To make the work look seamless, a special translucent epoxy grout was incorporated to enhance the image and add robustness and longevity to the piece. There are 725 seams in this mosaic, which equate to over 227 meters.

This then allows the artist’s work to speak to the viewer, not the mechanical interpretation of it.

Their job was to ‘stitch’ together an image that is delivered chopped up, by using a technique that appears invisible, yet brings out the true character of this type of glass, its brightness, colour and shape. Middleton from V-vo Architectural Mosaics, with Ankit Gakhar, Darren Hay and Brody Osborne formed the core team for the actual creation of the mosaic. These were used to establish 375 sheets of images containing 900 individual tesserae to make up the whole picture.Īrtisan tiler Iain H. Colours were then selected in collaboration with the Bisazza artistic team in Italy and Shaun Tan. The image was scanned and reproduced as a pixilated map. The mosaic suppliers Bisazza have combined their art selection of premium glass mosaic tiles with mathematical accuracy to translate the beautiful Shaun Tan painting into a mosaic masterpiece. This type of digitised mosaic image is new and has only become commercially available relatively recently. Once the work was installed in the library, he spent a week on a large ladder joining everything up as a fluid composition. Shaun painted the work in parts, in his backyard, relying heavily on detailed sketches to ensure continuity between the different parts. The entire project took about 3 months, painted using acrylic and oils with some collage of printed materials, fabric, coloured paper and gold leaf. Hence the title The Tea Party which nods towards Lewis Carroll, as well as being an alternative, or extended version, of the strange world that was briefly glimpsed in his picture book The Lost Thing.

Shaun’s concept was that the large T-shaped area in the children’s section of the library would depict a flowing landscape with whimsical creatures strolling, swimming, flying and rowing through it, some having conversations and reading books, others breathing fire and stormy oceans, with many drinking cups of tea, made by towering tea pots.

Cicada tan shaun