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Isamu Noguchi

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NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · Isamu Noguchi
Words · Nicola Barrett

“to be hybrid is to be the future”

The art world, unfortunately, has a certain reputation for snobbery. Everything that is deemed as ‘art’ must, of course, be well thought out, aesthetically intriguing and completely unaffordable for anyone who isn’t part of ‘the rich’. Anything that is actually affordable for people who aren’t part of that income bracket is deemed as ‘low art’. Low art is defined as “for the masses, accessible and easily consumable.”

Over the years this definition has often been criticised alongside the common phrase “art for art’s sake” which was born from definitions like these and “is so culturally pervasive that many people accept it as the “correct” way to classify art.” Thus, it is rather surprising to see such definitions being alluded to in reviews of Noguchi’s exhibition at the Barbican as the artist himself was not a proponent of “art for art’s sake” according to Barbican curator Florence Ostende.

Japanese American designer and sculptor Isamu Noguchi was of “the most experimental and pioneering artists of the 20th century”. His exhibition at the Barbican displays over a hundred and fifty works from his career which spans over six decades and explores his life, work and creative method. The best way to describe him is a ‘creative polymath’ as his work straddled a multitude of disciplines.

The exhibition itself is on two levels and upon entering the space you are directed upstairs. This first section is divided into spacious alcoves and display different periods of the artists work. There is a slight feeling of disconnect here and one finds oneself peering over the railing to the floor below, which appears from above far more engaging. However, this part of the exhibition provides an important overview for those who are not so familiar with Noguchi’s work. It maps the artist’s collaborations with the likes of Brâncuși, Martha Graham and R. Buckminster Fuller, in addition to charting Noguchi’s activist work, protesting racist lynchings, America’s internment of its Japanese American citizens during World War II, and fascism.

However, it is on the first level that the exhibition becomes a real delight, a rambling hodgepodge of stone and metal sculptures and his world-famous Akari lamps that makes one itch to play amongst this minimalist wonderland. Noguchi was committed to creating accessible public art and playgrounds, or playscapes, were a fascination for him. He designed these playgrounds as a way to “encourage creative interaction as a way of learning.” Indeed this interest in play and playfulness is echoed in the exhibition’s main space.

The star of the show is certainly the Akira lamps handing like softly glowing space ships, seemingly emerging from the floor like some strange luminous creature and arranged in clumps like brightly coloured mushrooms. Noguchi designed them after visiting struggling post-war Japan as a way to revitalise the economy. He took the Japanese bamboo and rice paper lanterns and modernised them as a way to bring industry back to the war-torn country.

These lamps became popular in Britain in the sixties and are still available, albeit in a slightly changed form, in IKEA. Because of this they are instantly recognisable and have led to some likening the Barbican exhibition to a ‘high-end lighting showroom.’ However, this brings us back to the discussion of ‘art for art’s sake.’  As I wandered around the exhibition I was drawn back to childhood memories of visiting B&Q with my parents, (they were the only shop in my hometown that had escalators and thus was an infinitely entertaining playground). Playground is the keyword here, I was allowed to roam the aisle alone in delicious freedom and explore this wonderland of light, metal, wood and a multitude of other textures, shapes and materials. To my childlike understanding, all of this was art. Interestingly Noguchi’s philosophy was rather similar. In creating the Akari lamps he aimed to “bring sculpture to everyday households”.

In our current environment of late-stage capitalism, Noguchi’s quiet and thoughtful philosophy’s on purpose, sustainability and environment are perhaps exactly what the art world needs. He saw commercial forms of design “as a way of escaping the art market and working with more freedom and fewer constraints.” While we might criticise the society we live in unfortunately we must still exist within it, however Noguchi “believed in the idea that even in mass-production, individuality is still possible.”  We must adapt and innovate within the framework we have because after all, to quote the artist, “to be hybrid is to be the future.”

