Each year, the Aliwal Urban Art Festival (AUAF) brings together leading creatives across diverse urban art forms to showcase their brilliant craft at Aliwal Art Centre. Returning for its seventh edition, the Aliwal Urban Art Festival 2023 has a full day’s worth of activities in store, including live graffiti painting, music and dance performances and even a pop-up artists’ market.
There’s so much to see and do, so here are the 10 events, workshops and performances that we’d check out at the Aliwal Urban Art Festival 2023.
Time: All day
Location: Side Wall
Globally-recognized visual artists ZERO and TUYULOVEME will come together to give the side façade of the Aliwal Arts Centre a major refresh. Watch as the two artists collaborate for the first time to create a large mural that incorporates each other’s practices and design sensibilities.
Head to the Instagram pages of TUYULOVEME and ZERO to view their past works.
Time: 11am – 12pm
Location: #03-08
Capacity: 20 pax
Get tickets here
Led by Assumption Pathway School students, you can try your hand at one of the most important processes in apparel mass production – silkscreening. The quick and easy process accurately recreates crisp and clean images on surfaces over and over again. As part of the workshop, you get to design and print your own paper bags using a simplified version of the silkscreen method.
Time: 12pm – 1pm
Location: Multipurpose Hall
Get tickets here
If you’ve always dreamt of being in the live audience of an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? , here’s your chance. At Urban Immersion by The Improv Company, you will experience a comedy show that invites you to provide prompts or ideas for sketches. Hilarity will ensue. It’s your call, after all.
Time: 1pm (SAM LO and TraseOne) & 4pm (SPEAKCRYPTIC and SPAZ)
Location: Music Studio
Held over two discussions moderated by ZERO from RSCLS, four local artists discuss the processes and concepts behind their works at the FLIPSIDE exhibition. Join them as they explore topics of interaction, identity and representation within and between communities.
Time: 12pm – 6pm
Location: #02-04
Got a bunch of unwanted vinyl stickers that you don’t know what to do with? Let the multidisciplinary art trio DASSAD show you what to do with them! Check out their ‘The Everyday Vinyl’ workshop where you’ll learn how to create collages with scrap vinyl stickers. Then, put your new skills to the test by trying your hand at a collaborative collage that is assembled by community members like yourself!
Check out prior iterations of the ‘The Everyday Vinyl’ in the Instagram post below.
Time: 12pm – 8pm
Location: Multipurpose Studios & Courtyard B
Always wanted to try out a new art form or skill? Join the Black Market curated by RSCLS to learn a new craft directly from local and regional artists and practitioners. Each event offers you an opportunity to learn a new skill, gain insight into a new art form or gain access to the ideas that inspire the artists.
Pick from a wide array of workshops, which includes silkscreen printing, fixing a bike, graffiti and style writing.
Discover a whole new subculture or try a new art form with the following programs*:
D’TOUR of Kampong Gelam by RSCLS (5.30pm, 6.30pm and 7.30pm), Graffiti Workshops by The Blackbook Studios, Silkscreen by Dabo (Indonesia), Style Writing by Demster, Pop-up studio by Subcltr, Fixing a Bike 101 by Jamal Wagiman, Toprock 101 by 7deez, Pop-up studio by KILAS and Graffitera Workshop by BONY
*Onsite registration is required for various activities.
Time: 3:30pm
Location: Courtyard A
In a special collaboration for AUAF, the students of Kalpavriksha Fine Arts have partnered with the Titan Aerosol Crew to create a dance performance that blends traditional dance with modern graffiti. This performance is an ode to the traditional dance form of Bharatanatyam but is set against a modern backdrop, showcasing the uniqueness and dynamism of the dance as it relates and resonates with today’s world.
Scroll to view the trailer for their Esplanade performance titled ‘Kasi – The Infinite’.
Time: 4.30pm – 7pm (Dialogue Presentations) & 7pm – 9pm (Video Projections)
Location: #02-10
Get an inside look at the works of Hothouse, a space in Singapore that supports and prototypes artistic practices. Through dialogue presentations and video projections, you get to experience their work up close and have conversations about the intersections of art, technology, design and architecture. Through it all, you will learn about the values and intention behind their work like ‘discrete’ logic and serial yet non-linear modes of spatial production.
Get a feel of the vibe and energy of Hothouse through their posts about their regular meetings and discussions below.
Time: 5pm – 9pm
Venue: Multipurpose Hall
Discover new music and fresh tunes at Urban Sounds, a lineup of performances curated by Steady State Records. This year’s edition boasts a lineup of independent bands and artists from a multitude of genres. Look forward to performances by woes, Astronauts featuring Lukpeach, AMI (Anugerah Musik Indonesia) nominated indie band, Reality Club and Singaporean electronic artist and producer, Fauxe.
Time: 9.30pm – 11pm
Venue: Multipurpose Hall
Immerse yourself in street culture through music, dance and good vibes at the RE:union Party by ScRach MarcS. The dynamic duo re-imagines the conventional Block Party by creating a gathering point for anyone and everyone to experience street dance and urban culture at the heart of Kampong Gelam. Step up and enjoy dance performances and battles. The perfect way to round up your day at AUAF 2023!
A recap of AUAF 2020: Aliwal Urban Art Festival 2020 is back – with Preetipls, Vans, ScRach MarcS and more!
The Aliwal Urban Art Festival 2023 will be hosted at the Aliwal Art Centre on January 14. Head to arthouselimited.sg to view the full line of the events happening around the Art Centre and follow their Instagram, @aliwalartscentre for more updates.