Dimension: 29.7 (w) x 42.0 (h) cm | 11.7" x 16.5"
4 colour Risograph
Edition of 20
Signed and numbered
Printed on 220gsm uncoated acid-free paper
Subtle imperfections may vary
Knuckles & Notch (2025)
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Humans have been recreationally swimming since time immemorial. Evidence dating to prehistoric times has been found, with the earliest dating to Stone Age paintings from around 10,000 years ago! Written references date back to 2000 BC, and in many ancient tales. The earliest book about swimming was written in 1538 by Swiss-German professor, Nikolaus Wynmann, titled “The Swimmer, or A Dialogue on the Art of Swimming and Joyful and Pleasant to Read”.

Competitive swimming emerged in the 1830s in England, with the first swimming competitions being held in artificial pools built in London. By 1880 it grew in popularity so much so that the first national governing body, the Amateur Swimming Association was born.

Swimming as a competitive sport has a long history in Singapore and contains countless aquatic icons, from our ‘royal’ firsts like Patricia Chan, the first woman to win a gold medal in any swimming competition, to Joseph Schooling, Singapore's first gold medal Olympian, and to Joscelin Yeo, the most bemedaled South East Asian games athlete. And lest we forget our Paralympians, Theresa Goh and Yip Pin Xiu, who respectively hold a bronze and gold medal each!
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When most people think of sports, it’s often just an activity — motion, movement, engagement of both body and mind. But as visual artists, we see sports as much more than just that. Sports is a form of expression, a performance that utilises our strengths in ways that are fundamentally human and that cannot be replicated by machines. Every athletic moment is a voluntary decision we make to engage our body in a unified act of expression.

Echoes of the Wave presents our exploration of sports in a new light. Through our art director Djohan, who has spent much of his life participating in competitive games such as floor ball, hockey and skateboarding, we are able to approach this project with an understanding of sports. For him, staying active is an essential part of his holistic artistic practice, by granting him a deeper understanding of the human body.

Creativity, culture and leisure shape the way that we experience the world and ourselves, while sports concurrently engage the body and mind on a physical and metaphysical level. Integrating the two illustrates that art is more than just an aesthetic. It's a core expression of life itself, and serves to deepen our understanding and layers of meaning to these moments of athletic performance.

Our exhibition seeks to capture this synergy through a series of illustrations that reflect the intensity and impact of sports. By freezing a moment in time, we weave together the contrast of light and shadow, evoking a sense of tremendous movement, while the rich textures and neutral tones ground the palette in reality. These artworks speak to the way iconic sporting moments ripple outwards, creating lasting impressions that live on well after the moment has passed.

We aim through our art, to reflect the profound connection between sports and culture, and how they inspire each other by sparking dialogue, uniting communities, and transcending cultural boundaries.
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