The series View From This Side (2022) represents the final segment in artist Wei Leng Tay’s experimentation with a bag of family photographic slides. These slides date back to the 1960s and 1970s, at a time where Singapore and the region were emerging as new independent nations, and families—including the artist’s parents—were actively moving between these newly formed nations in search of a better life. But these slides captured not just the energy and spirit of that period; they are also materially a record of the effects of time and climate, as evident in their colour shift, dust, and spotting. As the artist puts it, “A white cardboard slide mount starts to appear like a chalkboard. An idyllic horizon burns like it is lit by fire behind a gird.” Viewed from this perspective, these source materials are not simply photographic images that recorded the surface of a point in time (e.g. the 1960s and 1970s), but are “photo-objects” that continue to record time and its effects.In Untitled (car parked by building), a car is visible in the distance, parked momentarily. On one hand, this is a record of the 1960s and 1970s, at a time of new nations and emerging economies in Asia, and where cars were increasingly viewed as a vehicle for both social and economic mobility. A gap is left between the scanned image and the photo frame to indicate that the image is not cropped. This acts as a clue for the rest of the images in the series which appear to in full bleed but are essentially scanned images cropped to their details.
