SINGAPORE, Sept 12 — A festival of photography might sound like an interminable series of exhibitions comprising rows of photographs in stark, white galleries, but A Room With A View, curated by Carol Chow and presented by the Singapore International Photography Festival, goes some way towards subverting some expectations of photography, and exhibitions in general. Here are five things you need to know about this exhibition.

1. It features six female photographers curated by a woman

If you go into the exhibition cold — and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) Singapore’s preference for printed "room-sheets” over artwork labels makes this quite easy — you might not have noticed that the show gives exclusive focus to six of Hong Kong’s female photographers, while also being curated by a woman. That this is worthy of notice at all suggests the amount of work which remains to be done for gender representation in the art world — locally, regionally, and internationally. Hopefully, there will come a time when all-women shows, out of simple ubiquity, are no longer noteworthy for that fact alone.

2. It showcases perspectives from all ages

Given that it is an exhibition which aims to reflect a diverse range of experiences and perspectives within the broad category of "female photographers in Hong Kong”, it should come as no surprise that there’s a fairly broad age range to the photographers: From 30ish to just a hair over 70. Rather than serving as some demographic, box-checking exercise, the works by these diverse individuals hint at formative experiences of very different iterations of Hong Kong. This might come across straight-forwardly, in works addressing personal memories of the spaces and places of Hong Kong, or more subtly, through projects which address or allude to anything from civil rights to state surveillance.

3. It is about more than just Hong Kong

Though centred in the experience of six female photographers from Hong Kong, the show is by no means insular, or solely preoccupied with Hong Kong itself. The most obvious counter-example is Lam Wai-Kit’s Which Things Were (Are) Allowed and Which Were (Are) Not, in which she applied Stasi-style monitoring to herself while in Germany. While the exhibition as a whole can be traced to the erasure of historical places and spaces in Hong Kong, there are certainly similarities to be found in Singapore’s own urban experience, given our rapid pace of development, where buildings of historical interest and natural habitats get razed far too often.

4. It is literally a room with a view

In what might be a clever nod to the exhibition’s title, the show takes place in a literal "room with a view”. Like the rest of the galleries at the institute, the Earl Lu Gallery features a wrap-around floor-to-ceiling glass facade, with the end result being that practically every work can be seen from the outside. The show’s curator has very clearly worked with this as a feature, rather than as a limitation to be overcomed. The way the works are displayed varies dramatically, suggesting both openness and dynamism: Ranging from a large-scale vinyl print on the glass facade, to the relatively conventional hang of Wong Wo-Bik’s photographs, the apparent salon-style hang of Lau Wai’s clustered images, and even the decoratively-fringed prints of Yvonne Lo, wrapped around the gallery’s pillars.

5. It is not quite what you would expect

As the mention of decorative fringing might suggest, despite being part of a photography festival, there are numerous departures from conventional prints on photographic paper. The first work upon entering the gallery is a video by Wong Wo-Bik, while Lam Wai-Kit’s nearby slideshow is set to folksy-sounding acoustic guitar. Throughout the exhibition, various non-photographic objects constitute many of the works on show, including architectural drawings, hand-drawn maps, and miscellaneous artefacts such as an envelope, or a film canister. — TODAY

* A Room With A View runs until Oct 16. From 12pm to 7pm, Tuesdays to Sundays. Closed on Mondays and public holidays. At Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, Lasalle College of the Arts, 1 McNally Street.

Admission is free.