www.ayakoscabin.com
Ayako the dolly maker
Remember the cuddly creatures that happily inhabited the nook between your pillow and bed stead? How you’d Stair into their blank plastic eyes and somehow know them. The motley crew of luminous, fluffy, and thread bare. Well what if you never grew out of this point of wild imagination? And never lost the ability to love these inanimate squidgy little figures?
Ayako is an artist who clearly hasn’t.
Profiled on ayakoscabin.com, she describes ‘ I am short, slightly freckled and faintly tanned, I have a mole at the top left of my forehead, and a broken pinky on my right hand’.
But what you’ll find behind the confine’s of a tall brick wall, down a side street in Dalston East London. Is someone far more open than the mysterious title of ‘the dolly maker’.
The buzzer outside is marked with the beaming expression of one of her creations. Crossing the threshold of her home come studio, more appear from the sides of corner cabinets, and bookshelves. Before discovering them huddled en mass beneath the warmth of the early evening sunlight in the upstairs office. And it’s here that we settle, in this strangely familiar environment, to discuss them all.
Ayako Tsunekawa grew up in a town of mass production, the Home of Toyota’s production line. ‘it wasn’t a posh place, it wasn’t a city place. But it was a happening place, because we had the tube station set up in, well, I don’t know when. And I saw it change, but we still knew all the neighbours, and it was a community’.
Despite the comfort of these early years, by elementary school, Ayako found she was bored by the conformist environment. ‘I had this sense of wanting to get away from what was considered normal in Japan’. She claims ‘Because in Japan you have a ladder system in society’. This was especially true in the classroom ‘, I didn’t like it because you had to be the same, you know, action men and barbie doll’s you had to be the same. It was just a torture for me, I mean why? There’s no love!’
After a period in International school, the artist saw her future overseas. ‘Back then I was more interested in fashion, So I said to my parents, I’ll go to a school in America, and they said you cant go there because they have guns! So I said ill go to England then’.
After studying fine art in London, Ayako began specialising in Print. Manipulating a medium so synonymous with mass production, to fulfil her expression of individualism. She begun to utilise rust, as a way of expressing this. A material embedded with notions of time and the decay of memories. Especially poignant, for a young person so far away from home ‘‘If you have memories in another country, there more vivid in a way. I remember smells and colours, and it’s wonderful to revisit your childhood’. Her final series of rust print’s depicted doll’s, as a way of conjuring childhood nostalgia.
After graduating and without printing facilities, Ayako found she needed another way to explore the lives of the broken and homeless little figures, that were cluttering up her flat. ‘instead of making doll prints, I started to think I could do something different with all the dolls I had been collecting’. This developed into a practice which has consumed Ayako ever since. Continuing to breathe new life into forgotten toys. Pulling apart mattel, and Hasbro, and decapitating faus bisque, to create finely hand crafted characters. With nothing but the knowledge gained from attending her school plushie club. But contradicting any assumption that her childhood was most formative in her love of dolls, she claims:
‘I hated dolls when I was little, I especially hated those plastic things. I thought they were really boring, because they had similar faces, and no personalties. I wanted to give them more I guess. But I had this one piglet doll, and I remember one day his tail came off, and my mum threw it away. And for the next few days I was in tears, because I was so attached to the piglet. That’s the only dolly I remember.’
It’s this kind of attachment which so greatly informs what Ayako creates.
‘Phylosophically In Japan we believe that every single thing has a soul, and I believe you know, even a plant has a spirit, and I feel that especially with my dolls. I go to a charity shop, I find a dolly and I know it’s been in someone’s house. I want to look after it, but then I chop of it’s head because I want to give it a new life’.
The dolls are always completely unique. Placed together they appear like a patchwork of colours and forms, Arms and leg’s are mismatched, and species merge. An aesthetic which speaks of the struggle to be different in Ayako’s homeland. As the artist acknowledges ‘I go to japan now, and things have changed drastically’ Speaking of the way Japanese youth dress today she claims. ‘they all want to express because they have been suppressed, or they just wanna be themselves. Them, free. Historically we’ve always adapted, when computers came out, we made it Japanese. So we have sony and Hitachi, and cars especially, even now with hip hop and rock. We’ve always taken something from outside the country and made it Japanese. We’re good at adapting and making it unique’. A sentiment mirrored by the way in which Ayako recycles and adapts these products of capitalism. The Bratz dolls, and action figures, that are crafted into one off’s, embedded with meaning and emotion.
Ayako has continued her doll making whilst working full time for Japanese toy giant Pokemon. But see’s the process as an important cathartic experience. ‘it’s quite a natural thing. Loads of the dolly’s are effected by my state of being, If I’m wanting to express something then I’ll do it through a doll. So there all part of me in a way’.
