The catalogue was published in occasion of From Words to Pictures: Art During the Emergency . The exhibition looked at art in the 1950s through examining two art societies, the Singapore Art Society and Equator Art Society. It "attempt[ed] to map diverse ideas and constituencies with colliding and overlapping interests and values, united only by their common desire for political and cultural vibrancy through 'Malaya', a term which represented new political formations as well as cultural traditions."