After Utopia: Revisiting the Ideal in Asian Contemporary Art

The crossing of a body of water, as implied by the work's title, is often a metaphor for a rite of passage, suggesting that one is now re-entering the unknown depths of this tangled, long-lost Eden.

Projected onto the wall like a window opening out into a vista. These were the dreams of yesteryear: romance and promise of the new world that voyages from distant lands set sail for.

Reminiscent of a gentleman's study-desk from colonial times, with an array of paraphernalia strewn across its surface alluding to themes of voyage, discovery and study.

A once-beautiful landscape has been ravaged by industry, and all that remains is a charred, blackened earth, bearing testament to the rapaciousness of humankind.

The shape of the sculpture references the humble kerosene stove, a source of energy and light for many residing in India's rural areas. Here however, its charred, its blackened form alluding to industrial waste and a spent resource, while its surfaces depicts an allegory of constant daily struggle for existence, annexed into a deadly coil of predator and prey.

A monumental arabesque of entangled motorcycle exhaust pipes is a sculptural statement on the environmental problems plaguing Bali. The formal contours of the sculpture evoke the undulating curves and claustrophobic density of a forest: here is the vanished primordial Eden, resurrected as an urban jungle in industrial materials. The rapid development of urban centres across the world, where infrastructural advancement fails to keep pace with population growth, resulting in topographies that slowly, but surely, begin to recall the nightmarish terrains on anti-utopian science fiction.

The installation mythologizes the history of The Artist Village, and its one-time home, enfolding details of major topographical elements with the myths and legends surrounding them.

This piece was originally presented as an accompaniment to Sembawang installation, and is an image of an avian species colloquially referred to as "tok-tok bird". The Chinese characters meaning "the phoenix of the deep scars", and the diamond shaped mirrors on which the sculpture is perched represent the creature's tears, as it emerges from the ashes of its rebirth, or renaissance.

The artist's grounded flying machines question our desire to command the skies, as well as our contemporary obsession with and reliance on technology, revealing these projections of power and ambition to be hollow and illusory.

The installation was conceived as a response to the financial crisis of the late-2000s, through the doom and gloom of which prophesies of Capitalism's end, and the collapse of the existing world order, were rife.

The central analogy links two forms of marriage: the first, the nuptials between the artist's parents, and, at a symbolic level, the political manoeuvrings and compromises that birthed Malaysia as an independent nation.

Over 6 full days in 2011, artist Svay Sareth walked from his home in Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. He hauled behind him a metal sphere 80Kg in weight as he walks. The journey he took can be seen as an attempt to come to terms with a painful past as well as a powerful mute testimony to the horrors of war and its effects on the lives of so many caught in the crossfire.

The artwork comprises of 366 carved figurines, each seated in a meditative posture, their number referencing the total number of days in a (leap) yea. This meditative repetition encourages a certain stillness and looking within oneself, thereby giving rise to self-awareness and peace as one is reconciled with the world.

A large scale installation of glittering, 'mirror' bombs raining down, summons the zeitgeist of contemporary times: of heady excess and hedonism-and creation-amidst catastrophic violence and destruction. Mesmerizing and menacing at the same time, Bomba is a death-defying disco, a reckless party for the end of the world.