POOLEMS
POOLEMS, Poems for the Poolside, full colour / B5 / 26 pages / Printed at X-Graphics, Jakarta / on HANKUK Arte Natural White 105gsm / self published by Missing Sock Books
Created during a stay in Mallorca, this little document titled POOLEMS combines text and photographs to question themes of wealth, displacement, and the inherent alienation of the tourist experience.
Mallorca, an island of spectacular natural beauty, has become a playground for wealthy outsiders where locals can hardly afford to live.
These poetic meditations delve into personal anxieties, millennial aspirations, loneliness and the struggle to find meaning in a superficial world. Fundamentally, they comment on our failure to see that we are not separate from nature, but deeply interconnected with all living things.
diSRupT
DISRUPT full colour / B5 / 8 pages / Printed at X-Graphics,Jakarta / self published by Missing Sock Books
DISRUPT takes the form of a mock-azine, a single-issue publication dedicated to the promotion of Moke Koshiba, a fictional "in-between" character, my alter ego, and the author and protagonist of "In Between Experiences."
This one-off, designed to mimic a contemporary design and style magazine, is a conceptual gesture, a critique of the hurdles emerging artists face in establishing a presence within the art world where being seen on the right platforms is crucial to what is conventionally called ‘success’.
luang prabang
NO TITLE full colour / B5 / 26 pages / Printed at X-Graphics, Jakarta / on HANKUK Arte Natural White 105gsm / self published by Missing Sock Books
This is a booklet about the Laotian city of Luang Prabang, once the capital of the ancient Lan Xan kingdom and at present being overrun by millions of visitors each year.
This booklet is a print (10 copies) of a handmade book, poetically assembled out of new and found images and recent historical fragments (photos from my first visit in 1989).
Twenty pages of associated collage made up of flowers,leaves, notes,scraps,bits of cardboard and beer cartons picked up from the pavement and pasted onto found paper such as tourist maps and in-room hotel policies, it directly addresses topics of culture, history and identity.
It attempts to show the shifting and often fraught relationship between a deeply rooted ancient culture and the outside world, tracing a path through a defining period of French colonial history, followed by American bombing in the 1960s and 70s, towards a hyper commercialised and highly extractive contemporary industry called ‘tourism’.
Primarily a visual document, accompanied by a brief explanatory note, the booklet serves as a meditative exploration of these complex cultural dynamics.