Return to Singapore: Reactions to Urban Renewal

Goh returned to Singapore in 1966. Here, he found himself in a different “nervous city”: newly independent, caught between conflicting pressures to build a successful economy on one hand, and a unified cultural identity on the other. A recurring theme for Goh during this period was Singapore’s urban redevelopment and its impact on society. Using collage and acrylic paint, he depicted a strained city undergoing a drastic transformation between the late-1960s and 1980s. Taking an aerial perspective, he evoked cramped urban conditions, and used hues which he felt were “the colours of Singapore.” Goh was deeply ambivalent about the issue of redevelopment. He lived and worked in Chinatown, a neighbourhood which saw heated debate over its conservation status for decades, and he was concerned about the trade-off between preservation and progress. This can be seen in the collage Urban Renewal, which features an exuberant palette of colours and a dizzying array of forms. Deliberately giving the work the quality of doodles, Goh renders the urban mosaic as kitsch, perhaps a comment on the dangers of heritage areas becoming overcommercialised. During this period, Goh was also preoccupied with capturing the character and charm of pre-war architecture, particularly weathered windows and building surfaces. An example is his 1987 collage-painting, Windows. Incorporating objects such as string and nails, the work has a gritty, three-dimensional quality. The zoomed-in front-on perspective, faded colours and worn textural detail creates an elegiac, archival quality and an aged realism. In tension with the bright pastiche of Urban Renewal, this work wistfully attempts to capture the authenticity and beauty of local traditional architecture, before it disappears.