Gilles Massot
The Lover's House [Art]

For the past few years, Gille Massot has been pursuing a long-term project taking the Ganges and the Mekong as the running threads of a body of work, which hopes to result in an overall vision of Asia. It is while travelling recently in Vietnam for this purpose that he came to Sa Dec, the little town where Marguerite Duras grew up and where she met with Ong Huynh Thuy Lê, the man with whom she was to live a love story that would inspire the famous novel “The Lover”.

In 2006, Gilles completed a MA in Fine Arts that focused on the ruins of an 18th century castle in southern France. The work entitled “Valbelle, Myth of Fiction” looked at the legacy of the Century of Lights in today’s context, in particular from the point of view of the history of photography, while investigating the thin line that separate myth, fiction and reality and how these three realms interact with one another. It is more particularly this aspect of his research that he found poetically embodied in the house of Marguerite Duras’ real life lover.

Benjamin Tan
Space in theatrical film [Film]

Titled ‘The Girl with the Red Balloons’, it tells a tale of reconciliation between mother and daughter as each become estranged from each other’s reality
– their own respective perceptions of the world. Ultimately it deals with the concept of maturity and finding our inner children as we become desensitised by the unrelenting pace of a materialistic, urban society. A quirky surrealist experimental, adapted from a script written in the style of theatre, the film employs a unique visual style of cardboard sets which mirror their real world counterparts, where the space within the film is treated as per a stage play.

Benjamin Tan is pursuing his undergraduate studies at NTU’s school of Art, Design and Media, majoring in digital film production. Currently in his foundation year, his forays into the film and video art mediums under the directorial pseudonymn of jmin.

Hans Tan
Don't Stand On Ceremony [Industrial/Product Design]

As an independent designer, Hans Tan focuses on contextual research that yield conceptual propositions through design. With an abiding interest in ploughing
the relationship between tangible objects and their intangible meanings, he pursues opportunities to discern the world afresh.

Mark Wee
Made in UNION [Architecture and Interiors]

Union is a multi-disciplinary research-based creative consultancy that is dedicated to the creation of beautiful human environment that inspire hope, and the celebration of positive living.

Formed on the belief that successful projects require the development of good briefs, UNION, as a collective of Architects, Designers, Business consultants, and Researchers work together seamlessly to provide valuable Business and Design solutions that are sensitive to the environment, people and culture.

Union works with clients to develop a holistic strategy through a variety of research tools, fieldwork, facilitated discussions, interviews and analysis. The synthesis of these precesses lead to design solutions that not only facilitate purposeful living, but also stunning environments that explore the imagination and the narrative.

Union’s unique portfolio ranges from exciting projects such as The Majestic Bar, and the exhibition design for the Singapore Biennale 2006, to luxurious hospitality interiors for the ShangGri-La and Movenpick group and the iconic Kempinski Palace of the Emirates Hotel in Abu Dhabi.