Lot 39: Tomoko Takahashi (B. 1966)

Clockwork at Hales Gallery mixed media installation dimensions variable Executed in 1998. PROVENANCE Hales Gallery, London, where acquired by the present owner in 1998. EXHIBITION London, Hales Gallery, 'Tomoko Takahashi. Clockwork', 1998. NOTES Smashed clocks, ticking clocks, plastic clocks, round clocks, wall clocks and clockworks are scattered everywhere in what appears to be the workshop of a mad clockmaker. The walls are covered with drawings and the floor is flooded in clocks, tables, tools, MDF boards and other DIY equipment. 'Clockwork' was first installed by the London-based Japanese artist Tomoko Takahashi in the Hales Gallery in 1998. A nominee for the Turner Prize in 2000, Takahashi has established herself on the art scene for making extensive landscapes of defunct technology and islands of flickering junk against the imposingly minimal white gallery space. These idiosyncratic installations create an initial impression of chaos, but the viewer quickly perceives an apparently painstaking selection and arrangement. Her work is both dynamic and poetic, with patterns and narratives teeming just below the surface. It always seems as if the artist has just left the studio: leaving artworks in progress, packing materials strewn about, phone lines ringing and ashtrays overflowing. Takahashi's preferred method of making work is to live in the space in which she is going to exhibit, collecting and accumulating refuse specific to that site, which she later arranges into subtly structured installations. The work becomes a personal excavation of the artist's life as well as a physical one of the space. "Her work raises questions about economic waste, yet at the same time, her winking, buzzing and deceptively organic installations also suggest the possibility of reincarnation and renewal." (V. Button, 'The Turner Prize', London 2000).