Image size: 63.4 x 26.5 cm,
Object size: 79.0 x 31.6 cm,
Image size: 63.3 x 26.2 cm
This is a photo collage by Singapore-based French artist Gilles Massot (b. 1955) depicting a traditional shophouse pillar sign of a Chinese bakery Xin Mei Li Bing Jia (新美利饼家) along Balestier Road. While it was originally meant as a preparatory work for photographic sculptures or 'photo-objects' featured in his 1991 solo exhibition "Singapore, Boy...Time Flies with You", it has over the years taken on new significance as a historical record of these vanishing shophouse signs, which constitute a vibrant aspect of Singapore's typographic streetscapes. It also served as vital documentation for trades and businesses which no longer exist in the district.Created in the early 1990s, this image also reflected the emergence of conceptual photography in Singapore, whereby photographers like Massot delved into exploring the medium beyond its literal, documentational function, to express more abstract and symbolic ideas. Massot's use of the photo collage aesthetic defies conventional straight photography by fragmenting the pictorial plane, and assembling different perspectives of a scene shot across different angles and time together to form a unified whole. This methodology resembles the optics of seeing and remembering — whereby the eye and mind work in tandem to organise various visual information and memories to form a collective impression.
