Friday night excursion!

Friday nights are a precious commodity. For some reason, there's this urge to spend it wisely, and preferably on things social. It is afterall Friday, where the weekend unofficially starts.

I was all ready last Friday to head down to the gym to try out a belly-dancing class I've been meaning to go for that night, when an evening work meeting stretched past its time and made it impossible for me to go.

So, abandon Plan A.

Just then, one of my curators marched over to our desk exclaiming that "Auntie" Joyce was doing her last museum tour for the year. Finally, ART EXPLAINED - How can anyone miss something like that??

So we merrily trudged down to SAM, all 3 of us with "Auntie" Joyce, proclaiming loudly as we walked how we'd be her biggest and most awe-struck fans ever. We even devised a plan to take on different personas - bimbo, tourist, Ms Know-All, etc, just to make the experience "more interesting". Our contagious enthusiasm made "Auntie" Joyce chuckle.

What struck me walking thru the galleries of works by local artists is how first-hand the information or contact with them seems - the curators literally can say "Oh, when I first met Gerogette Chen in the 80s, she was like this and this" or "I asked Iskhandar Jalil why this piece was created like this....". Its so different from visiting HUGE galleries overseas of old masterpieces from the 18th or 19th centuries, but never really sharing that "closeness" or affinity to the artist to understand what they did and why they did it. Joyce had much to share from her years working here. Its so much more real, what we have here.

We dropped by the other exhibitions in SAM as well - the Teblah Terbib one which is for the Biennale, and the Zaha Hardid (a renown London architect) collaboration to display the best of Deutsche Bank's collection. I have to admit that the Zaha Hardid exhibition intrigued me thoroughly. The use of architect within a neo-classical buildng like tt to break the lines and define new spaces or new ways of looking at an old space - amazing to say the least. My picture above doesn't do it justice - U have to walk within to be stunned by its sheer size and beauty. Go see it if you have time (Show ends Nov 12).

It was a Friday evening well spent.