Mingle with the SGFurs Furries at the Mountbatten Goodman Arts Centre

What is a Furry? Are there Furries in Singapore? Well, Furries are people dressed in animal costumes; simply put it is like those what you call “cartoon animals”. Essentially the Furry fandom is a sub-culture of popular culture; it is synonymous to Anime copslay made up of people fascinated with anthropomorphic animals.

The Tanjong Goodman Arts Centre is an arts village in Singapore located in the Mountbatten district (Goodman Arts Centre, 90 Goodman Road). Managed by the Arts House Limited and established in 2011, the facility is a buzzing arts scene, an arts hive of sort nestled within the culturally-rich neighborhood of the Marine Parade arts estate. It sits within a 7-acre complex which once served as an education institution. Part of the compound is also made out of a contemporary assortment of several blocks such as a container building (Block O), where you can find the SGFurs on their fursuit walkabouts.

SGFurs at Tanjong Goodman

Tanjong Goodman played host to the one day event, currently in its eighth edition, offering activities packed with a packed program covering more than 50 free diverse arts areas, as well as a lifestyle market hawking goods of the trade. The event was open to all members of the public, with free admission and ran on the 8th of July from 11am to 5pm.

The arts center aims to build up the Singapore arts and performance scene, serving as a place to bring artists, enthusiasts and neighboring communities together in a warm and intimate manner to experience the arts in a cohesive environment.

At several times throughout the day, the SGFurs in their fursuits got together to walk the Goodman Arts Centre center compound, surprising visitors at every turn. A fursuit is essentially a costume worn by a furry. Children we fascinated and intrigued by the number and quality of furry fursuiters, with opportunities for visitors to mingle with the centre’s resident performing furry artists.

Our group of SG Fuzzies present at the event includes Kazuki, Cheetah Paws, Ark the Wolf, Strafy the fox, Zander, Brave wolf to name a few, as well as veteran SGFurs fursuiters Vee the fox and Darklurker the dragon on board to grace the event too!

And were the Singapore crowd bewildered by the rare public appearance of SGFurs at Tanjong Goodman. Visitors were awestruck by the detail which goes into the handcrafted fursuits, snapping photos and wefies with the fuzzballs. Much to our fursuiters delight. The visitors were generally very well behaved, at times fursuits winning the hearts of the children and parents at the event.

Furry Workshops

Want to learn about what makes a Fursuit? Visitors too participated in a variety of workshops organized by our furry artists from 11am to 2pm at Greenfield modular multi-purpose studios (Block O). SGFurs Kiba and Brae were there to showcase their fantastic range of hand-crafted fursuits, one of a kind only in Singapore through 45-minute fursuit-making demonstration and workshop panel sessions.

Learn from our guest professionals crafters experiences in fursuit making. Taught concepts include the art of body-casting where fursuits are made custom to the wearer’s body dimension, height and shape.

Besides the use of fur material, participants can learn how to cast their hands using a clay-like formable building material called alginate, commonly used in the creation of medical items, such as dental impressions to form parts of interest. These were used to made the teeth and jaws details in the fursuits you see. You can literally call Furry fursuits a walking piece of art!

Other range of art forms in the furry fandom also includes furries who create art, music and fiction or who shoot videos related to the community. Fancy a go at figure-drawing? That is how furry artist go about translating ideas into works of art, which is predominantly used by the furry artists in the fandom when drawing up art works of their animal characters. Your imagination is the limit!

In all, the event was a great success. Many thanks to Hollud and Snares for the arrangements and publicity for the event, Kuvon the Fox and Rekir Coyote for the photos and the Goodman Arts Centre in catering for the SGFurs presence as well as the logistical and support needs of the fursuiters in ensuring an excellent event.