Foreign Artists Exhibition 2006 Part 1

FAE3
Originally uploaded by pookie_san99.

On Sunday I took my exhibit to the International Centre for the upcoming Exhibition which runs from tomorrow Tuesday to next Sunday.Aided and abetted by my friend Peter, we got the thing set up in about 2 hours.
My exhibit is meant to represent a tissue packet commonly given out freely on street corners and intersections the length and breadth of Japan.The tissues are used as an advertising tool by such diverse companies as loan and finance firms to escort agencies and language schools.
As to the specific details.In the first photo you can see the 80 piles of tissues and plastic covers which will enclose the tissues.Each of the 80 stacks is 16 centimeters high and made up of 20 separate packets of tissues.Each separate packet has 7 individual tissues inside it.
Each individual tissue required glue at each end and then more glue to attach it to the next tissue.It was necessary to ensure the tissues were so well glued otherwise the stacks lost their shape and form.Tedious and time-consuming.It took about 30 minutes to glue and complete one stack.Multiply that by 80 and it took roughly 40 hours to complete the stacks.Add another 10 hours for the painting of the covers.I used about 10 litres of glue in total.
There were some unforeseen problems.I initially stored the finished tissue piles in boxes but a combination of the glue and the humidity of the rainy season caused some of the stacks to go mouldy.This required a hurried unpacking of the boxes and replacement of the now useless mouldy stacks.The remaining stacks I kept in my small living room/kitchen which meant space was at a premium.

The second photo below shows the covers and the finished assembled exhibit.There are 60 or so artists exhibiting various works and art-forms including photography,sculpture and paintings.

Im going along Friday afternoon to hob-nob with the other artists and talk to any interested visitors over a beer or three.Im still trying to think of what Im going to say about it.Maybe something along the lines of "Yes its a serious statement about contemporary society and capitalism" or "Cant you see its a corrective to the Picasso and Cubist movement" or even "Its a cross between Murakami's Superflat movement and Pop Art style."