Postcards From My Darling Love is Ripple Root’s twelfth solo show, a series of work inspired by the 1965 film Chinta Kasih Sayang (‘My Darling Love’), directed by Hussein Haniff. It is the prolific artist duo’s first time using film to be so closely inspired by. With the various Singaporean backdrops the film is set against, there’s a great sense of nostalgia and pride watching it, because here we are 61 years after the film release, so much and yet nothing much has changed in this time. Picking up on the protagonist, a workaholic painter who is more intent on making money out of his art than showing concern and affection for his wife, it is that familiar ‘Singaporean financial struggle’ meets risqué-camp quality, a lighthearted sense of humour runs throughout the film and artworks. Despite individual domestic and familial responsibilities the takeaway is how simply human we all are at the end of the day, with deep-seated desires for affection and attention. And sometimes work resurfaces as that ‘first love”. 

Using their signature medium of paints and mixed media, Ripple Root reinterprets banal scenes from the movie with a fresh twist on colour, by way of romanticising the setting of Singapore- Haw Par Villa, East Coast Park, Chinese Gardens, the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. While some pieces are inventive and their very own, dreaming up birds, the mangrove swamp and its natural ecosystem finding its way into some of the paintings- their personal ‘obsessions’. There is even a wood piece of theirs uncovered from exactly ten years ago that they decided to frame and feature because it set the tone of the show. Some scenes are largely interiors-based, but in the framing they were thinking about how these pieces could be situated as art objects in a home. Some of the canvas sides have been treated such that they look like film vignettes. Seen throughout the show is an undeniable cinematic quality including some use of text and subtitling, a poetic quality in terms of composition and subject matter. Through the simplicity of the circumstance and themes, it opens up a world of relatable dialogue. It’s a love letter to lovers, and a love letter to Singapore.