Credits

Images · Isamu Noguchi
Noguchi at the Barbican is open from Thu 30 Sep 2021 —Sun 9 Jan 2022. For more information visit https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2021/event/noguchi
 

Photos

  1. Portrait of Isamu Noguchi, American sculptor, the latter’s special assistant planner, July 4, 1947 in New York City. (Photo by Arnold Newman Properties/Getty Images)
  2. Bronze plate
  4. Noguchi, Isamu (1904-1988): Humpty Dumpty. 1946. Ribbon slate. Overall: 59 ◊ 20 3\4 ◊ 17 1\2in. (149.9 ◊ 52.7 ◊ 44.5 cm). Purchase. Inv. N.: 47.7a-e New York Whitney Museum of American Art *** Permission for usage must be provided in writing from Scala.
  5. Terracotta and plaster

Aude Moreau

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NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · Aude Moreau
Words · Nicola Barrett

“I think what motivates my work is the word: privatisation”

Less is more or… is it? For visual artist Aude Moreau, whose works includes carpets of sugar that take up entire galleries or large scale installations that cut across the Toronto skyline, one cannot help think that ‘more’ is the grander option.

For the latter work, Moreau spelt out those same words “Less Is More Or” across the face of the Toronto-Dominion Centre’s skyscrapers. The buildings were designed by the German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Moreau twists his famous maxim ‘less is more’ leaving it open to interpretation when juxtaposed with his towering skyscrapers. “I wanted to revisit the interpretation of the evolution of modernism and the possibilities of what is to come . . . to say ‘what now?”

Moreau’s practice encompasses her dual training in the visual arts and scenography. The time she spends creating her works range from years of painstaking preparation for ambitious installations to more short term interventions. She “focuses a relevant, critical gaze upon showbiz society, the privatisation of the public space, and the domination of the State by economic powers in today’s world.” NR Magazine joined the artist in conversation.

Much of your work is realised on a very large scale, how do you deal with the practicalities of seeing such ambitious projects through to fruition? 

I think it was my dual training in visual arts and scenography and then the fact of having worked in cinema that allowed me to develop large-scale projects. The theatre and the cinema are fields that depend on a multitude of skills in order to create a work. Also, a large part of my job involves surrounding myself with a team that can help me achieve my projects. In that sense, I act a bit like a producer.

There is a political element to your work, do you consider it a form of activism? 

Activism demands clarity of message, transparency that excludes contradiction or paradox. Art is polysemous. So I would say that it is ‘the political’ rather than politics that runs through my work.

Are there any particular concepts or inspirations which drive your creative process?

I feel like I often forget what guides me and at the same time always revolve around the same thing, without being able to name it completely. Each new project brings its own issues, its own context. Right now, I think what motivates my work is the word: privatisation. It is a term that we associate with economic vocabulary, but which, in its polysemy, describes complex realities which affect the ideological relations of our time. The criticism of the “spectacle”, the structures of power, the activation of already existing places, the ephemerality of the works, are various anchor points stated in the 70s and have nourished my practice.

Sugar can be quite a difficult substance to work with as it tends to clump together with even the slightest bit of moisture in the air. With Tapis de Sucre, was this an issue and if so did you try to stop it from hardening or did you consider the change in materials as part of the artwork?

I was not confronted with this reality during the “Sugar Carpet” installation. There have been several editions of the work in different contexts. I think it’s because the industry takes care of this kind of problem through different methods, including adding emulsifiers like magnesium stearate.

However, once the installation is complete, each accident remains imprinted on the surface without altering the trompe l’oeil and the overall vision. The accidents that mark the surface bear witness to the life of the place and momentarily shatter the trompe-l’oeil. These stigmas refer to the fragility of the work. It is the reversal of the monumental and its spectacle which echoes the fragility of our presences that makes the work moving. Like an invitation to cross the trompe-l’oeil to catch a glimpse of the deadly reality of this industry, both in its historical production methods and in its consumption.

Architecture seems to play quite a large role in your artwork, why is that?

