Under the Five Trees

18th January - April 30th 2019, Five Sites at Esplanade Park

Five trees, five songs and five stories, waiting to be discovered in the Esplanade Park. Drawing from the area’s rich history as a place for lovers and loners to hide, Under the Five Trees is a site-specific audio and environmental installation that combines sound, music, poetry, narrative and landscape design.

Under the Five Trees was commissioned by the National Gallery Singapore for the Light to Night Festival 2019. The work was created by Kaylene Tan and Ben Slater in collaboration with Boey Kim Cheng, Amanda Lee Koe and Aswani Aswath (text); Evan Tan and Victor Low (sound/music); Ling Hao and Faiz Bin Zohri (design/landscape).

Lovers End
Kaylene Tan (text), Hell Low (performer) Site: The Leopard Tree, near The Cenotaph

A ballad about love, trees and the things lovers do under them.

Red Carpets
Aswani Aswath (text), Siti Khalijah Zainal and Sivakumar Palakrishnan (performers) Site: Gravel area near The Cenotaph, adjacent to Esplanade Drive

A man takes solace at the place where the land meets the sea, and realises he is not alone.

The Sea Remembers
Boey Kim Cheng (text), K Rajagopal (performer) Site: Lawn between the Tan Kim Seng Fountain and The Cenotaph

A series of prose poems offering glimpses of a father and son’s walk along the waterfront in the 1970s.

Dark Trees
Ben Slater (text), Dana Lam and Jean Goh (performers) Site: The Yellow Flame Trees beside the Tan Kim Seng Fountain

Everyone knows the famous painting of the couple beneath the Yellow Flame trees; a young woman wants to know the story behind the story.

"I am ardently in love with the girl, but I know it is a hopeless affair."
Amanda Lee Koe (text and performer), Shak (performer) Site: The Pink Frangipani Tree near the Tan Kim Seng Fountain

4am in the 50s, a pair of star-crossed lovers have no way out, except the sea. This is their song.