We believe that every neighbourhood has a story worth telling. Art is the best way to share these stories and challenge our perspectives.

The art walk is OH!’s signature programme. It is a guided art tour led by OH! Volunteers. Each art walk explores a particular neighbourhood of Singapore – from heritage spaces like Joo Chiat or Emerald Hill to vast industrial estates like Sungei Kadut.

Audiences are invited to explore private homes and spaces within these neighbourhoods to see artworks that are site-specific, meaning each work responds to the story of the space it is housed in.

Since 2009, we have brought over 20,000 people on our art walks across the islands. Our most recent art walk took place in Emerald Hill, a former nutmeg plantation, in 2018. There, we explored Singapore’s colonial past through secret tours, art, and performances set in shophouses and shop units.

To find out more about our art walks, click here.

Unlike past editions of OH!’s art walk, which explored Singaporean neighbourhoods, we are exploring the industrial estate of Sungei Kadut. Artworks will be presented in three factories across Sungei Kadut, instead of homes. Similar to OH! Emerald Hill, WOOD 2020 will explore the neighbourhood of Sungei Kadut in relation to Singapore’s larger history.

The format of the art walk is also a little different this time. Part of the experience is guided, the other invites audiences to explore unique factory spaces by themselves and discover the art contained within.

For the first time ever, OH! will also be presenting a trilogy of interlinked art walks. WOOD 2020 will be followed with two more editions of art walks (EARTH 2022 and WATER 2024) that will study the cosmological and geological elements that form the building blocks of life and civilisation.

Sungei Kadut is one of Singapore’s oldest industrial estate. It became home to Singapore’s timber factories in the 1960s, back when timber was one of the nation’s largest exports. It was one of the industrial and manufacturing estates that powered Singapore’s rapid development to modernity. By bringing the art walk to Sungei Kadut, we can introduce this unique industrial estate to audiences and allow them to experience the very spaces in which raw materials like wood are transformed.

As most of the world begins to live in larger, urban cities, people are increasingly unaware of how nature provides the resources that have and will continue to provide us with the means to survive. Industrialisation has put many steps between basic natural resources and to consumption by an average person.

In Singapore, this distance is amplified by the control over and artificiality of nature. Here, we encounter beautiful gardens, rows of trees, or plants housed within malls and conservatories. We have little knowledge about nature beyond these structures.

As the world continues to grapple with climate change, we think it is necessary to rethink our relationship to nature. There is a need to consider how this relationship has evolved alongside Singapore’s rise as a modern city.