Sundaram Tagore Gallery: Contemporary Art Gallery Near Me for Plucked Paper Art

Sundaram Tagore Gallery Singapore occupies the ground-floor unit #01-05 at 5 Lock Road, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108933, and its current show, Neha Vedpathak: In Plain Sight, ends on Saturday 24 October 2026. Entry is free, according to the Art Galleries Association Singapore, and the gallery's own site gives hours of 11 am to 7 pm, Tuesday to Saturday. If you searched contemporary art gallery near me this week, the 22 works of hand-plucked paper here are worth the trip before they come down.

Sundaram Tagore opened his gallery in SoHo, New York, in 2000, then added Hong Kong in 2008, Singapore in 2012 and a permanent space in London in 2023. The gallery describes him as a Calcutta-born, Oxford-educated art historian and a descendant of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Before opening his own gallery he was a director at Pace Wildenstein in New York. That background is international, and so is this autumn's Singapore exhibition, which is by an Indian-born artist who lives and works in Chicago.

The Singapore branch sits in one of the colonial blocks of Gillman Barracks, built in 1936 for the British 1st Battalion and now managed by the Singapore Land Authority, which took over the 6.6-hectare site in March 2020. Its immediate neighbour at 5 Lock Road #01-06 is Art Outreach Singapore, according to SLA's directory. SLA's history of the site adds that the barracks were one of Singapore's last battle sites before the island fell in the Second World War, and that the Singapore Armed Forces later used them to train national servicemen, long before the art galleries arrived.

Neha Vedpathak, born in India in 1982 and based in Chicago, works with a method she developed and calls plucking. The gallery explains that she separates the fibres of handmade Japanese paper one by one with a tiny pushpin, then adds acrylic paint and thread. The process leaves the sheet full of minute raised fibres and holes, so each work has a surface that changes with the angle of the light. She calls her overall approach subtleism.

In Plain Sight is a mid-career survey of works made between 2017 and 2026, organised around three ideas the gallery names as land, body and spirit. That span matters. You can see the technique change from Deconstructed Flag, a 2017 work of handmade paper, acrylic and thread measuring 99 by 66 centimetres, to the small 2026 pieces made this year, such as Vulnerable #2 at just 33 by 33 centimetres.

The largest work is So many stars in the sky, some of them and some of me, from 2018, a square of plucked Japanese handmade paper, acrylic and thread measuring 203.2 by 203.2 centimetres. Stand back to take in the constellation pattern, then move close enough to see that every point of light is a hole or a lifted fibre. Infinite Possibilities (Creative Force), from 2023, is nearly as large at 185.4 by 147.3 centimetres.

Sex, from 2022, measures 160 by 124.5 centimetres and sits in the body section of the show. Among the newest works, To be Seen, from 2026, is 55.9 by 48.3 centimetres, and Illuminance, Radiance, Immanence (Kali) 2, from 2023, is 56 centimetres square. An honest tip: do not rush the small pieces. Their titles are the most personal in the show, and the plucking is easiest to read at that scale, where your eye can follow single fibres.

The gallery's website gives 11 am to 7 pm, Tuesday to Saturday. AGAS and SLA list a slightly different week: Tuesday to Friday from 11 am to 6 pm, Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm, and Sunday, Monday and public holidays by appointment only. The safe plan is to arrive before 6 pm on a weekday or any time up to 7 pm on Saturday, when every listing agrees the doors are open.

Note that an AGAS event page using the working title Land, Body, Spirit gives an earlier end date of 17 October. The gallery's own exhibition page says 24 October, and that is the date to follow. In mid-October the gallery had not yet posted its next Singapore exhibition, so after 24 October there is nothing announced to see here, and the final days are this show's last chance.

SLA gives Labrador Park MRT, Exit A, as the nearest station, with the nearest bus stop opposite Alexandra Point. A short walk along Lock Road brings you to ShanghART Singapore at 9 Lock Road #02-22, which opens Wednesday to Sunday from noon to 6 pm and has the festival photography show Systems of Seeing until 7 November, plus Zulkhairi Zulkiflee's text-based show Nyamok from 17 October.

For food and drink inside the precinct, SLA's directory lists The Blackbird at 8 Lock Road, Handlebar at 10 Lock Road #01-01 and Wheeler's Tropikana at 9A Lock Road, which it says closes on Mondays. The estate is also a gateway to the Southern Ridges, including the Alexandra Garden Trail and the Henderson Park Connector, so a late-afternoon visit to the gallery can end with a walk along the ridges. If you prefer a sit-down meal, SLA also lists The Southern Depot at 43 and 47 Malan Road, home to Little Island Brewing and Kyuukei Coffee, and Naked Finn at 39 Malan Road, which closes on Sunday and Monday.

Address: 5 Lock Road, #01-05, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108933. Email: singapore@sundaramtagore.com. Admission: free. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 7 pm on the gallery's website, with Sunday, Monday and public holidays by appointment according to AGAS. The current show closes on Saturday 24 October 2026.

Gillman's tenancies are not permanent: Mothership reported in 2024 that the site is being studied for housing, with leases expiring progressively by 2030. The Karpo APP can map Sundaram Tagore, ShanghART and a Lock Road café into one route before the Vedpathak show closes.