Staying true to her motto "a drawing a day, keeps the doctor away", Tina Berning bought a tear-off calendar from the stationery store next door on the day she arrived in Kyoto and filled it with her observations, notes and impressions over the following 186 days.
The calendar with the tips of the day in hiragana and kanji, the positions of the moon and the Japanese holidays form the background noise of the drawings, sometimes covered by areas of color, sometimes exposed, sometimes surrounded by figures. The rhythm of the days of the week, the numbers and characters become part of her work and document the completed time span of the 6-month excursion.
For the reproduction of the calendar, the artist has supplemented the drawings with a photograph taken on the exact day. We see house facades, traffic signs, plastic figures and temples. On a second level, we are allowed to witness the journey and thus also gain an insight into the artist's observational research.
