Specimen Garden by Pamela Tan

About

Drawing from her background in architecture and her fascination with coral ecosystems, Pamela presents a body of sculptural works that blur the boundaries between art, design, and spatial emotion. These intricate, coral-inspired forms explore the convergence of memory, materiality, and ecology—translating natural systems and ancestral memory into immersive spatial poetry.

Through sand-coated laser-cut metal and luminous bead-like elements, each sculpture invites the viewer into a world both fabricated and organic—where architectural precision meets the softness of nature.

🗓 Opening Day: Sunday, 15 June 2025
📍 Core Design Gallery, Subang Jaya
🕛 12–2pm | Private Preview (by invitation only)
🕑 2–3pm | Artist Talk & Curatorial Walkthrough
🕒 3–6pm | Exhibition Open to Public

Artist Biography – Pamela Tan
Pamela Poh Sin Tan (b. 1991) is a Malaysian interdisciplinary artist and architectural designer whose practice bridges art, architecture, and design. Known for creating emotionally resonant sculptural forms, she blurs disciplinary boundaries to explore the unseen and the experiential. Her work seeks to evoke spatial narratives that are felt rather than merely observed, reflecting a deep commitment to the poetic and the material.

Pamela holds a Master of Architecture (MArch) from the University of Greenwich, London (RIBA Part II), and a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Architecture from Taylor’s University, Malaysia. Her project Mappa Mundi: A Map Maker’s Dream was featured at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London (2015). She was the final recipient of the Tan Sri Chan Sau Lai Architecture Award (2016), and her acclaimed works Eden and Projection Kite have received international recognition, including the Iconic Award – Best of the Best from the German Design Council and Bronze/Merit awards at the Design for Asia Awards (2020).

Specimen Garden
Pamela’s sculptural work signals a fresh and vital voice in Malaysia’s ultra-contemporary sculpture movement — one that fuses art, design, and spatial emotion into a unified language. With a background in architecture, Pamela was trained not just to design buildings, but to reimagine how humans might live, feel, and experience space in the future. This forward-thinking approach — taught to her during her architectural studies — continues to shape her entire creative career, including her well-known commissioned works. Her first solo exhibition makes this influence unmistakable: here, artistic expression and architectural thinking converge seamlessly.

Deeply inspired by her underwater experiences while snorkeling, Pamela transforms the sensory immersion of coral reefs into sculpture. She recreates this feeling of being surrounded — enveloped by form, light, and texture — through laser-cut metal structures softened by sand coatings and luminous bead-like elements. The results are both fluid and precise, natural and fabricated, echoing coral forms through a post-digital lens. These works don’t simply depict nature; they embody it, offering viewers an emotional architecture that can be felt with the body as much as seen with the eyes.

In bridging the disciplines of sculpture, ecological memory, and speculative design, Pamela’s work embodies a new direction for Malaysian sculpture — one where material innovation, emotional depth, and future-living concepts are intertwined. Her sculptures are not just static objects, but spatial experiences — bold proposals for how contemporary art can build feeling, not just form.