CHIEU Shuey Fook
His work is in the permanent collection of the Singapore Art Museum
representing 2nd Generation Singapore Art.
Major art commissions include enamel frieze at Orchard MRT Station.

Email lifineartgallery@yahoo.com to view or purchase

Born 1934 in Singapore and graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art in 1953. Chieu's metal relief "Water House" won the first prize in the Instant Asia Art Competition in 1970; and "Demon Fish" won two citation awards in New York and selected by ITT for their worldwide advertising campaigns. He is also a first prize winner for the abstract painting category in the Singapore Art Society Art Competition.

He held five solo shows in Frankfurt, Germany, Macau and Singapore.

His major art commissions include aluminium relief murals for a fleet of 20 Singapore Airlines Boeing 747s, enamel frieze at Orchard MRT Station and fiberglass relief murals in Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore. His work is also in the permanent collection of the Singapore Art Museum.

Chieu worked as a visualiser in an advertising agency for 24 years, he patterned his life as art director in the agency by day and an artist at night.

"I enjoyed my work in the advertising agency immensely. All along I was lucky to be given a reasonable free hand by the creative directors. I made fine art the focus of my graphic designs, giving priority to creativity and experimentation. They appealed to our clients. This approach meant my designs and paintings or metal reliefs fused easily with one another.

More and more of my ideas come out in low relief ie aluminum, copper, copper enamel, steel and zinc.

They have a life of their own in light. They are more complete than anything I have done in the past. Experimentation is obviously important as it is through his concepts, the artist has much to gain through the exploration of media and materials. But the artist must guard against preconceived solutions. I find endless possibilities working with metal.

In Singapore, if an artist sticks to only one form of art, he will have difficulty making living out of it. The answer, I believe, is to be able to tackle the different mediums. Indeed, the artist must always bear in mind the collector's needs. Discerning collectors look for uniqueness in ideas and application."

Glass is another medium worked by Chieu. Brightly colour glass fragments radiate from the pristine whiteness of tile with bursting energy. Figurative shapes dance across some works, while other reflect balanced abstractions of geometry, colour and symmetry. A rainbow parade of gaily-stained glass decorates each work, changing contents from piece to piece, but not vibrancy, thus displaying the artist's rich kaleidoscopic palette.

Always on the lookout to recycle materials, many Singaporean artists use discarded objects in very innovative ways in their art. In Chieu's case, the glass is recycled even the tiny glass fragments and powder that result from shattered glasses are not wasted: Chieu can incorporate them into his works to give a touch of textural qualities.