Tatsurou Bashi creates environments for sculptures and monuments in the public realm that pose questions and invent new contexts through the transformation of space. He presents his provocative projects outside of a museum or art context in order to engage with the widest possible public and to enable his structures to be encountered within ‘normal’ reality. Bashi’s work deals with ideas about contexts for works of art, history and the present, the spaces that surround things, about urbanity and ultimately, the social fabric.

His work magically transforms the scale of public monuments and our relationship to them. It simultaneously evokes thoughts of Gulliver whilst pulling the rug from under our historically entrenched and often unconscious acceptance of social hierarchies. The relatively simple (in conceptual rather than practical terms) illusory removal of the sculpture’s plinth prompts a psychological transformation. The viewer no longer has to ‘look up’ to the statue either bodily or metaphorically. An act of democratisation occurs.