Soft Whispers of the City: Riverbank

In this series, Goh incorporates fallen petals and leaves from the plants and flowers surrounding a river, drawing attention to their unique biological pigments as she frames them against clean white ceramic backgrounds. During her discoveries of natural landscapes around the city, Goh shares how she was fascinated by the way flora formed their colours: flowers, for instance, possess certain colours to attract bees; and the bees, feeding off the flowers, in effect affect the way these flowers grow and reproduce. Colour is thus a vital part of their interconnectedness and mutually fruitful relationship–assuming not just aesthetic value, but becoming the voice of these flowers, integral to their survival. Centring flora in her work, Goh reveals her deepening connection to and understanding of her mediums, and an almost sacred respect for a quality as natural and ordinary as their colour. Against otherwise clinical, monochromatic white and grey backgrounds, the deep greens of eucalyptus leaves and earthy browns of soil and foraged plants serve as vivid accents that bring raw, organic warmth to her pieces–as if breathing in them the same vital life and nurture they freely give in their original, natural habitats. 

Apart from flowers, plants and soil, Goh contrasts these natural materials with her signature mediums of cement and wood. Like in her previous work, their surfaces create the illusions of spacious indoor places, making up wide walls, sprawling floors and sturdy columns. Yet, as the foraged flora adorn and command attention in these spaces, Goh creates a fluid atmosphere that brings the outdoors indoors–seamlessly marrying the comforts and respite of empty, urban structures and the wonders and intricacies of the wilder natural world. The pieces in this series thus offer a peek into the artist’s shifting, broadening perspective–one that sees architectural spaces no longer sealed off from the rest of the world, but deeply immersed and embedded in a larger, ecological environment. Like the interdependency of flowers and bees, the works reveal a desire for a relationship between city structures and nature that is no longer exploitative, but mutually beneficial, gratuitous and harmonious.