Photobook: The Abeyant Nursery

Singapore, 2020 Co-published by Quinn Lum and THEBOOKSHOW Hard cover with exposed bind 230 x 165 x 15mm The Abeyant Nursery (re)orders a history of trauma and creative identity. Painting a picture of the child and the artist who are made and remade over the course of the book, associations are juxtaposed between images of mixed media and are played provocatively with repetition. Control and ownership of the artist’s past and present are orchestrated through corrections, edits, gaps, intentional overexposure, and plaintive text, casting his self-image through a processual exploration of image-making. The weight of evaluation by parents and by the self looms large as a concern and visual conceit in The Abeyant Nursery, and the question of freedom and liberation from its hold lingers for both the artist and his readers. This book won the inaugural Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF) Printing Prize in 2019, sponsored by Dominie Press.