Draft:Justin Loke

Singapore Artist - Curator - Writer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Justin Loke (born 1979) is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator based in Singapore.[1][2] He works across installation, theatre, and curatorial projects, with a practice that incorporates humour and social commentary.[3] Between 2011 and 2013, he also served as Associate Artistic Director at TheatreWorks.[4][AI-retrieved source] In 2009, he received the Singapore President's Young Talents Award[5] and the Japan Foundation Art Award.[6] He was also listed in 50 Singaporean artists You Should Know for SG50 both as a solo artist and part of the collective he co-founded.[7]

  • Comment: Judging by the creator's writing style, I do not believe their denial of a relationship with the subject. I will formally warn them on their talk page. Whyiseverythingalreadyused (t · c · he/him) 08:22, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
  • Comment: Unsure if person meets WP:BLP notability guidelines. Needs more secondary, reliable sources, see WP:SOURCE. BenTanXiaoMing (talk) 12:25, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
  • Comment: This suffers from multiple examples of WP:CITEKILL. Instead we need one excellent reference per fact asserted. If you are sure it is beneficial, two, and at an absolute maximum, three. Three is not a target, it's a limit. Aim for one. A fact you assert, once verified in a reliable source, is verified. More is gilding the lily. Please choose the very best in each case of multiple referencing for a single point and either drop or repurpose the remainder
    It will be almost impossible to give this a meaningful review until you have chosen the references you intend to use
    The overal effect is WP:BOMBARD, often employed to seek to demonstrate notability when none exists. We need quality of referencing, not quantity. You have work to do, please. 🇵🇸‍🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦‍🇵🇸 10:21, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
  • Comment: substantial edits since the last submission, but still needs some work. You need inline citations on all content, aim for a citation for every sentence. Content like this: "Although primarily known as a visual artist, Loke has also engaged with literature, drawing particular influence from Spanish and Latin American writers. His literary work has included translation, approached both in the linguistic sense and as a form of intertextual and comparative reading within philological and etymological contexts." can just be removed. WP:PROMO concerns throughout. Caleb Stanford (talk) 00:20, 1 September 2025 (UTC)
  • Comment: Declining again for now. I suggest you rewriting it from scratch, not using AI. The Career section should be the focus of the article and it should summarize in prose (again in your own words) what secondary, independent reliable sources say about Loke. See Your first article. S0091 (talk) 17:41, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
  • Comment: This needs to be completely rewritten. S0091 (talk) 17:16, 31 July 2025 (UTC)


As a co-founding member of Vertical Submarine, Loke has led the collective to receive several accolades, including the Singapore Art Show Judges' Choice (2005)[8], the Credit Suisse Artist Residency Award (2009)[9] and a nomination for the Signature Art Prize (Asia Pacific) (2011)[10] and won the Celeste Prize (2011) in New York[11]. In 2012, the collective participated in the Gwangju Biennale (2012).[12][13]

Career

Early trajectory with Vertical Submarine

Loke’s artistic career began in 2003 when he co-founded Vertical Submarine.[14] In 2009, the collective exhibited A View With A Room as part of the Singapore President’s Young Talents at Singapore Art Museum (SAM)’s 8Q gallery.[15] That same year, they were commissioned by Zouk, in collaboration with the Singapore Art Museum, to develop Flirting Point for ZoukOut 2009.[16] It was an interactive installation that satirically examined how flirting can be reduced to a site-specific activity carried out under instruction.[17] This installation was later re-presented in 2010.[17] During the Singapore Night Festival that year, they also presented Abusement Park, an installation that drew public attention and has continued to be referenced in accounts of the festival more than a decade later.[18]

In 2011, the Singapore Art Museum, in collaboration with the Singapore Writers Festival, commissioned the trio to create UnderWriter’s Table, a work that reflects the collective’s characteristic humour while critiquing the appropriation of literature for propagandistic purposes.[19] That same year, Vertical Submarine staged their first theatrical production, Dust: A Recollection, co-written and directed by Justin Loke and Joshua Yang, a member of the collective, and presented in collaboration with TheatreWorks (now T:>Works).[20] Loke and Yang also conceptualised Incendiary Texts II: Selected Anatomical Studies or Thirty-Six Eastern Vulgarities and One Incendiary Oath… In Roman Letters, which was presented at Art Stage Singapore in 2011 and later at Art HK in 2012.[21][22] The work featured thirty-six illustrated swear words, each incorporating anatomical references in the Hokkien dialect.[21] In 2012, Vertical Submarine also presented an installation at the 9th edition of Gwangju Biennale, titled “A Roundtable on ROUNDTABLE”. The work engaged with the biennale’s overarching theme, ‘ROUNDTABLE,’ addressing ideas of collectivity, shared narratives, and transnational dialogue.[23][24]

