Goodbyetime

My desk in the studio is right by the window. I like keeping the window open; the heat, the breeze, the early raindrops - you can feel the air changing throughout the say. Every now and then, I will gaze out of the window and look at the sky. The light shifts, clouds alter their formation, time passes by.




The Chinese for time is 光陰, light and shadow. Goodbyetime was made over the last six years from the light and shadow through the studio's various windows. It is a story about time literally vanishing. It is a lament, but it is also a celebration of every hour of the day (and night).




Each page is as long as the month it is named after, or as short as the hour - or two that its text describes. Or just seconds if you only give it a glance.  Hidden within each French fold is an image of the sky from one of our studio's windows taken at an hour of the day (or night) described in the text. You can't see the image when the pages are hurriedly flipped. And even if you pause to lift each page, it may not be possible to see the image in full. On a particularly windy day, nature may afford you a glimpse.




Friends, we hope you will put Goodbyetime up on your wall. Unlike a calendar that begs to be busied, may it remind you to stop and enjoy the things and people around you.

Goodbyetime  / buy
Edition: 200
ISBN:   978-981071849-7
Price:    S$18.
Text:     Yvonne Tham
Design: ampulets

A sneak peak at the text:

The first to go was 10 o'clock; out went the cartoons and the nighttime news, but no one noticed: the children had to be put to sleep.

Next was 1 o'clock. That slim hour was so singular and tall, it was all the more easily tipped over with a plastic fork and slipped into a Styrofoam lunch box.

And as teeth were brushed, shirts buttoned, and breakfasts rushed, like the magician's long-suffering rabbit, 8 o'clock vanished when the distracted audience blinked.