Notice - Forest - Yuken Teruya

Yuken Teruya

Notice – Forest 2006

Not Currently on Display

In Notice – Forest, Yuken Teruya has created delicate jewel-like papercut trees, constructed from discarded shopping bags. Teruya began with a photograph of a specific tree, which he reconstructed in meticulous detail and suspended inside the bag. Many of the bags are derived from multinational brands such as McDonalds, Louis Vuitton and Starbucks. One of Teruya’s concerns was to point to the link between environmental problems and the ever-growing ‘family trees’ of global corporations.

If Teruya’s trees are metaphors for the growth and spread of large corporations, they are also small memorials to the many trees that have been destroyed to create commercial bags. These fragile icons suggest the instability and transience of the natural environment.

Born in Okinawa in 1973, Yuken Teruya is part of the first generation to have no memories of a Japan not dominated by consumer culture. In response to his experience of consumerist immersion, Teruya manipulates and transforms the meanings of everyday objects in order to explore issues such as consumerism, the depletion of natural resources and other problems associated with globalisation, including the threat it poses to regional cultural traditions and identities.

His choice of materials, almost entirely drawn from the detritus of mass-produced, mass-marketed goods and services include pizza delivery boxes, toilet rolls, shoe boxes, newspapers and paper currency — all of which he adeptly teases into delicate, incongruous sculptural tableaux.

Yuken TeruyaNotice – Forest 2006

Yuken Teruya
Notice – Forest 2006