Expanding What It Means To Be Singaporean

native-objects-collection-larger2Yellow Puff: Now you can have a truly inclusive dining experience at home

What constitutes being a Singaporean besides Singlish and food? I have struggled a lot with how the city of Singapore can be an inspiration for its people, be it artists, designers, film-makers and anyone who creates. Very often, I find that when Singapore is referenced in a work, it is usually to complain and criticise its over-regulation or how sterile and artificial things are and it stops there.

So, it was a breath of fresh air to hear Larry Peh, a designer, talk about some of the objects he created inspired by the city at the last Rojak. One such work is Yellow Puff(above), which came about from the yellow boxes drawn up all around the city as part of the ever-tightening regulation to indicate where people can smoke. Another interesting piece is Take It Away, where he creates fabric version of the plastic handles that kopitiams use when you take away a hot drink. Also worth checking out is Beep It, a ringtone inspired by the beeping sounds of the dreaded ERP device in cars here.

Larry’s work has a tongue-in-cheek quality to it but what is inspiring is how he takes seemingly every day things around us and transform them into objects that have a local sensibility but global appeal to it.

You really need to check out his body of Objects and Subjects.

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