Probably because architecture plays a big role in our daily lives. It defines our habitats, structures our movements, testifies to our time and our way of thinking while talking about previous eras. It is silent but contains in itself the production contingencies of an era, and bears witness to the historical, political, economic, technical, cultural and ideological contexts that it emerged from.

In this sense, Gordon Matta-Clark’s cuts in architecture greatly interested and challenged me. And the reading of Dan Graham’s text which puts in dialogue the cuts in the architecture of Matta-Clark and the concept of transparency in Mies van der Rohe through the question of the penetration of light was a major trigger in the process of creating my skyscraper illuminations projects.

What was the most exciting project which you worked on? 

The last project « Less is More or ».

What was the meaning behind showing your own version of Mies’ famous maxim ‘less is more’ on the skyscrapers he designed. Was it irony or something more complex? 

In fact, I modify the sentence of Mies van der Rohe by adding the word “or” to complete the occupation of the four facades of each of the skyscrapers. This has the effect of inscribing the sentence in a loop. “Less is More or Less …” This lessening of the affirmation refers to “post-modern” semantics which, while criticizing the modernist project (the great utopias, the desire for a social architecture, etc.), defends the idea that all points of view are equal. However, this equivalence of individual points of view creates new norms and forms of alienation.

So, this is not ironic towards the architectural achievements of Mies van der Rohe, but ironic compared to the flattened world we live in. A constantly updated world that works to erase traces at the same time as it blocks the horizon by creating disproportionate surpluses. Surplus of images, data, storage, memories, codes, goods, plastics, fashions, tastes, opinions, etc.

What do you want people to take away from your artwork? 

Questions and the feeling that anything is possible.

What advice would you give to young creatives interested in creating large scale and ambitious works? 

I would say that the large-scale works do not necessarily require large resources. However, it requires persistence. The realisation of the projects can take several years, even decades. Therefore, it is essential to ask the question of the need for an occupation of space of this type and to find allies. This is particularly true for projects carried out in public space.

Are you working on any projects at the moment and what plans do you have for the future? 

Yes, I am working on my next exhibition which will take place in January 2022 at the Bradley Ertaskiran Gallery in Montreal. A new corpus that will bring together sculptural and two-dimensional works around the issue of melting ice. Inspired by a brief trip to the Rockies in Alberta, visiting the Columbia Icefield and especially the Athabasca Glacier. The geographic context is particularly significant given the proximity of the glacier and the oil industry in the province.

In the longer term, I would like to achieve “the Blue Line”, which is ongoing. This is an ambitious project, the idea of which germinated about 10 years ago, and which has gone through different phases of development without being completed to date. It is about drawing a line of blue light 65 meters high on the facades of 20 buildings bordering the East River in the Financial District of Manhattan. The height corresponds to that of the rising waters if all the ice on the planet melted. When I think about this project, I tell myself that it must be done now, there is a sense of urgency that rises.

Dinu Li

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NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · Dinu Li
Words · Nicola Barrett

“Sometimes the not knowing can be the work itself”

Have you ever looked at an old photo of a family member and wondered at the moment captured in the image? Did you flip through stuffed albums and make up stories in your head about the pictures you saw there? If so, you might have something in common with multimedia artist Dinu Li. Born in Hong Kong, his family emigrated to the UK in the early ‘70s. Li draws inspiration from archival material, incorporating history, memory, and invention in his work whilst emphasising appropriation and reconfiguration. Examples of his work range from a fictional documentary inspired by his cousin’s experiences in a Cultural Revolution labour camp, ‘portraits’ of the bedrooms and possessions of illegal immigrants working in London’s Chinese restaurant trade, and a re-tracing of his mother’s life travels from China to Hong Kong and then England. “In his practice, Li examines the manifestation of culture in the everyday, finding new meaning to the familiar, making visible the seemingly invisible” and his work “is often characterised by problematising the document as part of the modus operandi.”

You have spoken about how you were drawn to the photograph of your cousin holding what looks to be a radio but is instead a painted brick. Is this camouflaged reality something that inspired you to incorporate an element of fiction into your archival works?

