Meet-the-People Session investigates the convergence of a free art workshop and a Meet the-People Session, a series of one-to-one meetings between elected members of parliament in their constituent in Singapore. The artists Jennifer Ng and Adrian Tan had planned and received permission to reinstate Singapore People’s Party (SPP) chairman Chiam See Tong’s table to the void deck as part of the interactive installation cum art workshop. The singular table that the veteran opposition politician used to conduct his Meet-the-People sessions for 27 years was then sited in SPP Head Quarters, having been used together with aluminum panels in creating a makeshift cubicle for the dialogue sessions. This proposal was rejected due to the limitation of time in addressing the need to attain a permit to exhibit the furniture.
The workshop that then took place across two weekends during the OH! Open House art festival at Potong Pasir involved both participants from outside the town and members of the town community. Through a series of exchanges, typographical posters, and public exhibition centered around a table of concrete artifacts and feedback drawn and written on multi-coloured paper, the artists re-territorised the void deck space at Block 140 through their own form of a Meet-the-People Session table.Â
Adrian Tan 