Located in an older residential neighbourhood, A Mallet & A Ball is a project situated in Bishan, central Singapore. During a fieldwork assignment in the area, I visited numerous sites before arriving at the border of Bishan North near Marymount. It was here that I encountered a community of Woodball players who had founded and maintained an open field for Woodball and leisure gardening. The players personalize the field with their own decorations, maintaining a naturalistic and vernacular aesthetic that continues to evolve.
I became involved with the community, drawn to their self-organised practice as a viable form of grassroots community building. This mode of self-governance resonates with the broader saga of the Singapore Sports Hub, which, since its opening in 2014, was embroiled in ongoing controversies between misaligned goals and public accessibility. The Hub ultimately closed in 2020 following the dissolution of the public-private consortium managing it.
Around the same time, ahead of the 2020 Singaporean general election, part of Bishan was incorporated into the newly formed Marymount SMC, prompting the Woodball community to relocate from Bishan North to Marymount. In doing so, they made minor adaptations to continue their activities within the new constituency.
I proposed that the community members teach me how to play Woodball, a practice deeply rooted in the local context. I then began painting en plein air on-site within the neighbourhood. Over time, my work evolved into a collective, exhibitionary practice, where members of the community assumed a performative role, recounting and sharing their early experiences playing Woodball in Singapore’s public spaces during the 1990s.
They also accepted my invitation to design a six-fairway Woodball course at another site. Taken together, this interactivity functions as a discursive exhibition-making process, providing an audience with insight into the history of Woodball in Singapore as narrated by the local community. It highlights how they have spent the past fifteen years negotiating and relocating their play spaces before arriving at their current site in Bishan North, now Marymount, where they continue to call home.
Film excerpts, 2020
Thanks to Wang Ruobing, Hilmi Johandi, and Clare Veal.
© 2022
