Absence
What:
Absence, Hiromi Tango
Where:
Vitrine Space, Platform, Degraves Street Subway, Melbourne
When:
Everyday except Sundays until May 31
Opening Fri May 16, 6pm
How much:
Free
(Think friendly Japanese expat bower bird bookmaker, stuffed in a capsule hotel.)
People-person Hiromi Tango has holed herself up into that little space no larger than a late model Ford Festiva at Platform (where the old guy with second-hand books lived and died) and is living out her art project Absence. She's there for the duration of the festival, with millions of bits of string, scribbled notes, psychotic drawings and hand-stitched journals.
The liner notes for Absence reckon this project may generate ‘unexpected moments of intimacy and tension'. They got that right. Take the challenge: I dare you not to be in tears after 15 minutes with Hiromi Tango. She is a force of nature (think tsunami, not baby squirrel) who inexplicably melts the hardest of hearts. Moreover, people give her stuff: secret diaries, those stickers you get on apples, White Knight wrappers, bad drawings of Ronald Reagan. Then, when you're gone, she'll catalogue everything, sew it all into books, hang it from string, stick it to the windows, look at it.
I'm a cynical old buzzard when it comes to things like this, but with Absence I'm sold: it's about real people, and the beautifulness of communicating and helping each other. You Choir of Hard Knocks lovers out there sooo have to get on this one.
By Oslo Davis
Format: Other
Genre: Art/Design
Keywords: Platform, Next Wave Festival
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ThreeThousand is a subcultural guide to Melbourne, published daily and fired by email weekly. It is compiled by an amorphous gaggle of Melbourne writers, stylists, designers and photographers who all like huddling under that big umbrella we like to call creativity. Without editorial independence ThreeThousand has nothing. All editorial you read is featured because it's worth it - not because it's paid for.
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