Light Forms

Every photograph in this exhibition was taken in the dark. Each began with waiting, for days or sometimes months, for a single species to bloom. At its peak, the flower is brought into a completely dark room and lit with ultraviolet light. There it glows, revealing colours too faint to see in daylight. Much of this glow is biofluorescence.

Many of these plants are native to Singapore and cultivated in the Singapore Botanic Gardens; several are rare and endangered. Some are shown with the insects that live on them: caterpillars that eat their leaves, butterflies that drink their nectar.

The red fluorescence of chlorophyll, the pigment that makes leaves green, offers a glimpse into processes within plants that are normally invisible to us. For Iyvone, this hidden light also speaks to our dependence on the natural world.

“To recognise that our breath, our bodies, our environments and our futures are intimately entangled,” she says, “is to understand that we, too, are connected to the forest.” Her photographs are therefore more than records; they are “a mode of remembering, a way of seeing anew what sustains and heals us.”

Each image begins with slow, patient attention, and asks the same of you. Look closely, until it gives up its hidden details. Then consider the question at the heart of Iyvone's work: "How do we learn to care for the forest, the ocean, and the other-than-human world?"

About the Artist

Iyvone Khoo (邱一文)

A multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of biology, light, and discarded materials.

Iyvone's practice involves working directly with living organisms including fungal mycelium, plankton, insects and plants. Her works present the living world as an active, intelligent and interconnected creative force.

Iyvone describes her approach as a form of magical realism, in which the living world is at once sentient, intelligent and sacred, while remaining grounded in scientific understanding: "different languages for the same truth."

She works in light-painting photography (moving a light across the subject during a long exposure), videos, sculptures and installations.
Iyvone's artworks are held in private and corporate collections internationally.

She is a Mead Fellow of the University of the Arts London (UAL).

Level 1, Botanical Art Gallery (Gallop Extension)
From 4 December 2026 to 14 February 2028
Open daily*, 9am – 6pm (Last entry at 5.30pm)
*Closed on the last Thursday of every month
Admission is free.