Information
| Title: |
ママよ。ナントカなる。 JP: Mama yo. Nantoka naru. “Oh, well. We’ll get by.” |
| Media: | Ink on paper |
| Size: |
43 cm by 24 cm (framed/mounted size: 63 cm by 43 cm) |
| Date: | 2025 |
Description
Style: Chōwatai, vernacular Japanese rendered in a blend of kanji and hiragana and katakana (Japanese phonetic characters).
This piece was inspired by my experiences of using a couple of UK delivery companies: DHL and Parcelforce.
I had gotten used to the high standards of service offered by Kuroneko Yamato and other delivery companies in Japan. Those guys not only treat your things with care but also collect and deliver punctually. What’s more, their charges are quite reasonable.
Sadly, the services offered by DHL and Parcelforce did not fill me with national pride.
DHL managed to deliver the packages I sent for the Purification by sumi, Illumination by watercolour exhibition late and break a display that I had been planning to use to exhibit some digital works.
The display that DHL broke.
For the Belper Arts Trail, I tried using Parcelforce. I sent two packages to arrive three days before the start of the trail.
One arrived on schedule. The other went AWOL. It finally turned up the day after the trail ended.
I needed some additional works to beef up my display for the trail, so I decided to draw on my experiences for inspiration. Hence: “Oh well. We’ll get by.” (That should probably be in slightly less polite language to capture the mood of the original Japanese, but there might be kids reading… )
I used katakana (angular phonetic characters normally used for words of foreign origin) for the nouns and hiragana (curved phonetic characters normally used for words of Japanese origin) for the other elements to try to capture the emphasis of the spoken form of the phrase and to break up the rhythm and flow of the piece.
I wanted to get across a feeling of being inconvenienced and annoyed.
Which I was. Very.