Singapore does not get many chances to see five decades of a Cultural Medallion artist's work in one room, free, in the middle of Orchard Road. From 30 October to 8 November 2026, the ION Art gallery on Level 4 of ION Orchard hosts REMINISCENCE (II), a solo exhibition by Ang Ah Tee, the 2009 Cultural Medallion recipient known for thickly textured, semi-abstract paintings of Singapore's streets. Admission is free and the gallery keeps mall hours: 10am to 10pm daily, no booking needed.

Organised by NANMAN ART, the show gathers works from the 1990s to the present, and lands 13 years after Ang's first REMINISCENCE exhibition at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) in 2013, which showed more than 50 works.

What you'll see

Three threads run through the exhibition:

  • Singapore's changing streets. Chinatown's shophouses and its historic streets, including Smith Street, Temple Street and Ann Siang Hill, hang alongside contemporary views of Marina Bay. Ang paints the atmosphere a place leaves behind rather than its architectural detail, so past impressions and present-day views sit in the same frame.
  • Travel landscapes. Guilin and Suzhou in China, Melaka, Paris, Santorini and Japan, each translated into the colour and rhythm of the place rather than a postcard view.
  • The style's evolution. Earlier representational work in watercolour and oil gives way to the expressive acrylics he has built since the 1990s: spontaneous brushwork, palette-knife texture, and vivid reds, yellows, blues and greens, with Chinese ink painting and Western modernism meeting in one composition.

One date to double-check before opening day

The media advisory we received on 29 October says the exhibition runs from Thursday 30 October, and repeats that date in the subject line and twice in the body. The official exhibition poster, however, prints 31 October as the start of the exhibition period. The opening ceremony is on Saturday 31 October at 2pm, followed by a private art salon from 3.30pm to 5pm (an invite-only conversation between Ang, Associate Professor Tan Chee Lay and art columnist Zhao Hong, not open to the public).

Our practical read: any visit from 31 October onwards is safe; a trip on 30 October itself carries a small risk of finding the gallery still being set up. We have asked the organiser to confirm which date is right and will update this article when they reply.

Visit details

  • What: REMINISCENCE (II), a solo exhibition of Ang Ah Tee, organised by NANMAN ART
  • When: 30 October to 8 November 2026 (see the note above about day one), 10am to 10pm daily
  • Where: ION Art gallery, Level 4, ION Orchard, 2 Orchard Turn, Singapore 238801, directly above Orchard MRT (NS22/TE14)
  • Price: free, no booking needed

About Ang Ah Tee

Born in Singapore in 1943, Ang studied at NAFA from 1960 to 1962 under the pioneer artists Cheong Soo Pieng and Georgette Chen, and has painted full-time since 1977, travelling through Asia and Europe for his subjects. He took first prize in Western Painting at the Dr Tan Tsze Chor Art Award in 2001 and received the Cultural Medallion, Singapore's highest arts honour, in 2009. If you have ever wanted to see how one painter's view of the same streets shifts over 50 years, this is a rare free chance to do it between errands at ION.

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*Details are from the organiser's media advisory of 29 October 2026 and the official exhibition key visual; ION Orchard's own website had no listing for the show when we checked the same day, and the two official sources disagree on the start date (30 vs 31 October), which we flag above. Cover image: Ang Ah Tee, Chinatown (2023), acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100cm, courtesy of NANMAN ART and ION Art.*