The Lion City’s newest arts hub, Telok Ayer Arts Club, combines multiple artistic mediums with an innovative culinary and mixology movement.
Telok Ayer Arts Club, a new multi-concept venue by The Supermarket Company, has opened in Singapore’s bustling Central Business District, at the crossroads of cultural, business and dining communes. Positioned as a fresh take on the beloved community centres of Singapore’s heartlands, the space has been designed to bring together art, music, food, and drink in new and accessible ways.
Telok Ayer Arts Club was formed from a community of its own. Curators Anmari Van Nieuwenhove and Kamiliah Bahdar, music director Hasnor Sidik and The Supermarket Company founder Sue-Shan Quek, collectively conceptualised the multi-use arts space. Through creative residencies and events helmed by multidisciplinary artists, themed club nights, and more rule-bending programming, they hope to shape the way Singaporeans approach the arts.
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Located on the ground floor of a shophouse at the edge of Telok Ayer, surrounded by towering inner-city commercial buildings, the design persona of the new venue are described as “70s modernism remixed” by homegrown multidisciplinary design practice FUUR Associates, and include a sensuous façade finished with handmade terracotta tile that’s reminiscent of the iconic brick-faced buildings of Singapore’s past, updated with a modern sculptural twist, and a wooden door constructed with 100-year-old teak reclaimed from old Chiang Mai villages.
Designed for both creative and curious types, the venue’s arts programming is a malleable mash-up of art, music, food, and drink that allows each artist to respond to the Arts Club in their own way, and vice versa. The curators will invite local and regional artists—both emerging and established—to inhabit the Arts Club and fill the space beyond the walls with multidisciplinary works and performances that aim to jolt white-collar senses from their everyday routine. This could range from a one-night performance to a weeks-long showcase, demonstrated through a variety of mediums from light, sound, installation, 2-D, and more.
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Intended as a respite from the non-stop demands of the city, the music programming overturns notions of work and play with tongue-in-cheek concepts like “Office Hours”, a weekly Friday evening DJ set helmed by music director Hasnor; and “Kelab Malam”, an intimate club night in the CBD focusing on debut international guest DJs that is interjected between artist residencies. Upcoming plans include indulging weekend excursionists in Saturday daytime parties that will inject life back into the CBD beyond the confines of the proverbial weekday nine to five.
In addition the club’s culinary offering is helmed by head chef Bertram Leong, who will offer his rendition of French Mediterranean cuisine, flecked with rustic, comforting and occasionally Asian flavours to an all-day dining menu that includes the likes of tomatoes and tofu with white miso, shitake pesto, red wine vinegar and parmesan; seafood fettuccine with Manila clams, crab meat and mussels in a rich, umami shellfish reduction; and locally-bred spatchcock served with bacon matchsticks and a creamy garlic mash.
Dishes will be complemented by a list of reinvented classic cocktails created by beverage manager Din Hassan that ranges from the Burma’s Pegu Club, a tart, refreshing gin-based cocktail, through to Kuala Lumpur’s Jungle Bird, a bracing blend of Mount Gay rum from the barrel and Campari, smoothed out with fresh lime and pineapple.
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With each artist that is featured at Telok Ayer Arts Club, the culinary and beverage team will develop special menus comprising dishes and drinks inspired by their work, as a response to the artist in the medium they know best.
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