Jogja: random acts of artistic expression

Jogja is well known as an arts hub, but you can often be pleasantly surprised when you stumble on pop-up art.

Friday's find was along a route travelled often, between ISI (Institut Seni Indonesia - the Jogja art school) and Charlie's playgroup near Kasongan. Some nameless creative has made these wooden figures and wired them to the safety posts above the river. No name, label or other obvious identifier (unless "Nowhere" is significant). Maybe they are or were for a special occasion, or maybe for an art school project. But I like to think they were put there just for fun.

I think this next one is my favourite. In the background a wood-chip and aluminium foil mannequin hangs from a roof in front of graffiti wings painted on the wall to form a human butterfly, while the wooden figure with the long arms, big feet, wide gait and sticky-outy eyes steps over a safety post. I can easily visualise this guy moving, straight out of a 3d-animated kids film.

Behind him lies this scary looking crocodile sculpture perched watchfully atop the steep bank of the river. Again, no credit anywhere I could see for the maker. Evidently just someone having a laugh, putting a rather permanent artwork here to scare the living daylights out of anyone climbing from the river below.

Ahhh, Jogja. 'Tis a cool place.

Quick and random: bath mat

The floor mat outside the toilet at Wisma Bahasa language school. Just look at it for a little while. And ponder.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow, someone thought it would be a good idea to make a bath mat. Makes sense, bathroom floors in Indonesia are very wet things.

But to distinguish this bath mat from the many others on the market they needed a catchy design. And why not choose - of all the many things in the universe to wipe one's feet on - why not choose tennis balls?

But what really gets me is this: if you are going to depict and identify tennis balls on your bath mat, why use an image of baseballs?