Hoo Fan Chon is a visual artist based in George Town, Penang. His research-driven projects are often set in local geographies and concern class aspiration, cultural identity, informal histories, and colonial legacy.
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︎ email ︎ cv
✺ 2026 ✺ 2025 ✺ 2024 ✺ 2023 ✺ 2022 ✺ 2021 ✺ 2020 ✺ older works ✺ photography ✺ video ✺ painting ✺ sculpture ✺ installation ✺ writing ✺ george town ✺ archive ✺ fish ✺ durian ✺ badminton ✺
Catch of the Day: Fish Station
Wan Hai Hotel: Singapore Strait
2026 January, Warehouse Hotel (Singapore)
Curated by X Zhu-Nowell
Catch of the Day: Fish Station was commissioned by Rockbund Art Museum
This exhibition was part of The Singapore Art Week, organised by ArtSG & Rockbund Art Museum
The fish preparation and cooking were done by chef Desmond Yong and Charles Leow
List of works:
Catch of the Day: Fish Station
Food-sampling activation featuring line-caught fish from Singapore’s shoreline, prepared using various local cooking methods.
Tide Turning Lazy Susan（食來潮轉）
Insitu mixed media installation: motorized lazy susan, banquet table, tableware, linens, and condiments, dimensions variable, 2021
Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea All Fish Banquet (八鮮過海全魚宴)
Single-channel MPEG-4 video, color, sound, 3:54 min, 2021
2026 January, Warehouse Hotel (Singapore)
Curated by X Zhu-Nowell
Catch of the Day: Fish Station was commissioned by Rockbund Art Museum
This exhibition was part of The Singapore Art Week, organised by ArtSG & Rockbund Art Museum
The fish preparation and cooking were done by chef Desmond Yong and Charles Leow
︎
List of works:
Catch of the Day: Fish Station
Food-sampling activation featuring line-caught fish from Singapore’s shoreline, prepared using various local cooking methods.
Tide Turning Lazy Susan（食來潮轉）
Insitu mixed media installation: motorized lazy susan, banquet table, tableware, linens, and condiments, dimensions variable, 2021
Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea All Fish Banquet (八鮮過海全魚宴)
Single-channel MPEG-4 video, color, sound, 3:54 min, 2021
This fish station was a food-sampling activation at the Wan Hai Hotel: Singapore Strait opening dinner reception, serving line-caught fish from Singapore’s shoreline. Three days prior to the event, I visited Sembawang Park Jetty, Punggol Point Jetty, and Bedok Jetty to barter for anglers’ catch of the day using canned drinks, fishing equipment, cigarettes, and NTUC FairPrice vouchers.
Much of the seafood sold in Singapore is imported from neighbouring countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, and fish from Singapore’s own waters are not commonly available or are less price-competitive. Yet the shoreline is not only part of a national border or supply chain—it is also read by some as a place where food can still be gathered. This programme brought people together through the collective consumption of fish caught along Singapore’s shoreline.
Some migrant workers navigate urban landscapes through an ethic of subsistence, self-reliance, and ecological knowledge shaped by agrarian backgrounds. In cities, this knowledge appears in practices such as fishing along coastlines, collecting shellfish from mudflats, or foraging edible plants from roadsides. Yet these acts often become hyper-visible in their hands, framed as transgressions rather than knowledge. Urban fishing, in particular, is frequently cast as a hygiene issue rather than recognized as environmental literacy and a long-overlooked right to harvest from one’s surroundings.
Harvesting seafood requires sensory attunement, intergenerational knowledge, and an acceptance of uncertainty—qualities at odds with “supermarket modernity,” which privileges convenience, standardization, and disconnection from origin, seasonality, and labour. The gesture echoes practices carried by some of my ancestors when they first arrived in the region as migrant workers.
Much of the seafood sold in Singapore is imported from neighbouring countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, and fish from Singapore’s own waters are not commonly available or are less price-competitive. Yet the shoreline is not only part of a national border or supply chain—it is also read by some as a place where food can still be gathered. This programme brought people together through the collective consumption of fish caught along Singapore’s shoreline.
Some migrant workers navigate urban landscapes through an ethic of subsistence, self-reliance, and ecological knowledge shaped by agrarian backgrounds. In cities, this knowledge appears in practices such as fishing along coastlines, collecting shellfish from mudflats, or foraging edible plants from roadsides. Yet these acts often become hyper-visible in their hands, framed as transgressions rather than knowledge. Urban fishing, in particular, is frequently cast as a hygiene issue rather than recognized as environmental literacy and a long-overlooked right to harvest from one’s surroundings.
Harvesting seafood requires sensory attunement, intergenerational knowledge, and an acceptance of uncertainty—qualities at odds with “supermarket modernity,” which privileges convenience, standardization, and disconnection from origin, seasonality, and labour. The gesture echoes practices carried by some of my ancestors when they first arrived in the region as migrant workers.