil-on-canvas paintings by Liu Kang and one other surrealist Malay painter. But those paintings you can catch all the time at the Art Museum, so much for the Biennale. Maybe there's other better stuff that I haven't seen yet, will try to see more if I have the opportunity. I guess the raw talent of the classic oil-on-canvas artists stood out in this case. I was quite impressed by the surrealist; his work is comparable to Salvador Dali! The Art Museum really needs a serious makeover too. Its a rather large building, but the layout and what not really pales in comparison to the Guggenheim, SF MoMA, National Gallery of Art or the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.

After that we went to the Botanic Gardens to see the models and posters for the new Gardens by the Bay project at Marina Bay. There's essentially 3 parts to Gardens by the Bay: Marina South (IR), Marina East (near the golf course) and the giant Ferris Wheel area. The entire project is huge! There's gonna be lots of conservatories, edutainment, flower markets etc. So many things going on that New York Central Park pales in comparison. I feel that Marina South, where the bulk of the activity is, is actually quite out of the way though. I will definitely visit, but probably not on a regular basis. I doubt people will go there for a weekly jog like at East Coast Park. Its just too out of the way and too many things going on. Not sure how this thing is going to turn out.

This whole garden thing got me thinking about land usage in Singapore. We are barely 25 miles (40km) across, yet we have more than 10 golf courses, huge parks and gardens (botanic gardens, east coast park, sungei buloh, macritchie and other reserviors, and now marina bay), 2 civilian air ports (seletar and changi) and a huge port (PSA). And not to mention close to a quarter of the mainland is used by the military for training and other purposes. And yet we have 4.3 million people here. Someone tell me its not getting too crowded?