STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery

Turmeric screen-printed into sandpaper, neon made from paper pulp: this is where the art gets made, not just hung.

STPI is the Robertson Quay gallery to visit when you want to see how art gets made, not just how it hangs. It is a print and paper workshop with its own paper mill and a 400-square-metre gallery showing what comes out of it, and admission is free. The compromise is that the programme rotates through the year, so check what is on, and whether a public workshop is running, before you go.

The story starts in New York. STPI opened on 10 April 2002 as the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, named after the American master printmaker Kenneth E. Tyler, whose presses and equipment were shipped from his studio to the river. Tyler had worked with artists such as David Hockney and Robert Rauschenberg since the 1960s. In 2017, for its 15th anniversary, it rebranded as STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery.

The building is a restored 19th-century warehouse of around 4,000 square metres, with printmaking presses, the paper mill, artist studios and the gallery. Most shows grow out of the residency programme, in which visiting artists work with STPI's in-house printers and papermakers. Oh Thiam Guan, its Director of Workshop, told Design Anthology it works like an open kitchen, with a menu of traditional techniques that artists often order off, which is the best explanation of why the work looks the way it does.

The results can be properly strange: Haegue Yang screen-printing spices such as turmeric and cardamom into sandpaper discs, and Eko Nugroho turning pulp from the paper mill into neon sculptures. Nugroho came back for another residency, and his exhibition Strange Monster View ran until 10 October 2026, with public sessions on mokulito wood lithography and on embossing and stencilling. Those sessions are the thing to watch for.

The public side runs to six to eight exhibitions a year, plus artist talks, tours, film screenings and print and papermaking workshops, and an annual show drawn from the Singapore Art Museum and private collections; past special exhibitions have ranged from Roy Lichtenstein to Zao Wou-Ki. STPI has led the Southeast Asian art showcase S.E.A. Focus since 2019.

How to do it well: check the website, book a workshop if one is on, and leave time for The Corner Shop if you want to take a little paper home. It closes earliest on Sundays. Michelin-starred Jag is on the second floor if the afternoon turns into dinner, and the painted Alkaff Bridge outside, conceived by Pacita Abad during her own STPI residency, is the way to leave.

Good to know Exhibitions and public programmes change through the year, so check STPI's website for what is on, opening hours and any workshop bookings before you go. STPI is at 41 Robertson Quay.

STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery | 41 Robertson Quay, Singapore 238236