Ng Eng Teng

Biography

On the evening of 4 September 1970, an exhibition opened in the lecture hall of the National Library of Singapore that would later be regarded as the start of Ng Eng Teng’s professional career. It ran for five days, jointly sponsored by the Singapore Art Society, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and the Society of Chinese Artists. It was opened by the Minister of State for Labour, Sia Kah Hui.

He was born on 12 July 1934 in Singapore, then a British colony. According to the accounts, his interest in modelling began in childhood, after he played with plasticine. In 1955 he passed the Senior Cambridge examinations, and in 1958 he took painting and sculpture classes at the British Council with Liu Kang and in the same year entered the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. There he experimented with different materials while the other students followed the curriculum. In 1959 he met the English sculptor Jean Bullock, who introduced him to ciment fondu, then a fairly new sculpting medium. His teacher Georgette Chen also noticed him. She often invited him to her home to discuss aesthetics, and he would spend a long time looking at the ceramics she kept there. There were no sculptors in Singapore at the time, and Chen concluded that his ability with clay and his fluent English promised him a future on exactly this path. She advised him to study in Stoke-on-Trent, the centre of British ceramics, and to visit the potter Bernard Leach at St Ives, whom she greatly admired.

He took her advice: in 1962, after graduating from the Academy, he left for Stoke-on-Trent. In 1962–1963 he studied ceramic design at the North Staffordshire College of Technology (Stoke-on-Trent College of Art), and in 1964 he spent a year at the Farnham School of Art in Surrey as a research student in ceramics and sculpture.

Next he found himself in County Cork, Ireland, where at the Carrigaline Pottery he designed tiles, hollow-ware and tableware. His work was shown at the Arts and Crafts Centre of Britain and at spring fairs, and The Irish Press wrote about the success of his pieces on the local market. In 1966 the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers awarded him a diploma. But life in Cork seemed to him too comfortable, and what he made was more craft than art. He decided to go back. There were three reasons: to set up a workshop and teach pottery, to support his family, and to answer Georgette Chen’s plea to her students to help their alma mater. The Academy’s administration rejected his idea of a pottery workshop there. He opened a workshop with his father’s help and made a series of pieces by slip casting and press moulding, hoping to earn money, but it was not a success. His money soon ran out, and on the recommendation of the artist Vincent Hoisington he took a job with the International Planned Parenthood Federation. In 1968 he worked there for a year as a visual aids officer.

After the 1970 exhibition he became a full-time sculptor. In 1981 he received Singapore’s Cultural Medallion. In 1988 the director of the Paris Arts Centre, acting for the Olympic selection committee, came to his studio and commissioned a three-metre sculpture for the Seoul Olympics, to be finished within a month. Ng resisted: he had his own exhibition schedule. The director persuaded him, and they agreed to replicate a studio model, “Portrait”, which could be quickly reproduced at the required size.

Among his public works are “Wealth” and “Contentment” (1974) at the National University of Singapore, “Mother and Child” (1980) outside the Far East Shopping Centre on Orchard Road, “Balance” (1982) at the sculpture park on Fort Canning, “Spirit of Man” (1984) at Changi Airport, “The Climb” (1987) behind the Housing and Development Board building in Toa Payoh, and “The Explorer” (1999) at the Singapore Art Museum. The last is made of cement, stainless steel and gold foil, and is about seven metres high. He is called the “Grandfather of Singapore Sculpture”.

From 1995 he gave works to the National University of Singapore. In 1997 went 760 pieces, in 1998 another 173: paintings, drawings, sculptures, maquettes and ceramics, 933 in all. He wanted the collection to stay together and to serve teaching. On 16 February 2001, for this gift, he was presented with the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award: a pen and a cheque for 15,000 euros for a project of his choice. The university’s Centre for the Arts has a gallery of his sculpture.

Ng Eng Teng died on 4 November 2001 in his studio, in a house at 106 Joo Chiat Place.