Sonny Liew reveals why NAC revoked grant for The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye

He disagreed with a Straits Times opinion piece on the sequence of events surrounding the grant withdrawal.

Sulaiman Daud | September 29, 2017, 12:13 PM

A Straits Times opinion piece, "Arts funding: Thorns among the lilies", was published on Sept. 28.

You can read the online version of the piece here.

The gist of the article is to argue that regulations on the arts scene in Singapore are here to stay, but that doesn't mean art and innovative thinking can't flourish.

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The reference to Charlie Chan Hock Chye

Near the end of the piece, ST cited the case of Sonny Liew's award-winning graphic novel, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye.

Unfortunately, they got the sequence of events wrong:

"The arts scene has indeed grown over the years but there are still some who find the climate limiting. Notably, artist Sonny Liew was perturbed when NAC withdrew an $8,000 grant for his graphic novel, The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, because of its "sensitive content". The book was nonetheless published and, impressively, went on to win three awards at the prestigious Eisner Awards. Lately, the artist said he is declining a $19,000 grant for a new book as he did not wish to get "too tangled up in the compromises involved"."

This point was raised by Liew himself, who disputed this sequence of events in a Facebook post on the same day as the ST piece:

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Grant withdrawal happened after book was printed and in stores

In the first part of his post, Liew wrote:

"A slight error in the piece: The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye was not published after the NAC grant was withdrawn - the withdrawal happened after the book was already printed and in stores."

This is correct.

According to Today, the National Arts Council revoked the S$8,000 grant on May 29, 2015 on the eve of the official May 30 book launch at Kinokuniya Bookstore.

The reason given was the book's "sensitive content", and NAC declined to comment further.

However, it mentioned that the novel was already launched in Malaysia earlier in May 2015.

The report also quoted Epigram Books publisher Edmund Wee, who said:

"The book has been published and the launch is still on. Without the grant, we will need to sell more copies."

Liew provides more insight

In the second part of his post, Liew provided a bit more insight into what went on -- from his perspective -- regarding NAC's decision to revoke the grant.

"For the record: From my understanding, they initially tried to argue that the manuscript submitted for the grant application was a departure from the final content (echoes of Jeremy Tiang's case) - when this was shown not to be so, they fell back on just saying that a (new) decision had been made and nothing could be done about it.

The grant system has both external and internal evaluators to review submissions - this is presumably to promote objectivity and impartiality in the process. Overriding those procedures after the fact should have required more justification on their part, but unfortunately this was not the case."

Liew makes three points here:

  • NAC's first reason was that the manuscript submitted for the grant application was different from what was in the final version. (Similar to Jeremy Tiang's case, which you can read about

    here). This was allegedly not true.

  • When this was allegedly shown to not be the case, the NAC then said a new decision had been made and there was nothing Liew could do about it.
  • Liew also claims that the external and internal evaluators, whose job was to review submissions, did not provide a satisfactory justification for the NAC's decision -- when the book was already a done deal to be sold to the Singapore public.

On June 2, 2015, following several media queries, Senior Director of the NAC's literary arts sector Khor Kok Wah said:

"The retelling of Singapore’s history in the work potentially undermines the authority or legitimacy of the government and its public institutions, and thus breaches our funding guidelines. The council’s funding guidelines are published online and well known among the arts community.”

After the hue and cry, 500 copies of the novel, which was half of its 1,000 copy print run in Singapore, were sold out within a few days.

Other graphic novels at Kinokuniya typically took around two years to sell 500 copies.

Following Liew's triumph at the Eisner Awards (the comic book equivalent of the Oscars), Kino has sold more than 5,000 copies of the novel and expect sales to remain strong.

ST has since apologised and corrected the error:

Related stories:

National Arts Council revokes $8,000 grant for new graphic novel, publisher prints stickers to cover up their logo

Government authority helps graphic novel “The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye” achieve cult following

Sonny Liew first S’porean to win prestigious Eisner awards for Charlie Chan comic

The story of Sonny Liew: How an unassuming S’porean comic artist took a big risk & hit the big time

Top image from Sonny Liew's Facebook page