Contemporary Art Gallery Near Me at Gillman Barracks: Yeo Workshop

Yeo Workshop is a contemporary art gallery at 47 Malan Road #01-25, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109444, open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm. From 17 October to 15 November 2026 it hosts the main exhibition of the Singapore International Photography Festival, a group show about homes, and from 21 November the Bali-based painter Filippo Sciascia takes over. If you are searching contemporary art gallery near me around Alexandra or Labrador Park, this is a good first door at Gillman, because the show changes how you look at the flat you went home to last night.

Yeo Workshop is run by its director Audrey Yeo, listed on the early website as producer and owner. Its archived about page announced a new and permanent residence at Gillman Barracks from autumn 2013, first at 1 Lock Road #01-01. Some time between 2016 and 2019 it moved across the precinct to its current unit on Malan Road, where it has stayed. In 2026 it added a year-long calendar of talks and events, and it also runs a second, glass-fronted space called Vitrine in the city centre.

The setting is half the appeal. The Singapore Land Authority, which has managed the precinct since March 2020, says Gillman Barracks was built in 1936, named after General Sir Webb Gillman, and covers about 6.6 hectares with 17 colonial state properties. The gallery's own description calls it a contemporary arts cluster of international galleries and restaurants in conserved colonial barracks. Expect low white blocks, verandahs and big trees rather than a mall-style art district.

The worlds we traverse, the worlds that linger is curated by Lenette Lua and brings together Lavender Chang, Chen Jialu, Geraldine Kang, Michael Lee and Wei Leng Tay, alongside poems and writing excerpts from the Migrant Writers of Singapore community. The festival describes it as a visual study of our homes and their traces, attending to the textures of domestic space in a country where land is treated as scarce and measured against efficiency. The question it asks is how space might be valued beyond money.

That makes it an unusually personal festival centrepiece. Read the migrant writers' excerpts alongside the photographs rather than after them, since the two halves were planned to speak to each other. A single slow loop takes about forty minutes. Note the festival's own hours for this show: Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm, with Sunday opening only on 18 October from 12 to 6 pm, so a later weekend visit should be a Saturday.

From 21 November to 31 December 2026, ORDER → DISORDER is a solo show by the Italian artist Filippo Sciascia, who is based in Bali. He paints ancient rock-cut shrines and meditation niches he came across in the forests around Ubud near the Pakerisan River, using oil paint, scratching and LED light. Sculptures pair Balinese antiques and fragments of Hindu iconography with rulers, clamps, cables and machine parts, and other works use dust, earth and mineral pigments gathered from caves applied straight onto cloth.

Entropy, the slide of systems from order into disorder, sits at the centre of the show, with titles such as energy dissipator 1, black swan theory and prophecy at 1420 mhz. A small earlier work, Order Disorder Eclisee from 2025, combines oil paint and electric light on a 50 by 69 centimetre canvas. The artist talks about the series on opening day, 21 November. The gallery lists nothing for 16 to 20 November, between the two shows, so time your visit for either side of that week.

If you work in the CBD, Yeo Workshop's Vitrine at OUE Downtown Gallery, 6A Shenton Way #01-36, shows What Remains until 4 December 2026. It pairs photographer Loke Hong Seng's street scenes of kampungs, trishaws and samsui women, placed on the street-facing panels so you can see them through the glass, with Wei Leng Tay's new collages built from photographs of a 1963 ikebana competition in Penang in which her mother took part. Look for Tay's Cuts | Traces | Arrangements collages, archival pigment prints on cotton rag that she sanded by hand, and Loke's Removal of Barnacles Using Fire, taken in 1968 and printed in 2015. Vitrine opens Monday to Friday from 12 to 5 pm, which suits a lunch-hour visit.

Richard Koh Fine Art is in the very next unit, #01-26, so the two make an easy pair. The Southern Depot fills several units in the same block, including Kyuukei Coffee at #01-22 and Little Island Brewing in Block 43. Across the precinct on Lock Road you will find Sundaram Tagore, OTA Fine Arts, Mizuma Gallery and the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art. When the galleries are done, the Southern Ridges trails begin at the edge of the site, and the SLA lists Henderson Park Connector and Alexandra Garden Trail among them.

Gillman sits on a green slope off Alexandra Road, and the SLA's directions are simple. Take the Circle Line to Labrador Park and leave by Exit A. The walk takes about ten minutes. Buses stop opposite Alexandra Point, and drivers enter from Malan Road, with a side entrance on Lock Road. Bring water and an umbrella, because the walk between blocks is outdoors and the afternoon showers can be heavy. Allow two to three hours if you plan to see several galleries and stop for a drink.

Address: Yeo Workshop, 47 Malan Road #01-25, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109444. Email: info@yeoworkshop.com. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11 am to 7 pm, Sunday 12 to 6 pm per the gallery, closed Mondays and public holidays. Now showing: The worlds we traverse, the worlds that linger, until 15 November 2026. Next: Filippo Sciascia, 21 November to 31 December 2026. Getting there: Labrador Park MRT, Exit A, about a 10-minute walk.

Ask Karpo in the Karpo APP for a coffee stop at Gillman Barracks or the easiest Southern Ridges walk after the galleries close.