Game on! Artist talk by Kosuge 1-16 at the Japan Foundation on 10 July 2012

At The Japan Foundation’s talk on 10 July, Debbie Kermode, Deputy Director of the Ikon and one of the curators of  The Playmakers, spoke about its background and appeal.

mac birmingham is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year and Koguge 1-16’s installation is a tribute to its founder, John English, who established the arts centre as a space for experimental puppetry, with children and young people at its heart, set within bucolic Cannon Hill Park.

Takashi Tsuchiya and Chishino Kurumada, the husband and wife team comprising Kosuge 1-16 took up residency at mac for one month while preparing The Playmakers. Debbie Kermode explained how they had worked with school children in the first week. The children were very relaxed in the artists’ company, exploring Cannon Hill Park together. The aim was to have children help recreate aspects of the park to feature in the exhibition.

The exhibition features life size puppets of John English and his wife, Alicia (Mollie) Randle. He is standing in front of an easel with a palette and paintbrush in hand, while she is sitting down with tea cup and saucer in her hands. The puppets’ arms can be activated by pulling a series of pulleys. Creatures surround John English – a dog, squirriels, birds and a swan – and they can be made to move as well – the dog’s tail wags, the birds’ wings flap and the squirrels run up the bandstand’s roof. There are also two enormous mobiles suspended from the ceiling. The cardboard cutouts which form the mobile were made by local children and include figures of people, birds and other features of Cannon Hill Park.

The installation also features a large bridge and bandstand, once again mirroring what can be found in Cannon Hill Park, and with a child’s perspective in mind. As Debbie said, when an adult enters the exhibition space the bridge seems to divide the room in two, concealing the puppets of John English and Mollie Randle from view. A child entering the gallery space, however, will see straight under the bridge to the other side unimpeded.

mac organised a special opening for children at 10:30am on a Saturday, allowing them, if they wished, to invite an adult. The children were treated to cupcakes with generous portions of icing on top, gorgeously decorated with animal figures and playful Kosuge cocktails – bright pink and purple non-alcoholic concoctions.

mac attracts 800,000 visitors a year, said Debbie, so it is hoped that a fair number will be able to enjoy The Playmakers through until 9 September when it ends.

Debbie’s talk was followed by Takashi Tsuchiya’s of Kosuge 1-16. The artistic duo’s name refers to the part of Tokyo where Tsuchiya lives with his wife, Chishino Kurumada, and children, Kohtaro (4) and Honomi (1). Tsuchiya showed a slide of their modest home in Tokyo which has no bathing facilities. To bathe the family use the local ‘sento’ or bath house, which is larger than their house. We even saw wedding photos of the couple posing by the bath (men’s).

Their neighbourhood is a tightly-knit, thriving community of young and old; some have spent their entire lives there. Often, if Tsuchiya and Kurumada arrive home late, someone will have left them food to eat in their post box. In order to repay this kindness, one of the first things the family did on moving in was to have a home party. Their home was made into a park and even had a road that people could cycle over.

They ordered noodles from the local noodle shop and the food was delivered by motorbike; the delivery man took great joy in motoring through the house on his motorbike time and time again.

Kosuge 1-16 have participated in many exhibitions in Japan, including the 2005 Yokohama Triennale, the 2010 Aichi Triennale, the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art , Art Tower Mito, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, but Tsuchiya focused on some of their more community-based projects in this talk.

One example is a giant table football game they constructed. Each enormous football player had to be operated by an entire child. At half-time six or so children, dressed as cheerleaders, clambered on to the table to entertain the audience before the second half.

The artistic duo also created a gigantic paper sumo game on a proper arena. It took a number of people to participate in the sumo bashes to cause one of the sumo wrestlers to fall down. Kosuge 1-16 also made sure that the winners would receive a victory cup and be allowed a victory parade through town.

Tsuchiya referred to their Kakikaki Kikokiko dadadadada! exhibition at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in 2011, in which they reproduced the studio of the artist Sho Yamaji, which resonates in many ways with The Playmakers, featuring as it did a life-size artist and a dog, birds and snail – all of which could be activated to move.

A trip to The Playmakers will bring out unknown depths of playfulness in everyone. It is sheer fun.

The Playmakers is being suppported by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation.