Our Host Postponed the Drinks Until After the Storm (2015)
Bamboo, mixed media, and bandages (dimensions variable)
Two framed photographs (42.0 x 59.4cm), of Hiroka Baba and Shimizu Ken’ichi♦
Our Host Postponed the Drinks Until After the Storm suggests that the ‘host’ might be the artist, or perhaps the building, the architecture of the gallery, reaching out to its neighbours either side.
The work proposes an ambitious but ludicrous plan for the gallery to facilitate a bamboo plumbing system where a drink can be passed from one neighbour, through the gallery, to a neighbour on the other side. This is perhaps a new function for the gallery; to empty itself of art but create exchange between its neighbours, become a conduit between them.
It is important that this event is deferred, interrupted by an external event; a looming storm. As a result the ‘arms’ of the structure become temporarily ‘pruned’ and lie either side in the garden, ‘bandaged’ up. The gallery space holds the remaining part of the structure, now ‘useless’ and therefore now perhaps able to become (just?) an art object.
Photographs of the two neighbours are exhibited, infinitely waiting for their moment of exchange.See: Sketch for Our Host Postponed the Drinks Until After the Storm (2015)
and : Channel, Rupture (2015) [ exhibition, Beppu, Japan, 2015 ]
