In a recent gallery visit to Yeo Workshop, we spoke with Martin Constable, artist and curator of ‘Fearsome Engines’, about the exhibition he shaped together with artists Debbie Ding, Hà Ninh Pham, and Charles Lim.
The exhibition examines the friction between gaming spaces and physical reality. Though none of them are gamers, each engages with the visual language and infrastructure of gaming in their own way, exploring themes of control, memory, and corporate obsolescence.
Hà Ninh Pham expands these themes into total world-building. His Role Playing Game, ‘Institute of Distance’, centers on the realm in the fetus where a soul-atom chooses its body parts and fate for its upcoming life. The exhibition features two works from this project. ‘[mountain]’ is a collection of 3D-printed game assets. The print ‘Loading Error’ celebrates the fact that this game is no longer available on Apple's App store and downloaded copies fail to function. Read more about the RMIT resident here: https://academics.rmit.edu.au/ninh-phamngocha
Charles Lim's ‘Switch’ (2026) uses a game engine to build a virtual replica of Yeo Workshop, where simulated flickering lights trigger real gallery lights via a deliberately clunky hardware rig, collapsing the boundary between digital and physical while exposing the mess usually hidden behind "seamless" tech.
Debbie Ding's ‘New Village’ (2026) draws on a walking simulator set in British WWII internment camps, presenting a digital print alongside a fabricated altar that parodies game portals, using game-engine logic to move through suppressed historical memory. Martin Constable's ‘The Philosophers Paradise’ (2026) turns the gaming battle station into a subject of aesthetic contemplation. Lightboxes of elaborate gaming rigs rendered with high visual appeal, framing what he calls "the aesthetics of male failure." Fearsome Engines is part of Yeo Workshop's annual summer program, which platforms guest curators, foundations, and artists presenting alternative perspectives in contemporary art — including experimental voices, some showing in Singapore for the first time.