Notes from the Bridge

Amazing Objects




By

Passing by the Royal Festival Hall, this colourful sculpted wooden sulpture caught my eye…

It was one on many such displays being positioned as part of a new foyer exhibition. As it happened the exhibition had not been fully installed, so there was no obvious indication about the nature of these colourful and creative edifices. I wandered about, enjoying the mystery – until I eventually came across a rough information panel describing them as coffins from Ghana. The above cocoa pod example was one of many crafted coffins displayed, which also included cars, airplanes, guitars, lions and a bottle cork.  There was a naive and charming wit about the coffins – perhaps created by the audacious alteration of scale. By basing the eventual form of the coffin on such a random source different-sized objects, it will be inevitable that distortions of scale will be required to eventually accommodate owners of roughly similar size: so a ballet slipper is scaled up many times to form a giant shoe, whilst conversely an airplane is scaled down, as if it were a prototype miniature model. This brings to mind one of our art college projects where an object from our pockets was also to be be scaled-up with similar exaggeration. It was a fun project – and in the same way this collection of coffins conveyed a great sense of creative fun.

Although the art pieces by Paa Joe – including the cocoa pod above – are replicas commissioned by the Jack Bell Gallery in London, the designs are typical of those used for burials. The crafted coffins are part of a modern interpretation of pre-colonial West African traditional burials and art practices. Ghanaian burial customs are based on a strong belief in reincarnation with the dead holding great power and influence over the success and happiness of the living. Families honour and commemorate the dead through long periods of mourning and remembrance.

I think the practice has merits. Deciding on the joyous and creative form to celebrate one’s life and after-life feels far more positive than summoning the portents we normally associate with death.

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