After seeing Jesse Rockwell’s photos of the fish in Bangkok’s New World Mall (we covered it first!) 20-year-old London-based artist Joey Phinn has painted a lush reimagining of the now viral photos. Joey, whose artistic skills span over media such as sculpture, digital painting and animation, had taken a break from painting but was inspired by the bizarrely beautiful “aquarium” in the New World Mall. When posting the painting to Facebook, Phinn quoted Carl Franzen’s The Verge blog post on the aquatic phenomenon:
“There’s something particularly eerie about an abandoned shopping mall. Perhaps it’s the stark contrast from its intended purpose: to see such a sterile place once designed to entice throngs of shoppers into its doors, now so completely devoid of any human life, dilapidated and darkened with time. It’s basically the very definition of post-apocalyptic. But in the case of the (now ironically named) New World shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand, abandonment by humans doesn’t equate with lifelessness. The mall, which reportedly caught fire in 1999 (rumored to be arson by a competitor), has since flooded with several feet of water and become a paradise for koi and catfish.”
Phinn has studied at the Chelsea College of Arts, Parsons New School of Design and Kingston University, and has a dizzyingly expansive and impressive online portfolio. You can also read her blog, where she posts poetry, prose, art criticism and articles about literally anything. No really, anything. She’s written a post called ‘Why Dogs Bite Cyclists’ and another called ‘How Businesses Can Use E-Commerce’.
Artwork: Joey Phinn
RELATED LINKS:
Bangkok Fishbowl: Exotic species swim free at abandoned mall (Coconuts)
An abandoned mall in Bangkok has been overtaken by fish (The Verge)
Reader Interactions