If you walk past the beach near Xtreme Skatepark at East Coast Park these few days, stop and take a look around. You’ll probably find 7 wooden logs standing vigil in the sun – each etched with carvings of poems, phrases, or drawings.
These Stone Age-esque carvings are in fact the memories of bygone times spent in East Coast Park by regular patrons who recorded(or rather chipped away) at the logs in the hot mid-afternoon sun.
The brainchild of art therapist Alvin George Khoo, this outdoor eco-friendly art piece is a comment on the passing times and the need for us to record our memories, and its purpose a cleverly hidden pun in the piece’s own title: Time Logs.
In an interview with UrbanWire, the art therapist, who had even gone to Thailand for a week to train his wood carving skills under the masters, said that the each of the 7 logs represents generations of a family, and the content of the each carving corresponds with the generation it is found in.
Alvin reminisces about the times when stilt houses existed along the shoreline, when he was able to play amongst the seaweed and marine animals. Unfortunately, the stilt houses disappeared during land reclamation, and this disappearance was part of the inspiration for Time Logs.
Time Logs is part of Project LAVA, an initiative by the National Arts Council to to generate awareness of our literary and artistic heritage, through the use of visual art in public spaces.
These logs will stand rooted for the public to view till at least August 2015, and may be extended in the future.