My Little Cabbage (II)
Katharine Allard
20 December 2005 - 23 January 2006

When I was small, my Dad's nick-name for me was mon petit chou, a term of endearment literally translated as 'my little cabbage'.  My Little Cabbage (II) is a reworking of a previous green cabbage made out of paper money, based on the $20 notes my Dad would slip into letters when I was away at art school.  Living wide-eyed in Japan for the past few months, I have found a wonderland, a world of layers and surfaces.  I've also remembered that travel makes you look at who you are, as much as where you are.

To make a work that stems from a culture I'm only yet glancing at seems glib, but a souvenir is the perfect emblem of this surface inhabitance.  On a recent trip to Kyoto I found that the main souvenirs include pickles, and miniature vegetables made from kimono material.  The vegetables remind me of New Zealand's knitted biscuits, and the Japanese love for pickles evokes childhood memories of England, and home-pickled red cabbage...

My Little Cabbage (II) is a marker of this time and space, a souvenir of myself sent back to New Zealand.