Excerpt from ‘Namasivayam, Points of Articulation’
Group 90 and Life Drawing in Singapore
By N. Nedumaran, Audrey Yeo and Jolene Teo
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Solamalay Namasivayam: Points of Articulation Monograph.
In The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, Kenneth Clark distinguishes the nude from nakedness by indicating that the former is a form of art while the latter is the undressed physical body that is crude and vulgar.⁶ However, Singapore society failed to see that subtle distinction during the twentieth century when Namasivayam was active as an artist. Owing to the prevailing conservative social environment and cultural mores alluded to by Chia Wai Hon in the aforementioned quote, figurative art and the practice of life drawing faced many challenges in Singapore. These included the lack of a formal platform that would have enabled artists to learn and practice life drawing, as well as the difficulty in finding models who were willing to pose in the nude. Namasivayam, however, was able to tackle these issues through the establishment of Group 90, which initially sprouted around a core of retired lecturers and educators – all former senior civil servants with the Ministry of Education. He introduced life drawing into the syllabus of LASALLE College of the Arts, and gilded by his impeccable reputation as a man of high integrity and honour, he was also able to procure the trust and services of willing models.
Solamalay Namasivayam at NUspiration, the 7th Exhibition of the Nude in Art presented by Group 90 at Bhaskar’s Art Gallery, 2008. Photo by Ayob Ismail.
Solamalay Namasivayam, Self Portrait, 1991, graphite on paper. Image courtesy of Yeo Workshop
Despite his unfortunate absence from Singapore’s art historical narratives, Namasivayam was not by any means a newcomer to the local arts scene, for he had a long history of activity dating back to the 1950s, having participated in exhibitions as a member of the Singapore Art Society (SAS).⁷ Back then, the SAS and the Nanyang Art Academy were the only two formal organisations in existence which provided artists with opportunities to draw, paint, attend classes and participate in exhibitions together. Indeed, Namasivayam’s outstanding aptitude for art was such that it soon came to the attention of, and was recognised by, Mr Ho Kok Hoe, the then President of the SAS, who subsequently gave him a strong recommendation for a place in the prestigious Colombo Plan Scholarship program, after having reviewed his works.⁸
Solamalay Namasivayam, Nama '97 , 1997, charcoal and chalk on paper, double-sided, 120 x 89cm.
Another person who also played a brief but critical role in his scholarship acceptance was Mr Goh Kong Beng, then President of the Singapore Teachers Union, who was also impressed by the potential he saw. In consequence, Namasivayam duly embarked for Australia in 1957 to attend the Fine Arts Course in Sydney, and eventually graduated in 1961 as a fully trained and competent art exponent.
Yet remarkably, upon his return to Singapore, he was destined to spend a significant proportion of his life and career as a teacher and educationist, despite his art qualifications. It is important to understand this particular aspect of his life as an artist, for it was only after his retirement that he truly became a specialist art lecturer per se, upon joining LASALLE College of the Arts in 1987. Subsequently, at LASALLE, he immediately made his mark by planning the syllabus and introducing Life Drawing into the Fine Arts curriculum that same year. But these achievements were to come much later, for decades earlier, the socio-cultural landscape in Singapore, as far as avenues for artistic studies were concerned, was far less sanguine. So although he had received his initial introduction to life drawing in the late 1950s in Sydney, there were hardly any opportunities to practice it following his return. This situation was owed in no small measure to the fact that hardly anybody around was familiar with life drawing, since only a small minority had access to the privilege of travelling and studying abroad back then.⁹ For the vast majority of people in Singapore, engrossed in their day-to-day struggles of making ends meet in a nascent post-colonial economy, art in general was not seen as a career objective, but a bourgeois indulgence with little correlation with the harsh realities of life. Thus any attempts to moot an introduction of life figure drawing not only faced the prevalent apathy towards art in general, but a culturally ingrained Asiatic aversion to what was then viewed as a taboo topic.
However, as someone who had prior exposure to the academic discipline of life drawing in Australia, the open-minded Namasivayam had no qualms about taking up the mantle of introducing it as an officially sanctioned subject for study in Singapore. Aided by his dignified persona and ability to articulate his views with great academic clarity, he was able to negotiate the glass walls of doubt and win over the sceptics. This quest finally came to fruition many years later, after his retirement, with the key role he played in the founding of Group 90, the first art collective specifically focused on life drawing and the development of figurative art in Singapore. In doing so, he helped provide a formal and respectable means of learning and practising the discipline, which had hitherto been confined to the realms of the world of private art studios.
