Tomoko Takahashi: Junk Junkie

I didn’t like Gormley’s Critical Mass on the roof, but even worse is the Tomoko Takahashi work on the floor below. She’s a junk junkie. The website claims that she recycles detritus into ‘illuminating’ works of art. I think not. There’s little that’s ‘illuminating’ and much that suggests an artist who values her own process over the final goal. The problem with junk is that it is ugly. When put together in collages, they’re even uglier. Then to add a layer of cliché she uses montaged photographs as a backdrop. This technique is so hackneyed (or should I say Hockneyed) that it’s laughable.

Now there is one interesting exception to this and that’s the wooden room with the photocopier. The idea that a machine in the corner produces represented images that cover the internal walls of the entire room is getting somewhere. Again, however, it’s a good idea gone bad. The actual images are dull, repetitive and irrelevent.