Flotsam and Jetsam (Osaka)

Flotsam and Jetsam (Osaka), 2013, by Christopher McHugh. Porcelain, mixed media. approx. 80 x 100 x 100 cm. Photo copyright of Christopher McHugh, 2013.

A solo exhibition at UAPS Gallery during my AHRC international placement in,Osaka, Japan (January-April 2013), gave me the opportunity to rework Flotsam and Jetsam, an ever evolving installation piece which began with my contribution to Unfinished Business at Wallington. In Japan, I hoped that it would develop new resonance in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011. 

The installation in Osaka exploits the ability of damaged objects to occupy a no-man’s land between presence and absence. By using found objects, including a set of rescued vintage drawers, to display a range of distressed and marked porcelain objects, Flotsam and Jetsam evokes the impromptu shrines which grew up in devasted neighbourhoods after the Tohoku disaster. The incorporation of a cardboard box wrapped with a blue plastic sheet in the installation references the ubiquity of such materials in encampments of the homeless throughout Osaka. Also, in some areas of Fukushima, in the north of Japan, spoil heaps of radioactive topsoil are covered in such blue sheets, waiting in limbo while an appropriate form of disposal is decided. By combining durable elements with an ephemeral, re-workable, mode of presentation, it is hoped the ‘scarred’ porcelain fragments in the Flotsam and Jetsam installation occupy an ambivalent position somewhere between absence and presence, thereby manifesting a sense of enduring loss and melancholia. 

Detail of Flotsam and Jetsam (Osaka), 2013, by Christopher McHugh. Porcelain, mixed media. approx. 80 x 100 x 100 cm. Photo copyright of Christopher McHugh, 2013.

Detail of Flotsam and Jetsam (Osaka), 2013, by Christopher McHugh. Porcelain, mixed media. approx. 80 x 100 x 100 cm. Photo copyright of Christopher McHugh, 2013.