Ripple Effect The Art of Teachers of Art

In celebration of NIE75, the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University (NIE NTU, Singapore) presents Ripple Effect: The Art of Teachers of Art.

The exhibition presents works that engage with the evolving nature of art education and its future, alongside pieces that reflect personal memories of campus life and the spaces where learning unfolds.

Through thoughtful, erudite, and often playful expressions, the faculty of the NIE’s Visual and Performing Arts Department remind us that teaching and art-making are inseparable pursuits—each enriching the other in purpose and practice.

Other works capture the spirit of play and exploration that has long coloured both classrooms and schoolyards.

View exhibition guide here

Catch the highlights of the closing ceremony here:

Artworks

5 Stones (2019) Inflatable sculpture

TWARDZIK CHING CHOR LENG

The children’s game of “5 stones” was once common in Singapore. Here, these stones are reimagined as monumental inflatables, scattered across NIE’s campus in locales that draw the viewer’s eye to them, or interrupt one’s everyday routine. The oversized stones seem to playfully suggest that these are a giant's forgotten toys—transforming an institutional landscape into a space of play.

Context of Urges (Diptych) (2014) Oil on linen

DAVID CHAN

Chan draws from a subject deeply rooted in Biblical lore and Western art history—the apple. He uses it as a pedagogical tool to cultivate students’ visual sensitivity, encouraging close observation and reflection. In this diptych, the same apple and frame are presented twice: as a solitary object, its frame scraped raw; resting delicately in a silver dish, in a frame left with its original finish. These shifts in representation create entirely distinct impressions, despite being premised on the same object, and foreground questions of perception and value.

How Are Georgette Chen’s Paintings Similar to French Modernist Art? (2025) Text and images

YOW SIEW KAH

Georgette Chen, a Nanyang School artist, is famed for still-lifes of tropical fruits and plants. Her work parallels Post-Impressionists Cézanne’s structural still-lifes and Gauguin’s bold tropical themes. In “How are Georgette Chen’s Paintings Similar to French Modernist Art?”, Yow uses computational “distant viewing” of brightness and chroma, showing stylistic affinities while highlighting Chen’s distinctively subtle palette and East–West fusion.

Tree of Imagination (2025) Digital projection

NICOLA & TRICIA (Nicola Choo & Tricia Goh)

Choo and Goh’s interactive installation reimagines Chern Lian Shan’s Tree of Education at NIE. Viewing learning as fluid and non-linear, they celebrate its “beautiful messiness.” The digital tree evolves through visitor interaction—images, thoughts, or traces—transforming into a communal creation. Each contribution nurtures growth, symbolizing education as a dynamic, co-created process rooted in collaboration and shared creativity.

9th August (2006) Single-channel video (Duration: 7’12")

TAN PIN PIN

9th August weaves 41 years of National Day Parade footage, highlighting Singapore’s transformation alongside the parade’s enduring choreography. Structured in five movements—fly-pasts, salutes, political figures waving, mass displays, and audiences—the film reflects on the nation’s passage through time. Accompanied by Philip Tan’s original score, it conveys both continuity and change, inviting viewers to experience Singapore’s evolving journey.

Pot-Trait of Young LKY (2025) Bronze

SECK YOK YING

Seck’s vessel-portrait, inspired by childhood memories of Lee Kuan Yew’s resolute speeches, reimagines portraiture beyond figural likeness. Using negative space to suggest his profile, the work questions how vases can embody people while embracing both strengths and flaws. It serves as a personal tribute to Lee’s enduring vision of education as Singapore’s greatest asset and lasting legacy.

Silent Reflections (2025) Plated porcelain

BAET YEOK KUAN

Baet’s porcelain raindrop sculptures, inspired by Singapore’s tropical rainfall, reflect nature’s quiet yet lasting imprint. Subtly varied in form and arranged like a constellation, the droplets mirror their surroundings and evoke water’s rhythms. The installation resonates with NIE’s greenery, metaphorically linking rainfall to growth, symbolizing an environment that nurtures intellect and creativity within the campus’s learning landscape.

Meditation (2025) Fabric, paper and ink

TANG WAI WAH

Tang’s work symbolically explores learning by overlaying a whale school drawing with circuit board patterns, reflecting digital education. Visible only through shibori-dyed fabric—a nod to her fashion background—the piece contrasts organic textile patterns with structured digital forms. Tang likens this to students’ layered growth, paralleling bound and released fabric or whales’ deep journeys, shaped gradually by time and experience.

Untitled #1, Untitled #2, Untitled #3 (2025) Mixed media

APRIL NG KIOW NGOR

Ng’s series fuses silkscreen and oil painting, creating tensions between print and paint that mirror layered meanings. Depicting her son adorned with flowers yet bearing bullet earrings, and her niece collaged with war imagery and crucifix bracelets, the works juxtapose innocence and conflict. Ng frames them as dialogues between mechanical and gestural, control and uncontrollable, reflecting fragility within human experience.

Construction - Line, Frame, Foundation Ahmad

Construction - Line, Frame, Foundation (2025) Clay, glaze, underglaze

AHMAD ABU BAKAR

Ahmad’s ceramic vessels reflect Singapore’s ever-changing urban landscape, inspired by his commute to NIE and NTU’s ongoing construction. Their raw textures and perforated forms recall iconic structures like NTU’s Hive and Tampines NEWater towers, as well as MRT construction materials. He likens this architectural foundation to education, emphasizing that strong infrastructure mirrors the need for nurturing future educators and leaders.

Fields of Unknowing (2025) Various Medium , Fields of Possibility (view from NIE VPA) (2025) Oil on paper, Six to One Composition (Collage of drawings from the Edgeworlds Series) (2024-25) Flower and fruit matter, various medium

VINCENT TWARDZIK CHING

The artist explores overlooked spaces between urban and natural terrains, creating works from organic materials during a residency with Ahmad Abu Bakar. Six to One Composition used clay and plants, while Fields of Possibility and Fields of Unknowing depict the NIE Art Gallery’s wooded edge. Blending experimentation, interactivity, and natural energy, Twardzik Ching emphasizes deep ecological connections, echoing John Muir’s reflections on nature.

Pavlov’s New Dog (2025) Mixed media on AI-generated print on printed paper

PAUL LINCOLN

Referencing Pavlov’s conditioning experiment, the work critiques how humans may be shaped by AI. Using a generative program, the artist created a paint-by-number German Shepherd, painting within its structure while adding expressive deviations. These gestures highlight tension between instruction and individuality. Distortions in the dog reveal AI’s fallibility, reflecting “model drift” and underscoring negotiation between mechanised systems and human choice.

Manual to Machine – A Dialogue in Three Images (2025) Pencil, Sora

LOW JOO HONG

Low’s triptych reimagines his HDB childhood, featuring his mother’s sewing machine and Tua Pek Kong’s icon. Using Sora, he generated AI versions of his drawing—one in full color, another Pixar-styled. By juxtaposing hand-drawn and AI-derived images, the work questions authorship and agency in an era where machine learning blurs boundaries between tool, artist, and artwork, reshaping notions of creativity and learning.

Probable Arrangements (2025) Archival pigment print

SWENG (Lee Siew Weng)

Sweng’s digital photograph uses the Lego brick as a motif of probability and pedagogy, referencing David Deutsch’s Constructor Theory. Symbolizing education’s building blocks, the bricks reflect learning as selective construction of meaning. A narrow strip of sky cuts through the composition, evoking infinite possibility within constraint, and framing education as both structured and open-ended in shaping the future.