Group 90 members featuring Namasivayam (third from right), from left to right: Liew Choon Kee, Ko Chew Kai, Ng Eng Teng, Sim Thong Khern, Namasivayam, Keong Hean Keng, 1998.
“The reason why I started it was because I wanted to concentrate on the human figure. There was no such club... I wanted it to be a formal one because drawing from the figure was not a thing that people liked here.”¹⁰ With this goal in mind, Namasivayam gathered a group of like-minded lecturers from LASALLE College of the Arts who shared his interest in the human figure, and started Group 90 with them. In the words of Sim Thong Khern, Namasivayam’s old friend from his student days in Australia, the artists involved in that endeavor felt that their interests in the human figure and life drawing had to be expanded. But most crucially, Mr Sim underlined the all-important context: “And because of our background, we were the right people to project an image of life drawing as an art form with the potential to thrive in Singapore.”¹¹ The group was formalised in 1990 (hence its name) and held its inaugural exhibition FIGURAMA in the same year. As a founding member who was credited with conceiving the idea for the group and bringing its initial members together, Namasivayam became a central figure in the development of figurative art in Singapore.
“By and large, the majority [of Group 90 members] follow an academic approach, presenting the nude as accurately as they possibly can ... Draughtsmanship is their main focus with some opting for the quality of a spontaneous quick sketch while others strive for a more complete finish. Then there are those with an Expressionist tendency, who are ruled more by impulse and emotion in their handling of subject matter and media, than accuracy in drawing. They distort or exaggerate to maximise visual impact, keeping within the bounds of representational art. Artists in the category [include] Namasivayam… They work fast to capture felt sensations that are transitory and highly elusive.”¹²
—Chia Wai Hon
Community Engagement 1. Photo by Ahmad Iskandar. Image courtesy of Yeo Workshop.
As part of Group 90, Namasivayam participated in several key exhibitions alongside other prominent artists like Chia Wai Hon, Liu Kang, Sim Thong Khern and Brother Joseph McNally. As the fraternity expanded, it came to include other well established names like Ng Eng Teng, Loh Khee Yew and Dr Earl Lu. As a measure of the level of camaraderie that prevailed over this pioneering group, it is notable that it was wholly voluntary and self-sustaining, and relied solely on the personal contributions of its members in order to pay for the expenses incurred by hiring models and organising exhibitions.
In representing the forefront of life drawing in Singapore, Group 90 provided a vital opportunity for an important aspect of aesthetic study to occur, while simultaneously enabling this nuanced discipline to develop further. The group generally adhered to the classical European approach towards life drawing, wherein the human nude became the central locus and foundation of art. The group also allowed artists to learn from each other while also furnishing them with a platform to showcase their figurative artwork. As such, the group held exhibitions almost annually, organising a total of six public exhibitions until 2003 when the original group split into three groups (one of which retained the name Group 90) as the space for the practice of life drawing in LASALLE became unavailable.
This excerpt is from Solamalay Namasivayam: Points of Articulation Monograph, published by Yeo Workshop to accompany Point of Articulation: Repose, an exhibition featuring the works of the late Singaporean artist Solamalay Namasivayam, held from 5 April to 7 May 2025. Click here for more information.
To read other writings from the Excerpts series, click here.
7Namasivayam, interview by Joyce Fan, NAMASIVAYAM s/o K.A. Solamalay, National Archives Singapore. 3 June 1997, Reel/Disc 6 of 10, Accession Number 001896.
8 Ibid.
9Sim Thong Khern, interview by Audrey Yeo and N. Nedumaran. 11 September 2019.
10Namasivayam, interview by Joyce Fan, NAMASIVAYAM s/o K.A. Solamalay, National Archives Singapore. 4 June 1997, Reel/Disc 9 of 10, Accession Number 001896.
11Sim Thong Khern, interview by Audrey Yeo and N. Nedumaran. 11 September 2019.
12Chia Wai Hon, ‘NUSENSE’, Introduction. Singapore: Procomp Printset, 2002, pp.10-11.
