Linking The Dots

National Gallery Singapore pulls together South-east Asia’s largest survey of Yayoi Kusama’s works.

- Jasmine Tay

As they stepped into the studio, Adele Tan and Russell Storer were struck by a blizzard of bright colours on numerous pieces of canvas and the pungent smell of paint. Here was passion and dedication, they thought.

That was last December, and the pair had travelled to Tokyo to meet the 88-year-old woman who stood before them. She would have been mistaken for a convivial Japanese obasan if not for her neon red wig, polka dot dress and a team of assistants flanking her.

The woman is none other than Yayoi Kusama, and the studio is where she continues to paint, as she has been doing over the past decades.

“There’s this misunderstanding that her studio assistants do much of her painting – that’s not wholly true,” says Tan. “She does a lot of her work herself and she paints every day. There’s almost an immediacy when her hand hits the canvas.”

The meeting was a monumental one, not just for Tan and Storer, but also for the National Gallery Singapore. It was the first time that both curators of the National Gallery’s latest exhibition – Yayoi Kusama: Life Is The Heart Of A Rainbow – were meeting the artist and her team, since discussions started early last year.