pianomania: MODERN ART ONE CAN RELATE TO: THE WORLD (POSTCARDS) @ ESPLANADE TUNNEL

More modern art one can relate to. Were you a stamp collector sometime earlier in your life? Yes, I was, for much of my primary school days and up to early secondary school, after which I "graduated" to classical music. I remember the thrill finding a new postage stamp which I never had to add to my collection. Stamp collection or philately was fun, and addictive, the sort of thing record collectors would do. Getting a complete set of stamps of a particular series provided the same buzz as getting the complete Vladimir Horowitz on RCA Victor.

This visual art presentation by Singaporean artist Lai Yu Tong revived some memories of my philatelic obsession during those 1970s primary school days. My parents agreed that stamp collecting was a positive thing to keep a young person out of trouble. And it was educational, a buzz word for me whenever I wanted to persuade my parents to indulge me. True, with stamps you learnt about the world's nations without leaving your home, about geography, foreign currencies and sometimes history related to the topics depicted in the stamps. Yes, I also learnt that Eire and Suomi were what Ireland and Finland were known to their citizens.

The only Singapore entry in the
collection of 33 postcards.

In those days, you can send a large
and heavy envelope with $1.

Lai's postcards are simple, filled with a single pastel shade backing designs of common day objects created by erasing the colour off the paper. What caught my attention were the stamps, most of which date back many decades, from a time stamps were cheaply massed produced with the simplest designs and colour (usually one, other than black and white). Nostalgia. Some of which still sit in my stamp collection in some dusty corner of my apartment.