Bryan MulvihillWorld Tea Party

WORLD TEA PARTY manifests as a pan-cultural, interactive, archetypal tea salon. This ongoing project draws upon the ritual of tea drinking worldwide as a metaphor for the dialogue between peoples, and their aesthetic and spiritual ideals. The World Tea Party examines the simple act of drinking tea in diverse artistic and social cultures, which are represented by collections of tea utensils, tea ceremonies and contemporary artworks. The project uses a multidisciplinary approach to look at collections, revealing how something as simple and common as meeting over a cup of tea can show an interconnection between visual arts, decorative arts, architecture, archival photography, and social meeting rituals, multicultural activities and contemporary cultural production. World Tea Party is a living archive where diverse traditional art forms are integrated with developments in digital media and interactive processes.