At Singapore Art Week 2015, the collective exhibited John Martin: The Butcher and the Surgeon at the Golden Mile Complex.[25] The work was later re-exhibited at Nunu Fine Art, which adapted its interior space for the first time to accommodate the installation.[25]

Solo debut as Justin Loke

Throughout his work with Vertical Submarine, Loke have been developing a body of work as a solo artist. His first solo exhibition in 2013 titled: The Seven Scenes of Barry Lyndon, featured a series of installation-based paintings inspired by scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 period film Barry Lyndon.[26][27] The exhibition was first presented at Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film[26][28], and was later shown at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore and at the Saatchi Gallery in London as part of the Prudential Eye programme (2015)[29][30]. In 2016, Loke collaborated with Samuel Chen on the exhibition Monkey Business, held from 28 July to 14 August at Chan Hampe Galleries in the Raffles Hotel Arcade.[31] The exhibition was later named one of the top ten shows of 2016 by The Business Times (Singapore).[32]

Institutional validation and market recognition

From 2016 onwards, Loke’s practice has received institutional validation through participation in global art markets as well as Singapore art-historical projects. Domesticated Violence, a sculptural work conceptualised by Loke and inspired by the writings of Argentine author Juan José Saer, was presented in 2016 as part of Vertical Submarine’s exhibition Death by a Thousand Cuts.[33] The work was later auctioned at Christie’s in Hong Kong.[34][35] In 2022, Loke was commissioned by the Singapore Night Festival to present a Highlight Act, resulting in The Curse of the Missing Red Shoe, a work that reimagined the history of Singapore’s Cathay Hotel.[36] Serving as writer and creative director, he designed an immersive experience in which visitors moved through rooms encountering characters from films previously screened by Cathay Studios.[37][38] In 2023, Loke was the curator for Benchmarks[39][40], a placemaking initiative in Singapore’s Civic District that featured a series of artist-designed benches created by six Singapore-based artists.[41][42]

In 2024, he presented 8-bit Word Cloud, a participatory installation on the Arts House Front Lawn as part of Light to Night Singapore. The work featured a poem with missing letters scattered across the Civic District, which visitors could locate and use to reconstruct the text.[1][43] Later in that year, Loke presented Leaving Room at Jakarta Art Exhibition 2024.[44][45] The installation transformed an art fair booth into a confined interior resembling both a hotel room and a prison cell.[46] The showcase was later listed among the top three booths by Plural Art Magazine.[47] In 2024, Loke also curated Creative Intersections: Traces of Dragons (2024) and subsequently, Creative Intersections: Snakes and Ladders (2025), both presented at Funan mall during Singapore Art Week.[48][49] During Singapore Design Week 2025, Loke participated as both an artist and a curator.[50] He presented Care-Full Shelter, an installation inspired by a bamboo feeding chair that invited visitors to sit, rest, and reconsider the function of chairs and communal spaces.[51] As part of the event’s programming of Care in Action, the installation was accompanied by Grandma Story in Three Seats, an interactive performance.[51] In addition to his artistic contribution, Loke curated Tran-Slate: Contemporary Design x Craft in collaboration with Heritage Singapore.[50] The inaugural edition featured a work by Saurabh Mangla, unveiled during Singapore Design Week at the National Library Board, Singapore.[50]

In 2025, he further developed his solo practice by presenting Unarmed Chairs in collaboration with Yeo Workshop as part of Holding (Space).[52] The work examines contemporary modes of consuming violence, particularly how it is mediated through screens and experienced from the comfort of domestic settings.[52] This body of work was later presented in another exhibition the titled "Inside the Dream of a Durian Seller".[53]

Literary and critical work

Although best known as a visual artist, Loke has also worked in the field of literature, drawing influence from Spanish and Latin American writers.[54][55] In 2013, Loke translated Art as a Sharp Weapon (21 June 1940) from Chinese, a text written by Lim Hak Tai, the founding principal of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.[56]

Selected art writings[57]

2013        The Logbook of Public Ideas Vol.II, Red Herring, The Substation, Singapore[58]

2012         The Logbook of Public Ideas Vol. I, Red Herring, The Substation, Singapore[59]

References

Related Articles

Wikiwand AI