INDEX
Decorative Disobedience
22 January–25 January 2025
S.E.A. Focus 2026
Marina Bay Sand Expo & Convention Centre
Singapore, Singapore
Curated by John Z.W. Tung
Images Coutesy of Richard Koh Fine Art
Related Artworks
You Need to Relax! (2026)
And It’s Getting Harder! (2026)
The Gossip Machine! (2026)
You’re Not a Boss if You’ve Got a Boss! (2026)
IWhat a Deadly Dangerous Thing! (2026)
Never in Our Favour! (2026)
Here, Come, I’ll Clean It for You! (2026)
Your Sign to Take a Hint! (2026)
We Are Not the Same! (2026)
The People’s Princess! (2026)
The World is Your Dominion! (2026)
A Future of Fear! (2026)
Best in Show, Always! (2026)
For Real, I Swear! (2026)
An Artist-Eat-Artist World! (2026)
A Full-on Production! (2026)
This Is All Too Much! (2026)
The Hidden Agendas! (2026)
The Great Gross! (2026)
I’m Here for a Big Slice of Pie! (2026)
The Grand Gesture! (2026)
Utterly Consumed! (2026)
Don’t Rock the Boat! (2026)
A Token of No One’s Appreciation! (2026)
A Hedonist, Through and Through! (2026)
22 January–25 January 2025
S.E.A. Focus 2026
Marina Bay Sand Expo & Convention Centre
Singapore, Singapore
Curated by John Z.W. Tung
Images Coutesy of Richard Koh Fine Art
Related Artworks
You Need to Relax! (2026)
And It’s Getting Harder! (2026)
The Gossip Machine! (2026)
You’re Not a Boss if You’ve Got a Boss! (2026)
IWhat a Deadly Dangerous Thing! (2026)
Never in Our Favour! (2026)
Here, Come, I’ll Clean It for You! (2026)
Your Sign to Take a Hint! (2026)
We Are Not the Same! (2026)
The People’s Princess! (2026)
The World is Your Dominion! (2026)
A Future of Fear! (2026)
Best in Show, Always! (2026)
For Real, I Swear! (2026)
An Artist-Eat-Artist World! (2026)
A Full-on Production! (2026)
This Is All Too Much! (2026)
The Hidden Agendas! (2026)
The Great Gross! (2026)
I’m Here for a Big Slice of Pie! (2026)
The Grand Gesture! (2026)
Utterly Consumed! (2026)
Don’t Rock the Boat! (2026)
A Token of No One’s Appreciation! (2026)
A Hedonist, Through and Through! (2026)
Description
Excerpt from Press Release by S.E.A. Focus
The eighth edition of S.E.A. Focus was held from 23 to 25 January 2026 and, for the first time, staged within ART SG at Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands Singapore. Created by John Z.W. Tung, the 2026 edition explored the theme The Humane Agency, showcasing a selection of works by established and emerging regional artists.
In times of unsettling change—of borders, climates, and belonging—it is not simply these shifts that define us, but how we choose to respond. The Humane Agency traced the quiet force of artists who, through image and material, act not as chroniclers of crisis but as participants in the difficult, necessary work of compassion.
Here, the person is neither subject nor symbol, but a site of relation. Across a range of artistic media, this edition of S.E.A. Focus drew together practices that resist detachment. Instead, they insist on proximity: to histories unsettled, to environments imperilled, to lives in motion. The presentation emerges at the intersection of three global currents: the persistence of conflict and the longing for peace; the intensifying ecological crisis; and the movement of peoples across and beyond nation-states. Art, in this context, becomes a mode of attention—slowing perception, deepening feeling, and remaining our capacity to care.
What binds these works is not a single message but a shared ethic: that empathy is neither ornamental nor optional. It is method. It is urgency. It is the first step toward imagining futures less estranged, less extractive, more entangled. The humane, then, is not a theme but a horizon. And the artist—through acts of making, sensing, and remembering—becomes not only witness to the world, but a vital agent in its refiguring.
