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LITERATURE
Cheong Soo-Pieng Catalogue, Universiti Malaya’s Art Museum, Kuala Lumpur, 1956, featuring three articles by Ma Ke, J.A.H. Flak and Professor Michael Sullivan, illustrated.

This unusual watercolour by Cheong Soo Pieng, Rubbish Dump, depicting historical Singapore in a scene showing discarded furniture in a junkyard has finally come into the market.

The building with the clock tower in the background is actually the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall which was the venue of the founding of the ruling People’s Action Party, with the landmark 54-metre tower added in 1906.

In a New York Times article on Oct 6, 2010, writer Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop observed, “Cheong’s work focused on scenes of the ‘everyday’, but went beyond depicting ordinary people engaged in common activities, like mending fishing nets or watching puppet shows. He also was interested in forgotten spaces and discarded objects, an interest that can be seen in the undated ‘Untitled (a Rubbish Dump)’ in the collection of NHB, Singapore, a watercolour on paper that depicts a junkyard with views of a mosque in the background.”

Seng Yu-Jin, one of the curators in the Cheong Soo Pieng: Bridging Worlds exhibition (Singapore Art Museum) in 2010, commented, “Cheong was very interested in the industrialisation of Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s. Some of his paintings represent power grids, factories, oil refineries, junkyards. These were very unusual subjects for local artists at the time.”