Kaws: Holiday Singapore exhibition to reopen after court lifts injunction to halt event
SINGAPORE — The Kaws: Holiday Singapore exhibition at The Float @ Marina Bay will reopen on Tuesday afternoon (16 November), after the State Court lifted an earlier injunction that called for the event to be halted.
The court order, which was lifted by District Judge Kow Keng Siong, had been served at the event site on Saturday afternoon just before the start of a private preview for media influencers and ahead of the exhibition's intended public opening on Sunday.
Along with halting the event – which was set to run until Sunday (21 November) – the order also called for the cessation of merchandise sales along and for all event publicity and advertising to be ceased.
Local non-profit group The Ryan Foundation (TRF) said in an earlier statement that it had obtained the order due to the exhibition's alleged "breach of TRF’s intellectual property rights and misuse of confidential information".
In a statement released on Monday night, the exhibition's Hong Kong-based organisers AllRightsReserved (ARR) said that the court had ordered TRF to pay the legal costs involved in discharging the injunction.
"The Court further ordered that there will also be an inquiry into the damages sustained by AllRightsReserved by reason of the injunction," it added.
Following Monday's hearing, TRF director Adrian Chan said, "The interim injunction is a temporary one and we are happy that the public gets to enjoy the artwork."
The lifting of the injunction comes a day after TRF began contempt of court proceedings against ARR for allegedly failing to comply with the order to halt the event. TRF said in a statement that it would be filing more documents and continue pursuing the matter in the High Court.
TRF and ARR had been in talks to bring the exhibition to Singapore in 2019, although negotiations eventually fell apart. Yahoo News Singapore understands that TRF's ongoing suit against ARR relates to information that was allegedly shared between the parties during the discussions – which included a site visit – for the 2019 show.
Kaws: Holiday Singapore features a 42m-long inflatable artwork by American artists Kaws – whose real name is Brian Donnelly – and is based on his signature Companion character. Singapore is the seventh spot on the exhibition's world tour, which began in Seoul in 2018.
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