Book Review: Singa-planet

This book is the companion book for the Yamaguchi Akira exhibition Singa-planet presented by The Japan Foundation and the Japan Creative Centre in Singapore.

I bought this book because the premise is interesting. I wanted to see how Japanese artist Yamaguchi Akira interprets Singapore through his art. The series of drawings take up themes of HDB flats and other snippets of Singapore life.

Singa-planet is actually the name of the illustration (cropped) that appears on the cover. It's a block of HDB flats that appears to be built on a huge ship. It's a well drawn piece. I love the way the flats are designed with sloping roofs from old houses, particularly shophouses. Very imaginative with a good mix of new and old.

This book has only 64 pages. It's too brief. The more impressive illustrations are the ones with all the details, but there are too few of them. Before you know it, you're on the last page. There are also some commentary pieces on Yamaguchi Akira by some other writers which took up quite a few pages. The pictures I've showed you is pretty much all the book has to offer, which isn't much.

In essence, this is like one of those thin exhibition books. So unless you're a follower of Yamaguchi Akira's work, it's not worth buying just to look at those few great paintings.

This book can be found at Kinokuniya Ngee Ann City, priced at $23.90, with GST. It's out of stock on Amazon Japan. I guess this book is printed in extremely limited copies.