好哇! It’s the year of the Ox…

The 26th of January is Chinese New Year and 2009 is the year of the Ox. Somehow I doubt I’m the only one to have spotted TFL’s lovely China in London posters. 

South Ken: China in London (V&A blogs' Flickrstream)

The design echoes traditional Chinese red ink block prints and is unlike anything else on the underground right now. The China in London poster reminds me how traditional forms can be reinterpreted in a modern medium, resulting in something timeless and beautiful… no doubt it will enter the canon of classic underground posters.

The internet is of course awash with predictions for the year of the Ox. Supposedly ‘we will feel the yoke of responsibility coming down on us this year. Way-out fashions, abstract art forms and newfangled notions will be given an impassive stare by the phlegmatic Ox’.

Sounds kind of boring. Thankfully there were no signs of the phlegmatic Ox at 146 Brick Lane today, where the last days of the Year of the Rat were spent reveling in wall to wall way-out newfangled abstraction.

The globally influential Toronto Sun reports…’The Ox is the quintessential hardworking, conventional cleaner-upper who will put everything back in order and turn chaos back into reason’. That sounds more encouraging… But what about creativity in the year of the Ox?

The Ox is said to have a vivid imagination and ’unlimited creativity and perspicacity’. Wow. Unlimited creativity and mental power? That’s more like it. Perhaps then we can expect hard working creatives to take over this year.

萬念俱灰 一炮而红