Nadine Ouellet & TIMOTHY WEE

Typographic Mise-en-Scène

Paper and wires / Photographic images

ABOUT THE WORK

The typeface in this photographic series has been generated by extracting forms from the famous Jean Dubuffet’s Hourloupe pictorial works. Named Type Brut it was created by Nadine during an interdisciplinary residency at Dubuffet’s former atelier in France in June 2019. The headdresses and masks were designed subsequently as a means to experiment with the letterforms – in space and in relationship to the body. The pieces were supposed to be showcased at LASALLE's Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore in April 2020, but the exhibition was cancelled due to COVID-19 and Nadine continued to work on them during the lockdown. They were imagined, not as fashion objects, but as visual elements of composed images. Timothy pursued the work and created the photographic images you are seeing – typographic head-dresses staged into visual narratives.

The works seen here are:
Bah
Hug
Mmm
Scrambled
YO

REFLECTION

The lockdown – a period of physical absence from society, but of conscious individual presence. We inhabited our heads, bodies and homes like never before. The typographic headdresses emulate the rawness of our continuous thoughts, the cacophony of words in our heads, the non-sense, the new awareness and the visceral need to connect with others and be seen.


Credit:
Photography by Timothy Wee

Models:
Fuli Gao and Muhammad Erwinshah Bin Hassan

NadineO_TimothyW_Hug.jpg
NadineO_TimothyW_YO.jpg
NadineO_TimothyW_Mmm.jpg
NadineO_TimothyW_Scrambled.jpg
NadineO_TimothyW_Bah.jpg
Nadine%27s+portrait.jpg
Timothy%27s+portrait.jpg

ABOUT THE ARTISTs

Nadine Ouellet is a Canadian-born designer and educator. She has taught and practiced graphic design on three continents and won international acclaim for her work in the process. Her design practice evolves around visual language, experimental typography, indexical portraiture, and identity. Nadine is the Programme Leader of the Diploma in Design Communication at LASALLE College of the Arts.

Timothy Wee is a photographer, educator and skateboarder residing in Singapore. His commercial practice is studio based, whilst his personal practice can take many forms across a variety of subjects.