The Counting Piece

The counting Piece is an installation and performance work that focus on the action of counting and counting a huge pile of toilet paper roll tubes collected and accumulated for 6 years before the exhibition.

The collecting part of the work is a public engaged activity which involving Bu’s community members, friends. The counting action involved numbering, dating and stamping with Bu’s late mother’s and her own collection of name stamps. Stamping as claiming the ownership of each piece of toilet paper roll tubes as a piece of art.

During the exhibition time along with other 40 artists’works in an old factory space, the Hart’s Mill at Port Adelaide, Bu has Counted 30 hours during 10 exhibition open days (plus 10 hours from 10 days before opening), #5006 numbered, dated, stamped. The last day was spent on tending the pile.

For Bu, this counting action is a celebration on life we lived, the basic human activity we all do on a daily bases, that is using the toilet paper. Instead of addressing the difference, Bu is trying to reveal what’s shared as human. The tea pouring work is another project addresses this idea.

Starting from dragging a suitcase in to the gallery, Bu would walk around the pile for a few rounds before opening the suit case, dressing up, throwing the newly collected tubes into the pile, taking the counting tools out.

Bu performs the counting action as meditation on awareness of the time lived and living, with the idea drawn from reading Tai Buddhist monk Ajahn Chah’s book ‘Toilet on The Path’(in Chinese: “道在茅坑中/Tao is in the Toilet”).

Bilge, Fringe Festival group exhibition curated by Tony Kearny

25 Feb-29 March 2023

Hart’s Mill, Packing Shed, Port Adelaide