TwentyFifteen 07/20: A Little Bit of Me from Everything Else by Matthew Teo

I Love Singapore So Much. © Matthew Teo

Continuing our feature on the Twentyfifteen.sg Project, A Little Bit of Me from Everything Else by Matthew Teo is issue #07 of 20.

Made over a period of four years during my tenure at Calibre Pictures, this series shows the various concerns that gripped me as I entered the working world fresh from National Service.

Many of the images depict my struggle to cope with work, friends, partners and family as work took up a huge chunk of my time during my early years with the studio.

These pictures are very much an extension of myself, just as all my past series also revolved around my friends, family and military service. The everyday has, in recent years, become intimately intertwined with contemporary art, and I take daily life as my subject matter.

Gaffer tape, mannequins, trolleys, huge bags of equipment and lightstands are part and parcel of my life as a camera assistant. Including them in this series is my attempt at formalising my work, as well as coming to terms with my career as a commercial/fashion photographer while juggling my own expectations as an artist and the influences I have had since my teenage years. I hope to challenge the boundaries we continually reconstruct between the self and others, as well as question what is socially acceptable to share with other people. This is particularly relevant in a modern world permeated by social media, where everyone is trying to share a piece of life and grab attention. I also use self-portraiture to express widespread social sentiments as well as my personal ones towards national policies and governance in Singapore.

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