Excerpt from Artist Statement
The new works presented at S.E.A. FOCUS 2026 emerge from a period of deep reflection, particularly following the revelations of my recent solo exhibition, Welcome Back, Boo. In addition to opening up new directions, the solo also marked a turning point that reaffirmed the material and conceptual threads running through my practice and deepened my understanding of how questions of identity, visibility, and materiality shape it. Whilst textiles and labour-intensive techniques remain central, I find myself more attentive than before to the overlap across medium, meaning and form.
In this new series, titled “Decorative Disobedience”, of twenty-four text-based gilded canvases, text reemerges as a central tool. Its return is not simply a novel revival of past formats, but reflective of a broader shift in my practice that embraces clarity without losing the tactile richness of material. Just as my ruched and specular surfaces conveyed presence and insisted on visibility, text anchor these works in language, reminding me that words themselves can be sculptural, declarative, and intimate all at once.
I have worked with text for a while now. The bulk of my earlier works employed text as a means to quite literally communicate thoughts and ideas, explicitly. Having drifted away from text for the past three years to explore more maximalist abstract outcomes, I find myself, gravitating back to it at this point in time. Perhaps it is a response to the times, in addition to being more grounded with what I have and want to say. Nonetheless, the new works feel like a breakthrough that needed space between my ongoing formats. The texts themselves move between recurring themes of social commentary, belonging, and protection. Rather than raw thoughts, these are chosen moments and realisations that trace my lived experience thus far, both as an artist and as a person still ultimately “figuring it out.”
Excerpt from Press Release by S.E.A. Focus
The eighth edition of S.E.A. Focus was held from 23 to 25 January 2026 and, for the first time, staged within ART SG at Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands Singapore. Created by John Z.W. Tung, the 2026 edition explored the theme The Humane Agency, showcasing a selection of works by established and emerging regional artists.
In times of unsettling change—of borders, climates, and belonging—it is not simply these shifts that define us, but how we choose to respond. The Humane Agency traced the quiet force of artists who, through image and material, act not as chroniclers of crisis but as participants in the difficult, necessary work of compassion.
Here, the person is neither subject nor symbol, but a site of relation. Across a range of artistic media, this edition of S.E.A. Focus drew together practices that resist detachment. Instead, they insist on proximity: to histories unsettled, to environments imperilled, to lives in motion. The presentation emerges at the intersection of three global currents: the persistence of conflict and the longing for peace; the intensifying ecological crisis; and the movement of peoples across and beyond nation-states. Art, in this context, becomes a mode of attention—slowing perception, deepening feeling, and remaining our capacity to care.
What binds these works is not a single message but a shared ethic: that empathy is neither ornamental nor optional. It is method. It is urgency. It is the first step toward imagining futures less estranged, less extractive, more entangled. The humane, then, is not a theme but a horizon. And the artist—through acts of making, sensing, and remembering—becomes not only witness to the world, but a vital agent in its refiguring.
Excerpt from Artist Statement
The new works presented at S.E.A. FOCUS 2026 emerge from a period of deep reflection, particularly following the revelations of my recent solo exhibition, Welcome Back, Boo. In addition to opening up new directions, the solo also marked a turning point that reaffirmed the material and conceptual threads running through my practice and deepened my understanding of how questions of identity, visibility, and materiality shape it. Whilst textiles and labour-intensive techniques remain central, I find myself more attentive than before to the overlap across medium, meaning and form.
In this new series, titled “Decorative Disobedience”, of twenty-four text-based gilded canvases, text reemerges as a central tool. Its return is not simply a novel revival of past formats, but reflective of a broader shift in my practice that embraces clarity without losing the tactile richness of material. Just as my ruched and specular surfaces conveyed presence and insisted on visibility, text anchor these works in language, reminding me that words themselves can be sculptural, declarative, and intimate all at once.
I have worked with text for a while now. The bulk of my earlier works employed text as a means to quite literally communicate thoughts and ideas, explicitly. Having drifted away from text for the past three years to explore more maximalist abstract outcomes, I find myself, gravitating back to it at this point in time. Perhaps it is a response to the times, in addition to being more grounded with what I have and want to say. Nonetheless, the new works feel like a breakthrough that needed space between my ongoing formats. The texts themselves move between recurring themes of social commentary, belonging, and protection. Rather than raw thoughts, these are chosen moments and realisations that trace my lived experience thus far, both as an artist and as a person still ultimately “figuring it out.”