Urban: Backyard 《都市：後院》 – Recent Works of Lim Jia Qi

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"Urban : Backyard, as its name suggests, is a survey of nature in the urban landscape. Touted as a Garden City, and now moving towards becoming a City in Nature, Singapore earned the name through its assertive push to go green everywhere and anywhere on the sunny island. This tiny land without natural resources is ironically packed with lush greenery deliberately reserved or created to complement the unabated growth of high-rise architecture in the metropolis. As urban living and nature get more and more intertwined, the line between urban living and nature gets blurred. In fact, they are so interweaved that sometimes, we conveniently forget about them or even take them for granted – the intentionally scattered trees dotting our neighbourhood, the freshly pruned shrubbery along our pathways, and the creepers and ferns that have found a home on our HDB walls. Lim and her series of woodblocks are set to remind us of the fascinating green plot ratio inhabiting our densely populated environment.

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Hailed as one of the four great inventions of ancient China, printing contributes to one of the most significant leaps in the developments of literacy and art by allowing information to be disseminated and images to flourish. Lim’s affinity with printmaking began in college where she majored in the subject and was exposed to various print techniques such as copperplate etching, woodcut, silkscreen and lithography. Traditionally, wood blocks are carved and later pressed onto other surfaces such as papers and clothes. As Lim walks further along this path, she embraces other methods in her practice by painting directly on the wood blocks she carved, and instead of presenting the print as a result of her carving, the engraved block is the work itself. In the male-dominated field of printmaking, young and bold Lim has gradually established a presence of her own.

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Drawing inspiration from Singapore’s public housing estates, Lim’s Urban : Backyard is a captivating play on space and perception. Peek through the geometric openings that exist within our structured HDB blocks in Garden View Sketch (2021) and In and out (2021) as beyond these apertures are carefully planted organic finds meant to break the monotony of our concrete jungle. In A Tree, a Roof and a Pond (2021), Lim brings forth a common presence in many of our heartlands – the multi-purpose hall that usually exists within the residential area. This space overshadowed and bordered by the towering blocks has interestingly transformed into a welcoming backyard for all, with its cottage-like appearance and a coincidental pond formed by a rain puddle on the lawn. Shelters and Puddles (2022) and Green Puzzle (2022) bring us up in the air and far from the ground respectively, where the framing of nature becomes conspicuous. The elevated presence of nature within the mass-produced elements of man-made infrastructure echo that they are there, and so there they are."

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- Helina Chan, Managing Directir at iPRECIATION