More recently the artist’s work has sparked interest from larger toy manufacturers, mistakenly viewing her work in the same vein as David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim’s ‘Ugly dolls’. Refusing most of these offers on the basis that her works or ‘friends’ as she often refers to them, will lose their spirit. She states : ‘I definitely wanna keep them as a fine art. Once there mass produced the value and the lifespan of your work goes down. I mean I work in the toy business, and it’s not something I want to become involved in with my art.’
One offer which she couldn’t refuse, was the dolly’s appearing in the video for Mika’s single ‘Happy ending’. But it clearly wasnt the celebrity factor which attracted her, saying nothing more of the project than ‘ well I got to meet him and he’s really tall!’. It was in fact the prospect of having the dolly’s animated which excited Ayako. With their disproportionate limbs, and cross species bodies, their movements would be a natural progression in imagining them as real beings.
Something which the artist does not struggle to do ‘I speak to them all the time, not that I’m mad or anything, I know them like my babies. It’s not like they interact with me, and I don’t expect that. Because there so part of me, when they’re born, I know what part of me they express. It’s kind of like they’re my friends’.
The light was dimming in Ayako’s office as we left, heightening this dreamy sense of familiarity. It might have been the rose wine, but there was a comfort to sitting amongst them all.
You can see how the buyers, who ‘range from doctors to dj’s’ could be so drawn to the characters, who come complete with name and a biography brief enough to project your own imagining of their persona.
All too soon it was time to say goodbye to Barmaid Lucy, the pub working mermaid with a penchant for all things artificial. The immobile and mildly disfigured kiri kiri, with a pregnant belly so reminiscent of pound puppies. And who could forget *902-10-021, the orange haired girl consumed and consealed by a Tesco bag, who steals emotions.
And as we waved goodbye to the creator, holding her favourite dolly aloft and puppeteering his paws to wave too. You cant help but envy what she affirmed throughout our interview, through her descriptions of her childhood, the philosophies of her culture, and the production of her work :
‘ I have trouble letting go’.
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A piece I wrote for a small mag we made at college called ‘Something’. It’s about my flat mate Amy, whose work is currently stocked in Lik+ Neon Brick Lane.
www.amydoesntlivehereanymore.wordpress.com
Building Comfort
The scene of our meeting, spoke volumes of the comfortable aesthetic that prevails in Amy Hancock-Martin’s work.
Fresh from screen printing on her bedroom floor, the young artists ink stained fingers curl around the warm pink china of her favourite mini mouse mug. In the sticky yellow light of her ex council shoebox, she sinks into her settee, and recounts the origins of her current group of works.
Concealed inside blank cardboard shells, rectangular blocks of pastel defy initial recognition. But squashed inside a duvet style lining are detailed replicas of London bricks. Ranging in appearance from giant Lego to heavily iced confectionary, their unexpectedly light weight nature, gives the ceramics a pleasantly surreal quality.
Since leaving her hometown of Devon two years ago, Martin claim’s ‘I have had a massive love affair with London Town’. But despite the romance that eventually blossomed. It was an initial unease with the grey beast that is Elephant and Castle, which encouraged her to stitch, and gaffa tape her way to homeliness.
‘It was a reaction to London being a lot more gritty than I thought. London is like neon, and everything in Devon was really dusty and muted. It was the best place to grow up, by the sea, it’s full of adventure. But a bit more low key. And Living in a place where everyone knows your mum, and you all have the same hairdresser, makes a girl want some anonymity.’ Visiting London as a child fuelled this desire ‘Coming back with clothes from Camden was the best, I loved that I had something no one else did. It’s about aspiring to be better and different, and I am yet to lose the idealism of those teenage years’
This kind of optimism has prevailed since Amy’s move to her current Bethnal Green residence ‘Its the best thing ever for making stuff. A bit of poverty is good for you’. Once a massive fan of t.v show changing rooms, Amy find’s re-imagining her home environment gives her a continuously evolving body of work. Her living room mantle piece is trimmed with decoratively sliced wave’s of gaffa tape. Reappearing in sections of faus parkey flooring across the grey carpet. Accented by the previous owners mismatched furniture, and the debris of a young and hectic lifestyle.
This living room come studio is the perfect example of Amy’s belief that the worlds of serious art and interiors can successfully co-exist. Cemented by her brick products, which are quickly helping her gain a solid customer base. ‘I’ve become used to the idea of something being an art object and not being so much about the ‘idea’. I secretly love the thought of where they end up in home’s, even as door stops. I particularly like the mail order element, how weird it must be to get a brick through the post’
However Amy does not envisage her work re entering the realms of mass production. ‘i think it does go back to me wanting precious exclusive things. Its all about discovering that hidden jem. having a rummage. You’ll never be able to buy my work in John Lewis. If people want something that’s a labour of love then they can come to me!’
