The National Art Gallery, Singapore

Police Barricade

May 1st, 2010

Title: Untitled (Police Barricade)
Artist: Yeh Chi Wei
Accession Number: 2009-01838
Conservation carried out by: Mar
Treatment Date: Feb 2009 / August 2009 / Dec 2009-Feb 2010

24 Feb 2009

Today, a new donation of 4 paintings by Yeh Chi Wei arrived to HCC. When I went down to the receiving area to check the condition of these paintings I found that one of them, ‘Police Barricade’, had some mould growing on the surface. We can’t place any works with mould into our stores as the mould could spread to other paintings, so we had to retrieve this work to our lab.

Once the painting arrived to the lab I took some pictures of it and did the documentation (condition report) that we always do before starting any conservation treatment.

I cleaned the surface of the painting with a fungicide solution that will kill the mould and also prevent it from reappearing again. We are in the middle of preparing other works for another exhibition, but I needed to do this straight away to stop the mould from spreading. It took me about 2 hours, then I put the painting away.

7 August 2009

I have been so busy with other things over the last couple of months…. But today I finally started looking at its condition in more detail and planning its treatment.

This is what I found:

What surprised me the most is that the paintings sides have been folded. You could see a large part of the image of the painting on the back:

The frame has been nailed directly to the sides of the painting so it is covering the folded sides. I wonder if there might be a signature hidden underneath the frame? We have in the lab the other 2 paintings that were donated with this one, and I noticed they also have folded edges and similar frames nailed to the sides. It looks like it was done by the same person.

I decided to carefully remove the strips of wood that make the frame to have a look at the sides. Unfortunately there wasn’t any signature, but then I could see why the sides were folded. There was one tear and one hole on the edges of the painting. Therefore the person who folded it was probably trying to cover these damages. These are the sides after removing the frame:

I would like to know if this was done by the artist, or if it was done by a framer or in a previous restoration. The painting also has a very oxidised varnish and a patch on its back, so it looks like it has been restored before. I decided to contact the Curator to see if he can contact the Yeh family and they remember if the works were ever sent for restoration or any other valuable background information.

In the meantime I started the treatment by removing the painting from its stretcher. If possible we try to restore paintings without removing them from their stretches, but in this case the damages were very close to the edges and I needed to access the tear from the back. This is the painting after un-stretching and some detail of the damages:

24 August 2009

Today I heard back from the curator. He says that the family is not very familiar with Yeh Chi Wei’s painting practices but that these paintings remained with the family until donated to us, and they never sent any for restoration. I guess then the restoration was most likely done by the artist himself.

I replied to the Curator with photos of the painting showing him the previously covered edges of the work. He is quite pleased about it. I also asked him if after treatment he would like me to fold the sides back the way they were, or if we should show the painting back to its previously larger size. We decided that it would be better to put the painting back the way it was, as we want to respect the artist’s intentions, plus if we return it to its larger size we’d need to order a new frame and stretcher, and can’t use the original ones. There are also other paintings folded and framed this way. I think maybe the paintings were all previously unstretched and slightly damaged, and the artist had to put them up on display for an exhibition so he stretched them and framed them all at once. This is my theory, anyway!

I continue with the treatment by removing the old patch and the remains of glue.

20 December 2009

Wow, I don’t know how it happened, but poor ‘Police barricade’ has been sitting in the drawer again for the last 4 months!! But now we have confirmed a list of many works for the Yeh Chi Wei exhibition, and it happened that most of them have problems with loose paint flaking off the canvas, so we have over 20 works in the lab by Yeh Chi Wei to conserve. But we also have two new people in the team, Lynn and Diana, who joined us last November and are now fully working on Yeh Chi Wei. So it’s time to pull ‘Police Barricade’ out of the drawer….

30 December 2009

Today I removed the residues of glue from the old patch by softening it with a gel. Then I flattened the distortions using moisture and weights.

31 December 2009

It’s time to turn the painting around and work from the front. Today I started removing the oxidised varnish. This is one of my favourite treatment (and probably of many other conservators!) because you can really see the difference. When you remove the dark varnish the bright colours of the painting come back to life. The downside is that we have to use solvents to do this, which sometimes are quite toxic, so this means sometimes having to work with a mask for many hours. Fortunately at HCC we have good fume extractor so we can work with that right on top of the solvent without creating much smell. These are some photos showing the varnish removal.

13 January 2010

I spent the last 3 days working on the varnish removal. It is quite a delicate process as if you apply too much solvent you can risk dissolving the original paint. But today I finally finished!

So now I am ready to start doing the canvas repairs on the back of the painting. I have to re-align the broken threads first and then mend them with a heat-sensitive glue, applied in tiny strips.

19 January 2010

Now that all the canvas repairs are finished, it’s time to put the painting back into its stretcher. But before that I need to do what we call ‘strip lining’, which is applying strips of canvas to the sides of the painting’s canvas so that the edges are stronger and we have some excess canvas to allow re-stretching. This is the painting after strip lining.

21 January 2010

Today I stretched the painting back to its stretcher with new staples. Before that I sanded the edges of the original stretcher so that they are not so sharp.

Then I filled the losses of paint with a filler that we make ourselves with chalk and a synthetic filler. This is what a loss of paint looks like after filling. We will then inpaint on top of the white areas to match surrounding colour.

29 January 2010

Now that it’s been a couple of weeks since I finished the varnish removal, it is time to re-varnish the painting with a new coat of clear varnish. It’s important to wait at least 2 weeks so that any remains of solvent from the cleaning process on the paint evaporate before coating it again. Varnish helps to enhance the colours and also protects the painting layer. I applied the news varnish by brush in our spray booth, so that I don’t stink out the whole lab!

18 February 2010

I have been caught up again with lots of admin work and other conservation requests over the last 2 weeks……….But today I aim to finish Police Barricade! So I inpainted the areas that I previously filled, and then I framed the painting. I used the same wood strips that I originally removed and carefully labelled to know where they belong to. I put them back into the same position using the same nail holes. Then I placed a foam-core backing board on the back of the painting. This is a preventive measure we use for all paintings; the backing board protects the back of the painting from accidental damage, from dust accumulation and from humidity changes affecting the canvas.

Here is a photo of the finished painting. Ready for the show!