The RAT has been listening to a lot of `90s rock music lately and it got me thinking about the kind of rock that’s being churned out these days. Where’s the oomph? Was asking myself the same thing looking at the winning works at the 30th UOB Painting Of The Year exhibition at the Esplanade Jendela earlier this afternoon. No, it has nothing to do with the banishment of photography from the contest (promised to keep quiet about that for now). It’s just, well, where’s the oomph? According to that know-it-all, Merriam-Webster, the word means “personal charm or magnetism”, “sex appeal” or “punch, vitality”. Sure, some of the works were technically or conceptually passable – or even solid – but to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I was, oomphistically speaking, “turned on” by any of them (with the exception of Arivan Shanmugaratnam’s And he gets his act together). Is it asking for too much to be turned on by what’s supposed to be this year’s best of the lot? Interestingly enough, there was one comment in the guestbook suggesting that UOB also exhibit the works that were rejected – which was echoed by an artist friend of mine as well. Unless, of course, my friend was the one who wrote the comment. I think it’s an interesting proposition – what exactly makes the cut? If anyone’s game, I’m willing to open up For Art’s Sake! for a kind of online Salon des Refuses. Email me at mayo [at] mediacorp.com.sg (mayo[at]mediacorp[dot]com[dot]sg) and if there’s enough, we’ll post it up. *** But back to the business at hand. Remember my scorecard reviews? I decided to bring it back, but with a twist – I got walk-ins to rate the works for me. For those of you not familiar with my scientifically-flawed-but-oh-so-fun method of criticism, artworks are rated on a scale of 1 (yawn) to 5 (yay) based on impressions that last between five-to-10 seconds (apparently the average time someone spends looking at something in a museum). So for half an hour earlier, I corralled a number of folks – from Singaporeans to Thai, Indonesian, and Chinese tourists, from students and parents to nicely dressed cuties – to rate the paintings. Not a lot, but hey, this ain’t a survey. *** UOB PAINTING OF THE YEAR 2011 Gao Yao Min’s My Dream Land

Erm, you sort of get the picture. The lowest it got was a "3".

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PLATINUM AWARDS

Nah Yong En’s This Work Lasts Forever was a bit more mixed.

But the consensus seems to be "3".

  Ong Jie Yi’s Old Haunt seems to be a fave as well.

Again, lots of "3"s. Hmm, the fence must be pretty comfy.

 The RAT also got our faceless critics to rate the rest of the exhibition. Here's a snippet of the result. 

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HIGHLY COMMENDED (OPEN CATEGORY)

Lester Lee Ngai Sing’s The Idea Of Great Success was quite unpopular.