The art of mapping
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Mapkin Seoul (from Gyeongbokgung to Pyungchangdong) 2005 Emil Goh. Seoul Foundation for Art & Culture’s first issue of SEOUL HERE NOW magazine |
Every neighbourhood has special places known only by those who live there; the places that make a community home. For Seoul-based artist Emil Goh, it is discovering that special character that is his art. “Any city can be interesting when you know where to go,” he says.
Commissioned by SCAPE 2006, he will make an artist’s map of the best places to eat, visit, relax, shop for objects, bookshops, sculptures, landmarks – the places you will not find in the guide books.
Goh will use this information to create a “mapkin” – a map of an area on a piece of fabric that should be used in conjunction with a guide book to discover the “true heart of a community”.
Christchurch’s mapkin is part of the 2006 SCAPE Biennial. The “mapkin” will be displayed at the Christchurch Art Gallery throughout SCAPE (30 September-12 November). It will “map” the city within the four avenues. Rather than being a tourist guide, it will be a guide to local treasures.
Goh visited Christchurch in August to “mapkin” the city for the SCAPE 2006 Biennial of Art in Public Space, New Zealand’s only biennial dedicated to contemporary art in public space. It was his first trip to New Zealand. While here, he asked Christchurch residents about their favourite places and eventually conceived the “mapkin” on the basis of this insider information.
Christchurch will be his fourth mapkin – his first being in 2002 for Re/Map at Laforet Museum in Kokura, Japan. The map was of his neighbourhood Surry Hills, in Sydney, where he was living at the time and undertaking tertiary study.
The brief was to create an “artist’s map” of his neighbourhood. “At the time I had no relationship with maps. I had to think really hard about what maps really were – all the things that maps are and what they’re not.
“Maps tend to be an impersonal document done by authorities. With the mapkin I wanted to map a neighbourhood from the perspective of those who lived there, using local knowledge to unlock the local treasures.”
- The Christchurch Art Gallery will be the hub for this year’s SCAPE Biennial; titled don’t misbehave! it playfully alludes to the unspoken rules surrounding art in public spaces. The Gallery will host the indoor exhibition, symposium, public talks, performances, “public meetings” and other events for SCAPE 2006 which is curated by Natasha Conland (New Zealand) and Susanne Jaschko (Germany).
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