#missing post office

Awashima: Setouchi Triennale gem

Sometimes you find a complete gem in Youtube land. This is one for sure. The creator is Muumi seuraava and the video is so nicely put together. We are taken through a series of artworks:

 Artwork No. 157 Project for the Museum of Seabed Inquiry Ship in Setouchi / SOKOSOKO SOZOSHO. / Re-ing-A　Katsuhiko Hibino

Artwork No. 161 Contours of Thinking　Esther Stocker

Artwork No. 160Awashima Artist’s…

Talk Tuesday 22 September 6 - 7pm [Drinks Reception 7- 8pm] Free, Booking essential. Please visit here for further information. The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation 13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle (entrance facing Regent's Park), London NW1 4QP Organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation 

Is there someone to whom you wish you could tell your thoughts, even if you may never receive an answer? This talk introduces artist Saya Kubota’s Missing Post Office project, which receives and looks after letters that you want to write but don’t know where to send. The Missing Post Office originally opened at the 2013 Art Setouchi Triennale and is still in operation today on the small island of Awashima, where over 7,000 letters are under the care of the postmaster Mr Nakata.

The Missing Post Office invites you to post a letter, like a message in a bottle, which will float 0n the sea of time. A letter to and from anyone, anything, anywhere and at any time, which will one day be washed ashore.

The UK branch of the Missing Post Office will open for a limited time only as part of Kubota’s forthcoming solo exhibition at the Daiwa Foundation in January 2016. The collection of letters can be read by anyone during the exhibition period in London, and the letters will eventually arrive in Awashima afterwards. We can receive your letters from now until 22 February 2016. For those who wish to contribute, please read the instructions andFAQs on missing-post-office.com/missing-post-office-uk, and send your letters and/or postcards to the address below:

The Missing Post Office UK c/o The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation 13/14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle) London NW1 4QP

Please join us at the private view of City & Guilds of London Art School MA Fine Art Show 2015. Saya Kubota, the current artist-in-residence at the art school, will be presenting a new series of works as part of this exhibition. I have had the privilege to work with the artist as a curator and writer of her artworks in the making. PRIVATE VIEW Wed: 9 Sept 5:00-9:00pm OPENING TIMES Thur: 10 Sept 10am – 7:30pm Fri: 11 Sept 10am – 7:30pm Sat: 12 Sept 10am – 5:00pm Sun: 13 Sept 10am – 5:00pm Saya Kubota’s practice revolves around memory and physical traces of the past which, although they have seemingly altered in form or even to have disappeared, still persist in the present time and space. Here, old and new, decay and growth, artifice and organic, human, animal and nature all share the same horizon of scattered parallel existences. Dilapidated portraitures and abandoned objects, all once cherished, are modified as material images of art by Kubota’s hands. At this juncture, the artist’s gesture merges with the actuality of the original makers. The artefacts convey their presence as art that exceeds what they originally represented. Eyes are masked with fractal stones that disperse lights; multicultural icons of female saints are overlaid on each other; and binoculars are embellished and anthropomorphised as a potential extension of the human body. These various works signal anonymous forms of existence that inhabit the space of our collective dreams – an expanded reality found through a conscious departure. This could be a mythology, a night-time dream or an evolving memory. Imaginations and memories kept afloat will be collected in the post boxes of the ‘Missing Post Office’. MPO looks after letters you’ve always wanted to write but did not know where to send. While awaiting delivery to an unknown destination, the letters are left to drift, floating in a liminal space in care of this unusual postal service. MPO originally opened on the small island of Awashima in Japan as part of Setouchi Triennale in 2013. Prior to establishing a temporary UK branch in January 2016 at London’s Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, MPO UK is now currently open to receive letters of undelivered thoughts from anyone who wishes to participate. [email protected] / sayakubota.com / missing-post-office.com Text by Eiko Honda [curator] Supported by SWAROVSKI GEMS