Collection as Artistic Practice: The Geographies of Collection and Politics of Display in The Installations of Tomoko Takahashi and the Geographies and Politics of Display.

Walking up Exhibition Road, London, in March 2005, I trace the path of many of the millions of visitors to the Great Exhibition of 1851. I walk past the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and, eventually, the Royal Geographical Society. Leaving the museum complexes of South Kensington behind me, I reach the corner of Kensington Gore and cross into Hyde Park. Making my way past the site of the Great Exhibition I walk towards the Serpentine Gallery. Once inside the gallery, I visit each of the four rooms of Tomoko Takahashi's installation in turn: Garden, Kitchen/HQ, Office and Reception (Figures 1,2, and 3 ). Architectural in scale, the artist's walk-in spaces have been constructed from a collection of over 7000 objects. Takahashi sourced many of these things from the museums and parks of the immediate area, others were sourced from skips, sheds, and second-hand shops across London. Entering these spaces, situated within this historically freighted exhibitionary terrain, I am suddenly very aware of myself being amidst objects. The books, cards, games, toys, and implements normally lived with, are collected here, laid out to view. I do not so much gaze on Takahashi's work as an empirical object as I actively experience the collection, moment by moment as a series of materialities and spaces. There is a density of objects and of experiences that eludes description. The state of mind it fosters is inconclusive, precise impressions slip away, and a sharper but somehow more effervescent consciousness emerges.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]