Please Return All Stolen Artefacts, 2022

Please Return All Stolen Artefacts
2022
Faux bronze vase, wood, primer and acrylic paint
64 x 13 x 13 cm

Inspired by current affairs in Singapore which surround the alleged theft of cultural property on an institutional level, this work titled “Please return all stolen artefacts” explores ideas of cultural repatriation, contestation and authenticity.

Since 2020, Paradise Now has been amalgamating incompatible elements — from conflicting histories to personal experiences, painting to emergent media to reflect on the complexities of our lives and our conditions.

Here, the duo continues this thread of inquiry by embracing the contrast between materials of opposing nature.

Intervening with a faux bronze sculpture originally displayed in Sidley Austin’s Singapore lobby, the work is reconfigured with wood to resemble an artillery shell.

“Please return all stolen artefacts” represents the artists’ rumination around broader topics of international contestation of property and the origins of cultural artefacts.

Formed in 2020, Paradise Now is a Multimedia Artist Collective (Bryan Tan, Jay Ho) whose artworks assimilate a diversity of daily influences drawn from perception through observation.

With a penchant for amalgamating incompatible elements, Paradise Now grows as a natural synergy of conflicting histories and personal experiences - they seek to explore the notion of space/mental space, memories, emotions, symbolism and metaphors through multidisciplinary approaches.

Paradise Now is a repository for their thoughts and memories that would otherwise fade away with the business of daily living.