01: Products
Product
There were quite a few products and services that they are providing.
Of course, the very first one will be the exhibitions shown in the different venues. They will be featuring 50 renowned international and local artists, who hail from various artistic disciplinary backgrounds. The exhibitions are of different forms, not only drawings, paintings or pictures, but the artists make use of videos to show out the feeling of “wonders”. Also, there are some art pieces are in 3D form, which means it allows the viewer to have a touch and feel of it. In addition to that, for each individual art piece, there was a board with the information of the art pieces.
Raw Canvas
Beyond Recognition
Altitude of 10000m, Infinite Islands
Untitled
Next, they also have Vernissage. This is a preview of the exhibitions just 2 days before. It is for the VIPs, invited guest, professionals and general public too.
Third, they provide Encounters. It is a 'get-together' sessions in for interaction between the interested public, the arts communities and the Singapore Biennale curatorial team. This session allows the public to have some feedbacks.
They also have a little section which is the kids’ biennale which consists of children’s art pieces on the same theme: Wonders. There are more than 36 schools and 8000 students joining in this event. This actually allows the children to have a hands-on experience and present their creativity.
Kids' Biennale
There is an education and outreach, which are programmes for the secondary and tertiary students which instill an interest of arts in the students.
Under their programmes, they also provide guided tours – scheduled tours with different timings at different places and with the different languages of English, Mandarin and Japanese. This will ensure that the visitors have a better understanding of the art works by the artists. For those people who do not like to follow a guided tour, they do provide self-guided tours’ files which are audio files in both English and Mandarin which the visitors can download before going to the exhibitions.
Lastly, Singapore Biennale 2008 also has its own shop, which is selling their limited edition t-shirts and tote bags. Also, they did sell their guides which include all the pictures and information of the art pieces.
All the above products and services are actually made to cater to the needs of the visitors, which are their target markets.
How effective?
I think it is quite effective as they have made very good use of their Arts pieces as they put the different art pieces at different places which will attract more visitors to the different places. For visitors who had the passion of Arts will enjoyed them and it would be a worthwhile experience even for me, a person who did not know how to appreciate arts, but had enjoyed the trip and most of the art pieces are still fresh in minds. And, I especially like one of the art pieces name: “I’m Not Expensive”. I think it is really fascinating. The art piece looks like it is just engraved into the wall only, but when you focus on one of the engraved picture for example the boy sitting there (shown below), and you walk horizontally, the boy is actually spinning.
In addition, their encounters and guided tours actually allowed the visitors to have a better understanding of this event and the shop can let the visitors bring back some souvenirs back home.