Everyday No Parking Sculptures

Palai Penang
2024 March, Homestead, Penang @ Wawasan Open University, co-organized by Galerie Balice Hertling from Paris and Blank Canvas from Penang.



Everyday No Parking Sculptures
Readymade no parking sculptures; on-site photo tiles installation, laserjet print, dimensions variable, 2024

*Selected documentation photo by Lin Ho

Parking space is limited and sometimes contentious in George Town. Both the tourists and locals are constantly testing the colonial entrepôt’s limit in accommodating the fluxes of vehicular traffic. Many of the shop owners in George Town respond to this problem by creating makeshift parking sculptures of varying complexity, using throwaway or economical materials such as buckets, broken stools, wooden planks, tyres, brick, pinwheels, etc. Many of these sculptures look spontaneous and perfunctory; others are more considered and designed. These erected composite scrap materials serve as visual cues to deter other drivers from taking up the parking space, yet collectively, they carry a sculptural presence that adds visual excitement to the George Town streetscape, like those carefully bonsai’ed pot plants.