Daily Archives: August 3, 2011

Gagosian Gallery: Takashi Murakami

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Takashi Murakami is a contemporary Japanese artist whom I first heard of when we were visiting Versailles last year. His art was littered around the Palace and I found it very cute and whimsical. I read that the Gagosian Gallery was exhibiting some of his work so I definitely wanted to make sure to check it out. It was kind of surreal walking into the gallery – the door was opened by a woman in a black suit and inside the art space was “patrolled” by more people in black suits. Obviously security maybe. Even at major art galleries I’ve never seen the likes of it with these guys in suits standing spaced out every 5 metres or so.

The work of Takashi Murakami on display was much more … shall we say, adult, then what was exhibited at Versailles. As a result it was kind of awkward to look at the pieces of art without feeling a bit uncomfortable. The pieces of work on display included Big Box Ko2, Nurse Ko2, 3M Girl, Mr Big Mushroom and Miss Clam. I’m sure if you twist your mind you can imagine what the last two in particular refer to! Here is a picture lifted from the Gagosian Gallery website:

As part of the exhibition you’re also given a mini Big Box Ko2 that you get to take away and make yourself. (It took me the better part of a True Blood episode to complete …)

Overall I enjoyed the exhibition very much.

MatterBox

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Matterbox first appeared on the scene about February 2008 promising a “new way for companies to talk to [the public] by giving [away] real, physical items.” It worked on the basis of people signing up to participate. However, it was only about a year later that the first Matterbox actually got sent out and both Sandra and I still missed out on this box. The second Matterbox came out another year later or was it two and finally we got something out of the premise. It wasn’t a bad box to be honest containing such items as a mini Original Source shower gel, a new Cadbury chocolate, some mini books and a Lovefilm DVD cleaning cloth, but there were also some rubbish items such as recipes for cocktails, and an O2 sim pack (couldn’t understand this as you could get it from O2 direct.)

Today I received the next box and it was seriously a big waste of time and money. The Biggest Waste. Ever.

As Official Treat Provider of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Cadbury have been running a series of events called Spots v Stripes to encourage the nation to be involved in all sorts of weird games. In aid of this Cadbury were the “sponsor” of the next box. The product of this box was this:

A Spots v Stripes pocketgame. Very disappointed not to even get a bar of chocolate with it. Seriously. The Biggest Waste. Ever.

And unbelievably someone even tried to ebay the item …