Hong Sek Chern

In July 2007, she won the 26th UOB Painting Of The Year (POY) Competition. Using traditional Chinese painting media, her painting Aspects Of The City II was singled out from among over 1,100 entries submitted by about 800 participants for the prestigious POY Award.

Hong Sek Chern has been painting interior and exterior spaces of local architecture using Chinese ink for nine years. Sensitive to painterly surfaces and affected by the world around her, the artist hopes that what she creates would allow her to think about the world, its people and herself. At the same time, she desires to share the beautiful surfaces with others to instigate reflection. Stylistically, Sek Chern’s works tend to reflect a masterful interplay of architectural blocks and lines, and are infused with a multi-point perspective of interior and exterior spaces that sometimes collapse into one another. Many of her paintings also explore tension between the old and the new, and notions relating to space and time are sometimes destabilized through the merging and juxtaposition of urban structures that belong to different times and places.


Awards

2007
Painting of the Year, United Overseas Bank (UOB) Group, Singapore

2000
Young Artist Award, National Arts Council (NAC), Singapore

1999
1st Prize (Representational Category), 18th Painting of the Year Competition, The United Overseas Bank (UOB) Group, Singapore
Honourable Mention (Two Awards), 1999 Singapore Turf Club Art Competition, Singapore

1996
Juror's Choice / Prize: Singapore Art Awards 96, 98 and 99, The Philip Morris Group of Companies, Singapore
Chen Chong Swee Overseas Art Scholarship, Chen Chong Swee Foundation and National Arts Council (NAC), Singapore 
Top Prize, Philippe Charriol Foundation Contemporary Art Competition 1995/6, Singapore