VFP art festival spotlights global eco-designs
2014-08-26
Very Fun Park contemporary art festival is underway at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei City, showcasing a host of green-inspired designs from around the world.
A total of 28 teams of artists from Taiwan and countries such as Australia, France, Japan, Sweden and the U.S. are taking part in the event. Organized by Fubon Arts Foundation, this year’s VFP boasts an ecological theme and is proving popular with festivalgoers from home and abroad.
Artworks on display include those fashioned from discarded materials and used furniture such as air conditioners and office cabinets. One example is “Tetris,” a two-story installation by Swedish artist Michael Johansson.
Comprising nearly 100 pieces of used furniture collected from the local community, the creation shares individual stories as well as those of the collective.
“I have assembled them in such a way that they resemble the closeness and interdependency of a family,” Johansson said. “The aim of my work is to suggest the subtle and complicated relations among people.”
Equally eye-catching is the enormous fish sculpture by Japanese artists Hideaki Shibata and Kazuya Matsunaga. “Menchinu,” or black sea bream, was forged from abandoned materials found in the Yodo River in Osaka and trash collected along the banks of the Tamsui River in New Taipei City.
“Rivers are the source of human civilization,” Shibata said. “Art can play a critical role in encouraging people think about the meaning of garbage and mitigate the impact of pollution on watercourses.”
Running until Sept. 14, VFP also features an art market, lectures by rising local media artist Wang Chung-kun and Australian street artist Buff Diss, screenings of films “Grazing the Sky” and “Rock Me to the Moon” and a picnic day.
Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=220964&CtNode=413)