This year’s listening journey was as complexity as life. What strikes me most is the way this year’s records balanced precision and vulnerability. I also noticed an interplay of opposites: melancholy paired with euphoria, the quiet of intimacy set against the grandeur of orchestration, the root of tradition interwoven with the innovation.

It strikes me how little has happened today or on all those Christmas Eves I’ve recounted. There was nothing monumental. And yet, each one stayed with me, even if it reads like a mosaic or a broken puzzle. I can remember them, write about them, and somehow, in the act of remembering, I find some way to piece them together, putting words and giving it permission for a second life.

At its essence, A New Home extends the spirit of the exhibition series, offering a meditation on the quiet transformations between movement, settling in, isolation and connection. What does it mean to call a place home within Singapore’s heartlands? How do these spaces shape the rhythms of our lives, and the shapes of our identities? By inviting viewers to dwell in these in-between moments, the series opens a reflective dialogue on identity, routine, and the fragile yet enduring bonds we form with the spaces we inhabit.

Here in Singapore, creativity too often feels cloaked in class, tucked away in corners accessible only to those who can afford the luxury of leisure. It’s a sobering truth, one that deepens my appreciation for the vivid, unapologetic culture I’ve just experienced in Taiwan.

I’ve been taking photos with the Nikon Z F camera for a week now, and it feels like having a new companion in an old, familiar story. It feels intimate in the way I’ve been able quickly bring it into my life, easing into the flow of my creative practice. I’ve always been a reflective person, and it’s even more telling in the way I take my pictures.

Her partner was sitting next to her, usually quiet and reserved, and shifted noticeably. The partner let out a long sigh, almost as if the name itself conjured something she needed to physically exhale. Finally, she muttered, “I plead the fifth.” It was a soft, almost reflexive response, but it held a strange weight.

It’s taken me a long time to recognise it openly. Admitting it feels like a confession of sorts, as if by acknowledging this part of myself, I’m stepping into an identity I once saw as distant, even forbidden. I think much of my hesitation comes from my past relationship, where “writer” felt like a title that belonged to someone else, someone close to me. I didn’t want to appropriate what felt so integral to him, as if writing was somehow a limited resource, reserved for a chosen few. It was as though I had drawn an invisible line, telling myself that being a writer was something only certain people could rightfully claim, and I was not one of them.

In Between Spaces is a made-up exhibition with a collection of black-and-white film photographs exploring the quiet beauty of Sydney and Singapore. These images capture fleeting moments of urban life, revealing intimacy amidst distance and transforming the mundane into the mysterious. A meditative journey through light and shadow, In Between Spaces invites you to slow down and contemplate the spaces between.