Tay Bak Koi’s buffaloes bear striking stylistic similarities with those of Tew Nai Tong, unsurprisingly as they were contemporaries at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art (NAFA), Singapore, with him graduating a year later in 1957-1960, but with them on different sides of the causeway divide. Tay’s buffaloes are much more linear, flat and abstract with the same double points resembling a Minangkabau roof. In 1996 (Oct 27-Nov 14), Tay Bak Koi held a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery, Penang, called ‘In Harmony With Nature’. It was his 13th solo and his second in Penang, held after his 1990 Impression show at the Singapore National Museum Art Gallery. Indeed, in 1994, he and Nai Tong held a joint exhibition at Shenn’s Fine Art in Singapore. A second-generation Singapore artist, he was somewhat of a rebel at NAFA, being better known for his selling crabs at a market stall, although his works are aggregated in the Nanyang Style popularised by Cheong Soo-pieng and Chen Wen-hsi. In the Reminiscences Of The South Seas (Shenns’ Fine Art, 1994), Chia Wai Hon wrote: “The highly stylised creature with a massive body supported on two pairs of inverted V-shaped legs, a small head and a sharp hump, have remained with him to this day.” Tay Bak Koi’s auction record was SGD66,080 set at the 33 Auction on Sept 1, 2013, for his Fisherman work. His notable solos are in 1964 (Tengah Airport Club, Singapore, his first), 1990 (Impression: The Art Of Tay Bak Koi, National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore) and a ‘memorial’ in 2007 (Reminiscences, Stamford House, Singapore). In 1963, he was already known to Malaysian audiences with a group exhibition at Penang’s Salon de Mai.