Murals and Public Art in the Heartland

Much of the heartland's public art sits where people pass anyway, on a station wall or a playground, so we'd build a morning around the trains. Start at Clementi MRT, where the Echoes of Clementi mural runs beside Exits A and B, ride out to Boon Lay, and finish among the ceramics of Jurong West. The cost is a bus ride at the end and most of a morning. If the east suits you better, swap in the Bumboat Playground at Pasir Ris and the market mural at Tampines, and keep the arts centres for an afternoon in town.

Echoes of Clementi

Echoes of Clementi is a sepia, comic-style mural that tells the area's story in nine places, from the prawn farms at Pandan Reservoir and a 1950s night bazaar on Clementi Road to the old Jurong railway line and today's town centre. Ashley Goh Yu Ting of Ngee Ann Polytechnic designed it as an extension of SMRT's Comic Connect programme. It's on show beside the station exits whenever they're open, and 15 minutes is enough to read every panel. For breakfast first, Clementi Woods Park in the Morning Shade covers the market and the trees.

Comic Connect has put murals like this in 35 SMRT stations since 2022, and its page describes many of them place by place. The first went up at Toa Payoh. Boon Lay's centres on Chew Boon Lay, the pioneer the district is named after. At Tampines the artist spent three weekends at four sites and ate at the round market on the way, while Tiong Bahru's shows the market that opened in 1951 and Kranji's shows the war memorial on its hill. Ride a few and you've done a gallery crawl for the price of a fare.

Art in Transit stations

The LTA's Art in Transit programme goes back to 1997, starting with the North East Line, and now runs across the network. Art in Transit at MRT Stations lists every work by station, and three make a good trio. The Coin Mat at Bartley, on the Circle Line, is a canvas of 164,800 one-cent coins with tiny Vanda Miss Joaquim orchids on them. Symbiosis at Canberra, on the North-South Line, is a mural Tan Zi Xi made with local residents, from their sketches of the plants and animals they met at Sungei Buloh. At Punggol Coast, on the North East Line, Zul Othman's Trajectories is a memory map of Punggol drawn from his own teenage years there. The Bloomberg Connects app adds stories and guided highlights.

Dragons and a bumboat

In the mid-1970s HDB wanted its estates to have a look of their own, and its designers turned playgrounds into sculpture. The dragon on Toa Payoh's Lorong 6 is the famous one, with a head tiled in terrazzo, slides and a body of colourful rings, and our Toa Payoh story has the way there. A smaller version of the same design stands on Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3, and the National Heritage Board counts the Ang Mo Kio Dragon Playground among the last four dragons left. They're working playgrounds, so give children first go on the slide.

Out east, the Bumboat Playground at Pasir Ris belongs to HDB's mosaic series, known for terrazzo tiles and designs drawn from Asian cultures, animals, trades and food. It stands next to Elias Mall, with a bumboat, one of the small boats that once ferried cargo around the harbour, as its centrepiece. The Adventure Playground in Pasir Ris Park has a seven-metre netted rope pyramid, and the Pasir Ris Heritage Trail strings the two together on foot. If you'd rather take a whole town, the HDB Heartland Walk uses the self-guided Toa Payoh and Ang Mo Kio trails, with map brochures to download.

Kilns in Jurong West

From Boon Lay, take bus 199 from the interchange to TK Pottery Jungle, a family compound on Lorong Tawas with one of Singapore's last two dragon kilns, a traditional wood kiln built in 1940. The Tan family has run it since 1965. It's open daily from 9am to 5pm, the shop is free to browse, and you can book a wheel or hand-building workshop or email ahead to walk inside the kiln. Get off at the stop before Lor Danau and walk about five minutes.

Beside the kilns, The Potter's Garden was Jurong Eco-Garden until JTC renamed it for the area's pottery legacy. JTC worked with the two kiln studios and with community potters and artists to show ceramic works around its five hectares. Walk in by the overhead bridge on Jurong West Street 81, and look for the butterfly garden, where at least 26 species have been spotted. The two stops make one easy outing.

Haji Lane and the arts centres

For murals in town, Haji Lane is a narrow lane of small shops where local and international artists have painted the walls. The bars fill up in the evening, so we'd come in the late afternoon. The free Kampong Gelam (Kampong Glam) walk from Monster Day Tours runs on Mondays and Saturdays and finishes here, and the Kampong Glam Street Art Walk pairs it with the murals while there's still light.

For art with opening hours, two arts centres let you wander in. The grounds of Aliwal Arts Centre, in old school blocks a short walk from Haji Lane, are open from 7am to 11pm, and the centre is the setting for the Aliwal Urban Arts Festival, a celebration of street art, culture and rhythm. Out at Mountbatten, Goodman Arts Centre keeps the same hours and has GAC Artventure, a self-guided trail past its murals, sculptures and studios. Step into any studio with an OPEN sign.

In the south-west, Gillman Barracks fills 1936 army barracks with contemporary galleries, most of them open Tuesday to Saturday, and the grounds are free to wander. It's one of the venues for Singapore Art Week, usually held in January.

The Southern Ridges loop runs around Gillman, so it pairs with the climb in Labrador Nature Reserve and Bukit Chandu. Nearly all of the looking is free, and most of it was made for people on their way somewhere else, so give it a morning of your own.