1946–present
Chong Fah Cheong
Chong Fah Cheong (b. 1946) went from being a novice in the De La Salle Brothers to becoming a sculptor whose works stand in the streets of Singapore. He carved his first pieces from trees felled in a school yard, and later worked in bronze, marble and jade. In 2014 he received the Cultural Medallion, the country’s highest arts award.
Biography
In 1981 Chong’s “Triad” won first prize for sculpture at the Singapore Innovations in Art Exhibition. By then he had already left teaching three years earlier.
He was the twelfth of thirteen children of a general practitioner and a housewife. He had loved drawing since the age of four, but did poorly in his academic subjects. At fourteen, after finishing Form 3 (Year 10) at St. Joseph’s Institution, he left school and entered the novitiate of the Lasalle Brothers, a Catholic teaching order, in Penang. He spent seven years in a cloistered life, training to be a teacher. In 1967 Chong returned to secular life and began teaching in Teluk Anson, Malaysia. A year later he left that post to read Social Science at the University of Singapore, and then took a diploma in curriculum studies in art and design at the City of Birmingham Polytechnic in the United Kingdom. In the 1970s he taught art at Saint Patrick’s School. Its principal, Brother Joseph McNally, told him to make use of the wood from trees felled on the school grounds. Chong’s first sculptures were made from it. In 1978 he left the school and began working as a sculptor.
He worked in both abstract and figurative styles. He became best known for a series of figurative sculptures about the people who lived and worked along the Singapore River; the statues near Cavenagh Bridge are connected with it. It seems to me telling that he remains a sculptor of scenes from life rather than of monuments on pedestals, though that is my impression, not a conclusion drawn from documents.
In 2000, commissioned by the Singapore Tourism Board, Chong made the sculpture “First Generation” for the Open Air Interpretative Centre project. It was the first in the series to be unveiled, on 31 December 2000. In 2001 Wing Tai Holdings commissioned “An Overture” from him, a jade sculpture for the courtyard of the House of Tan Yeok Nee, a national monument whose restoration had been completed in September 2000. Work began on 14 February, and it was unveiled on 13 July 2001. In 2002 the city of Penticton commissioned a bronze group of children at play, “The Romp”. In 2011, for the 80th anniversary of the brewing company Asia-Pacific Breweries, he made the bronze group “Chang Kuda”: six boys riding piggyback. It was installed at Swan Lake in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The Bamboo Garden at the National Library building, opened in April 2012, shows nine of his bronze and marble figures of readers and fantastical creatures.
In 2014 Chong received the Cultural Medallion. Eighteen of his sculptures entered Singapore’s National Collection and were shown at the National Gallery when it opened in 2015.
Profile notes