Drawn to artistic, literary and philosophical worlds and their histories, an important part of the practice of Vertical Submarine is centred on re-situating instances of anecdotal knowledge to evaluate their value and relevance in contemporary life. Formed by Justin Loke, Fiona Koh and Joshua Yang in 2003, and helmed today by the former two, the collective’s works are known for their playful methods of subverting constructs of knowledge and presumed wisdom, as well as conventions of seeing.

This can be seen in their works that engage with ideas of appearance and illusion, the deconstruction of (pseudo) intellectual premises as well as the creation of fictional personas as a way of measuring the reception of inherited knowledge.

The Amusement of Knowledge and Illusion is a survey of some of the collective’s memorable works, such as Hokkien Rhymes and Incendiary Texts which show their penchant for word play and puns to introduce, often humourous and irreverent contexts of meaning. In the Armchair Philosopher series, the artists present a set of reconstructed furniture as comical metaphors to highlight the gap between knowledge and application, in relation to the proverbial armchair philosopher who espouses untested expertise.

Embedded in the exhibition are hints to past work of the collective for audiences to discover, if they look hard enough. The show also revisits Vertical Submarine’s 2013 project, The Logbook of Public Ideas (2003 – 2013), a compilation of the collective’s ideas for art proposals, mostly unrealised. Also intended as a resource for other creatives, or the public to use, the exhibition presents two new works from the logbook, The Library of Silences.