About the Artist

Nick Ng is a Singapore-based visual artist who comes from a background in theatre and education. His current practice centres on clay-based works and material-led research. Working under Turen Ceramics since 2020, he explores themes of archaeology, mythology, and cosmology. His works draw inspiration from ancient cultures, pre-scientific belief systems, and Taoist ideas of impermanence and perfect imperfection,  resulting in objects that resemble unearthed artefacts.

Primary focus

  • Time, erosion, and archaeological aesthetics
  • Mythology and cosmology
  • Fragmentation, breakage, and material survival

Approach to ceramics

The way I work with ceramics today is deeply influenced by how I have learned to work with people, as a theatre director and as a teacher. 

When I was first working with ceramics 20 years ago, I devoted a lot of time to manipulating clay, seeking full authority over the material’s form and texture. I built a strong technical foundation based on that way of working. But when I returned to clay later in life, I realised that my understanding of it had changed.

In the years in between, I had been working in theatre, directing non-professional actors. They did not have formal training, so I could not approach them in the same way one might work with professional performers. Instead of imposing a fixed vision, I began to work with what they already had, their presence, personalities, limitations, and lived experiences. The process became deeply collaborative. The same philosophy carried into my subsequent work as a drama teacher. Of course, there are times when you push someone beyond what they think they can do. But when that push fails, you step back and ask: what is already here? 

When I came back to clay after retiring from teaching, I began to appreciate the clay’s character. Influenced by Oriental philosophies, ideas of letting go, of wabi-sabi, of embracing imperfection and incompleteness, became central to my practice. I stopped forcing the clay to become something it was not. In this way, working with clay became very similar to working with people. You can guide, but you cannot fully determine the outcome. At some point, you have to let go.

 

"This is also the reason why a lot of my works are left partially unglazed. I want to expose the clay body, and not hide what it is about."

NICK NG

Clay as Storytelling

During my years in theatre, my work often explored socio-political situations, particularly those of which people are pushed to their limits. This evolved into a deeper curiosity about human history: migration, ancient civilisations, and how people in the past lived and made sense of their world.

Whether ancient or contemporary, I believe that we are still human and experience similar emotions, fears, and desires. But our access to the past is incomplete, we can only imagine what once was through what remains. This interest in human history is the reason why my work leans into the aesthetic of unearthed artefacts. 

Ceramic objects, once fired, are among the most durable things a human hand can make. They may break, but they cannot be destroyed. The paradox of how something so fragile can also be so permanent intrigued me. Instead of working with text and live performers to tell stories, I began to work with clay. 

Imagined Archaeology: Breaking as Method

At first, breaking clay was a decision made out of necessity. I work with a small kiln, so larger pieces cannot be fired whole. They had to be broken into parts then reassembled after firing. This was a constraint that became integral to the work's meaning, the fragmentation aligned with the archaeological aesthetic that I was already exploring.

In an earlier work, The Oracle Prophecy of an Imagined Land, I mounted a ceramic form atop a map, proposing that relics exist everywhere, that traces of the past lie beneath every ground we walk on. 

This carried through into my other works, which began to resemble artefacts, their surfaces bearing textures that evoke landscapes or inscriptions. They are crafted to be open to interpretation, but not entirely abstract. They invite the viewer to reconstruct stories as if interpreting archaeological fragments.

 

the oracle prophecy of an imagined land

Circular and Square Forms: 天圓地方

More recently, I have been drawn to circular and square forms inspired by the cosmological imagination in Chinese mythology, where the sky is understood as round and the earth as square (天圓地方). In the initial phase of work, which I think of as my “Tian Yuan 天圆” phase, I create circular forms that are broken and then reassembled. The act of breaking in this context is symbolic of the myth of Pangu 盤古, the primordial giant whose cleaving of chaos brought heaven and earth into being.

This exploration with circular and square forms remains an open and evolving body of work. Beyond the two-dimensional form of clay relief that I am currently engaged with, I am looking toward expanding this inquiry into three-dimensional forms, continuing to reinvent the artefact in a contemporary context. 

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Nick Ng trained as an educator at the National Institute of Education (NIE), with specialisation in Art Education, and later earned his MA in Arts Pedagogy and Practice from Goldsmiths College (London). His early commitment to material and mark-making was recognised with a Certificate of Distinction in the UOB Painting of the Year Competition in 1992.

Alongside his visual arts foundation, Nick developed an extensive theatre career. In the late 1990s, he served as Resident Director of the Singapore Broadway Playhouse (新加坡大路劇社), where his works foregrounded visual composition, gesture, and form. He later founded FUNdaMENTAL MULTI-DISCIPLINARY (基 本多面體), creating performances informed by visual semiotics, postmodern aesthetics, and socio-historical inquiry.  

In July 2025, he transitioned from his long-standing teaching role to pursue his visual art practice full-time, under Turen Ceramics.