Puzzle Project UK - Press Release

Dates: 20 October - 12 November 2008
Opening celebration: 23rd October 2008
Venue: The Wall – The Gallery at Willesden Green
Admission Free

Like puzzle pieces, people acquire and change colour and pattern over the course of their lives, sometimes
gradually drifting apart, and sometimes forgetting that deep inside we are truly fractions of a whole. We
become akin to pieces of a puzzle scattered over a table – simultaneously diverse and also the same, yet so
hard to put together…

The artists involved in the Puzzle Project represent a fresh new initiative that originated from Osaka, Japan,
having crossed the boundaries of continents to reach UK audiences. The project explores and experiments
with the interplay of image and text. Each of the artists articulates a word, which they associate to the project
or to their own individual work. The pieces show connections and disconnections whilst simultaneously
continuing to belong to one single puzzle piece. The project by nature is meant to reflect the way in which
people converge and interact in urban centres, where boundaries between strangers and friends blur and we
build a new city and our own personal narratives.

The completed Puzzle will be a large-scale artwork, made up of 120 individual smaller pieces from each
artist. It is based on the original Japanese concept of sixty artists creating their own puzzle pieces, whilst
being unaware of the contents of the other participants’ work. The UK project involves 60 artists from Japan
and 60 artists from the UK, Sweden, Mexico, Hungary and other countries, thus bringing people of many
nationalities together through art and play. The project aims to enrich and engage with the local community
by stimulating a reaction to the pieces. In a specially organised workshop, members of the local community
will create their own puzzle pieces to be displayed as part of the final artwork.

A diverse array of poetry and performance pieces will accompany the opening, amongst them a poetry piece
by Ronnie McGrath; a dance piece by Stanley Hamilton; and finally a performance by acclaimed Japanese
soprano Yoko Matsuzuka.

The Wall – The Gallery at Willesden Green (Willesden Green Library Centre)
Opening hours: 10am - 8pm
95 High road, London, NW10 2SF
Nearest tube: Willesden Green