T. I. F. Stories
By Tatsumi Shinoda (Selection Director for Tokyo International Forum Artwork)
Artworks Gathered in “Ship of Diversity” 10
Richard Deacon
London is famous for the changing of the guard, the Houses of Parliament along the Thames River, double-decker buses and gentlemen in bowler hats. Along with the expansion around the town, a diversified ethnic culture image is being added.
The work place of Deacon is located in the developing area of the ethnic culture. Two-storied buildings are separated individually and used by artists. When I visited there, a Japanese young man, who used to work for a fashion designer, was working as an assistant and was making a lot of objects which looked like animal tails.
In this region of ethnic culture, you do not know what sort of materials you may encounter. When you walk through the town, you will come across plastic buckets, rolled hoses, dusty electrical appliances, shiny curtain fabrics and cheap shoes.
No artist is indifferent toward new materials and environment. They ignore statues and woodcarvings on bases of traditional shapes/materials. This tendency is stronger in English modern artists.
Deacon’s work placed at the side of escalator of B Block of the International Forum is also getting rid of such traditional art. It is a semi-transparent dome, but it also looks like the foam of an insect. Is it a model of a lid of a toy capsule or a model of giant barrier which protects the town by blocking off the attack from the universe?
One of Deacon’s aluminum works is already placed at the entrance of the glass hall. A common point for both works is that they are not traditional sculpture. You can say, the closer they are to modern age, the closer they are to the public.
With the emptiness and funny shape, Deacon’s work looks as if it is talking to people who come and go on the stairs, “There is no use in rushing that way.”
When you look closely at the work in the dome, you see it is a whitish plastic polyhedron created by connecting regular triangles, and tiny air bubbles are inside. It looks like an empty shape of foam, but it is sophisticated with careful calculation.
While this work puts up people’s casual mind inside, it projects the changing image of Tokyo on the outside. Is the polyhedron reflecting various faces of the city?
[ When it is asleep and when it wakes up ]
Location: Both wall sides of 1F escalator, B Block
Photo: Sadamu Saito
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