In 1989, Dr. Neville Ellis, an art teacher in one of the top high schools in Singapore, published an article titled “Will the Gifted Blossom?” in School Arts magazine. The essay provides an account of how Singapore’s Art Elective Programme (AEP) was established, refined and implemented in a handful of top-ranking secondary schools. 

Behind the lemon-yellow door in Singapore’s Goodman Arts Centre lies an idiosyncratic collection belonging to a 31-year-old artist and self-professed natural-history lover. Whimsical memorabilia fills the laboratory-like space; life-size replicas of a rottweiler, tortoise and stork greet the visitor.

Adrian Jones is not a familiar name in the who’s who of international art collectors. This 48-year-old Englishman lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, and maintains a modest profile—despite having written a successful book on video games at age 17, in 1983, and developing an early Windows-based email system called WinMail that was licensed by IBM.

As visitors to Tate Modern’s 2013 show on Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair turned into the penultimate gallery, they were stopped in their tracks by a startling sight. Before them stood a rickety picture frame holding a grimy, mangled painting with a gaping, fist-sized hole at its center. 

The four-year-old Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) has organized several important exhibitions of acclaimed Chinese contemporary artists during its short history. “Misdemeanours” brought about a change, presenting a 15-year survey of one of India’s most eminent artists, Bharti Kher. 

The gorgeous image of a partially devoured goldfish sets the tone for “The Swimmers,” a solo exhibit by Angki Purbandono at Mizuma Gallery’s Singapore location. The Indonesian artist presented some two dozen trenchant scan-art works that he had created together with fellow inmates during his ten-month stint in a Yogyakarta prison from December 2012. 

Winter in Shanghai brings frigid, cruel weather. Ice forms on desultory puddles and residual snow lurks in shadowy corners. The sun hides behind a blanket of pollution and the air is stagnant. 

No one can talk about the contents in the room. Period. That is the unyielding underlying principle of The Social Contract (2007– ), a project conceived by Jacqueline Riva and Geoffrey Lowe, who together form the collaborative A Constructed World.