Advertising & DJing

After college in Melbourne, I got started on my Art Direction career at a small boutique agency called WORK under a creative director named Theseus Chan. I spent my first day there working till 5am and really wasn’t sure if that was going to be my life kerning 8 point type and moving images 1 pixel at a time. At my next gig, I worked with a Noel Yeo, a writer fresh out of college in Oregon. We won a little nice batch of awards the first year while sharing new music with each other in our room. I think he was afraid I would claim the audio space so he got his CDs in first. He introduced me to Radiohead. That was a fun time in my working life.

While all this was happening, I spent all my weekends for 2 years at a club called Insomnia with a night called Guerrilla with a friend named Ashidiq. We were just going against the grain of everything else happening culturally and wanted to share alternative music we enjoyed. Along side with lo-fi visuals made on a VHS tape in Photoshop, we made our flyers and tee shirts which people still talk about till today which makes me happy. People from various creative communities came through every weekend and left their egos at the door and interacted in a way we’ve never seen before. It was raw, real and really sweaty. Here’s an article Vice did of our scene from back then.

After a DJ gig in New Zealand, it made me realise how small we are in respect to the world and quit my job. This allowed me more time to pursue my music while also setting up a web design company. It were a tiny set up but we did work through agencies for major brands such as Emirates, Mitsubishi, Ford and Audi. On hindsight, I think we were young and cheap. And as lovers of art, we also tried to create an online business promoting local artists to the world. We did learn a lot about the art world though and met many of our artist heroes from around the world. My lesson learnt was that there must be a balance between art and business for it to be sustainable for both.

It was also here that I also started my first record label with a friend in London called Qilin which aimed to uncover new artists from around the world. We had a series called 4 Corners where we discover new artists from all corners of the world. From Iceland to Indonesia, from London to Detroit. I was extremely proud that some of the artistes have become established and was happy to contribute to their journey. We also became the first local label to get to number 1 with my release Drum and Bass Arena charts, the world’s leading drum and bass online store based in London at that point in time.

Through the last 9 years, I’ve been working across the fields of design, music and art. Trying my best to pull together all my experiences from across the various disciplines.

Here are some projects I co-founded:

System Sovereign

Founded in 2012, System Sovereign is the multidisciplinary studio of Jonathan Nah/Kiat and Cherry Chan. Based in Singapore, the duo spend most of their time working on projects encompassing fashion, music, lifestyle, art and design. Kiat and Cherry have also been driving forces in the Singapore underground, creating communities in the arts & culture sector.  It’s focus was on culture based brands both locally and internationally. From designing Singapore’s first Fashion Film exhibition to community arts outreach programs for those that may not have the privilege of having experience the arts.

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K-Projects

In 2012, my wife and I started a furniture line with a investor friend called K-Projects. The first collection was called K% . The lead designer was Aki Sato, Japan’s top industrial designer, for the first collection while we handled the branding and press relations. We debuted the collection in Milan during the Design Week.

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Syndicate

I co-founded an artist collective with roots in different disciplines ranging from music producers, photographers, visual artists, turntablists, poets and even a sneaker designer. I’ve always had a firm belief that new ideas are formed by blending an interesting group of talents together. This platform was created to allow interdisciplinary collaborations. We’ve toured around the world playing at leading music festivals as well as being involved with the Singapore Tourism Promotion board as part of the SG50 celebrations. They supported us by allowing us to curate and present Singapore’s most exciting artists as part of a travelling show from Beijing to London and to New York and back. Each city also had a collaboration with a local artist and myself in each presentation. A highlight was to collaborate with Uniqlo to create in-store music with local artists for the world’s first concept store... a world’s first which I’m very proud of. The success of that project led on to creating subsequent albums of in-store music for Christmas and the Chinese New Year season.

Syndicate Artists: .gif / Intriguant / KoFlow / Nobi / Vandetta / Max Lane / Octover / Gema / SSYTM / Dju-lian / Kiat / Cherry Chan / Darren Dubwise / nada

Here’s one of my cats, the photogenic one. She looks cute but has a bad attitude. While having a random conversation with a French man in Poland who needed a lighter, I found out her name is ‘Etienne’ meant ‘Stephen’ in French. I still love her regardless.

Thanks for reading this far.