War Fronts (Bunker)

Place Asia: Singapore
Accession Number AWM2017.1142.3
Collection type Art
Measurement Overall: 50 x 120 cm x .5 cm
Object type Holograph
Physical description digital holograph
Maker Ding, Debbie
Place made Lithuania
Date made 2017
Conflict Second World War, 1939-1945
Copyright

Item copyright: Unlicensed copyright

Description

Debbie Ding's 'War Fronts' imagines three archetypal landscapes from the fall of Singapore - the landing of the Japanese on Sarimbun Beach, battles in the jungles of northwest Singapore as the Japanese advanced into Singapore, and finally, the bunker, the site where the British decided to surrender to the Japanese on 15 February 1942. These works were made by Ding as a result of a month-long reciprocal artist residency program between the Australian War Memorial (AWM) and the National Museum of Singapore (NMS), where she researched the shared wartime experiences of Australia and Singapore and the ongoing legacy of this. Through her research, Ding noted that these three landscapes of the fall of Singapore feature predominantly in the recorded memory of war in the tropics across a diverse range of mediums.

Depicted here is the site of surrender: the underground bunker in Fort Canning that was used the British headquarters in Singapore. Each landscape is a digital holograph and every holopixel of each image is a holographic optical element, which when properly illuminated and viewed from the correct angle, transforms the 2D image into a 3D scene. Every holopixel contains the entire image, much like how an individual's memory can colour and encapsulate a shared collective memory if seen from a specific perspective.

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