Breaking from conversation with a smile, to boil the kettle once more.
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Very Cheesy, but i wrote this for the Vogue Writing competition. The task was ‘the individual you admire most’. I guess they were expecting some glamour, but i wrote about asylum seeking/sibling rivalry.
A bride without borders
‘I’ve known my sister Jesse as three separate characters. She was the curly haired girl who’d raise her fist in a ball of rage, but looked out for me at school. She was the brazen fourteen year old in mini skirts and Mary Janes, arrested on the back of a stolen scooter. And now, as if from nowhere, she’s this Rubenesque model of mother hood.
Between these periods, had been the usual adolescent trials and tribulations. At two years her junior, the annoying little brother who’d eavesdrop on phone call’s and tear apart posters of Jason Priestley. I’ve been in the privelidged position to witness and learn from each. But at the age of 19, the complications of her relationship with Hossein put all of these into perspective.
I remember answering the door to him on his first trip to my parent’s house.
There was an air of Bollywood to him, with dark bouffant hair, 90’s style leather bomber. I knew little of how he’d arrived in the U.K in October 2000, from his homeland of Iran. Though gradually we learnt how he’d suffered imprisonment and torture, and was seeking political asylum. How he’d left family, friends, and a career as a successful lawyer all behind.
But at that first family meal, my understanding of any of this went as far as imagining what a culture shock my drunken father must have been. By the time Jesse was engaged, I’d almost completely forgotten the asylum case. Distracted from the implications of their marriage, by Hosseins sheer optimism, and the fact that my sister would no longer be a Levy.
On the 10th June 2003, they married before a small group of friends and family. For Jesse in her simple ivory silk dress, for better or for worse had far stronger connotations. But aside from some male belly dancing by a camp Iranian friend and the haze of shisha smoke at the wedding reception, the day was pleasantly conventional. Especially for a couple whose thoughts were so consumed with Home Office rulings and the prospect of being separated.
Devising a campaign for Hossein’s indefinite leave to remain, Jesse had always known how to get what she wanted. But ‘Justice for Hossein’ was less easily achieved than the causes of our childhood. I remember the routine question of ‘is their a puppy in your bag’ when my Dad arrived home from work, and how she’d persisted with this until some six months later a tiny welsh collie was asleep on her lap. Or how at sixteen she had protested against the prospect of leaving behind her boyfriend for a family holiday. Sobbing , and barricading herself beneath pillows and duvet.
But this was a cause which would require more direct action. Wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with images of the confetti strewn couple. We made a picnic to spend the day on parliament hill. Groups of downtrodden spouses had gathered for the ‘Brides without Borders’ cause. Watery eyes peering from beneath white veils, which had become poignant symbols of protest. Jesse’s cause had even attracted media attention, with magazine articles, and t.v requests. But by this point Hossein’s spousal visa had been rejected. The Home office weren’t questioning the marriage , but had refused the application on the technicality of Hossein already being in the U.K.
Since the Royal Courts of Justice had seen and rejected Hosseins case in August 2004, their life had become a monotonous struggle. Fighting through mountains of paperwork, grey forms demanded they justify their relationship in black inked block capitals. Arriving in my parents‘ living room one evening, Jesse was clutching what I mistakenly recognized as some other kind of application. A taste of the future life they could be leading, had brought a confused smile to her face. And momentarily I imagined the words ‘VISA’ and ‘successful’ slipping out of the brown paper. Seconds later Jesse removed a sonogram photo and announced her pregnancy. But a baby was a plan for a future not guaranteed. My mind raced, and words tripped from my mouth louder than I expected. Choking on the shock of my reaction, her long red curls accidentally mopped a stream of tears.
There had been a change in the political situation by the time Hossein was deported, and told to apply for a Visa in Tehran. The hysteria of saying goodbye was unbearable, because although the political situation had changed since Hossein had left his home, the uncertainties of what awaited him, were still gut wrenchingly real.
What could have been a terrible reality, can one day be recounted as an incredible romance. Thanks to the fact that the couple were reunited exactly one day before 8 pounds and seven ounces of sheer relief, screamed its way into existence in the late evening of April 27th 2005. Baby Jasmin Rosita represented the start of a new life. Her bright eyes, oblivious to the years of emotional turmoil that preceded her chubby digits, and wisp of brown hair.
It was as if Jesse had always known what she wanted. A husband, family, happiness. Things that other people take for granted. With the exchange of vows, and expected baby, I will always admire how she was willing to seal her faith in the impossible’.