I’ve had this old photograph of my cousin since I was a kid, showing him as a young man in a labour camp. It is interesting how easily we are fooled into believing photographs as a representation of truth when in fact, it is so unreliable. For so long I was convinced he was listening to a radio, until decades later, when he told me it was a brick painted to look like a radio. The aerial was simply a bamboo shoot, stuck on the side and the brick was painted with nobs and buttons. Even more surprising was when I asked if he heard anything from the make-believe radio and he said he heard the love theme from the film Doctor Zhivago.

You spoke of uncertainties of memory when working with your mother on The Mother of all Journeys. Do you find it frustrating that certain personal histories are lost due to lack of documentation or the fallacy of memory?

It is not so much about it being frustrating, rather it is perhaps inevitable that we humans will get our own histories mixed up by confusion and inaccuracies or imbue our own past with figments of our own imagination. There are also the complexities of someone telling you their past, and for you to retell it back to them, as they had long-forgotten aspects of their life journeys. So, there are lots of opportunities to slip up and our abilities to recount something precisely may well be unreliable.

Do you think that activism in art can be a way to inform positive social change? And do you feel that in recent years, particularly in western media, that activist art has become a social trend that is more performative than helpful? 

As always, art influences real life and vice-versa. Life is full of dualities constantly rubbing against each other. For example, how the global is connected to the local, and how the private is related to the public. There is also one’s personal life interconnected by politics. Whether we embrace politics or not is not the point. The point is that politics comes to us whether we like it or not. I recently went to see the Artes Mundi prize in Cardiff and all the works shortlisted were fully loaded by political points of view, often quite upfront. One of the exhibiting artists Meiro Koizumi made a video work about the legacy of the Second Sino-Japanese War. I found him very brave in using art to confront a very difficult and often taboo subject for many Japanese people. He had collaborated with a group of young Japanese people and got them to recite passages from a diary written by an ex-army officer about what he had witnessed during the massacre of thousands of Chinese people at the hands of the invading forces.

“There was something extremely compelling about these young people, not only reading out loud something they’d rather not think about but doing so in the high streets of urban Japan, where passers can’t avoid overhearing atrocities from a dark moment in their history.”

The work was confrontational, but it needed to be.

I think the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol was a positive thing. There was a lot of media coverage at the time, as the pulling down coincided with several similar dismantling. Obviously, there is always the danger that some people are more pro-active when there is media attention, as they may join in for a bit of fun, or simply interested in standing in front of a camera. But that does not mean the original impetus should be curtailed by people exploiting the situation for self-gain. The whole point of Colston’s statue being dumped into the sea is the absurdity of the statue in the first instance as well as the rude awakening of what he represented. So, the more noise the better.

You have stated you are working on something autobiographical, “delving into your youth when you were immersed in black culture”. Can you tell me more about this project? And what is your opinion on artists and creatives making work about cultures outside of their own. 

In my case, I feel it appropriate to make this work. It feels urgent and necessary, even if it’s just for my own benefit. I went to a school in inner-city Manchester that was quite diverse and was immediately drawn to a group of Jamaican youths. We hung out and went to blues parties together in Hulme and Moss Side, and very quickly I became a massive fan of dub. I loved the echo, the reverb and the repetition of a vibe, emphasised and heightened by the sound systems.

The genesis that led me to develop my new work was a recent rediscovery of a song on YouTube that I had heard as a young child growing up in Hong Kong where I was born. The song is called Always Together sung by Stephen Cheng who flew to Jamaica in the mid 1960s to record the song. The first time I heard it as a six-year-old, I took it for granted it must have been yet another traditional Chinese folk song. On hearing it again all these years later, I now realise it is in fact an early day rocksteady tune, which became a cult classic that helped shape the sound of reggae years later.

Thinking back to the triggers that allowed those Jamaican youths and me to instantly form a connection, I would say had a lot to do with cultural phenomenon’s that we valued. For example, what Bruce Lee stood for both in his movies and perhaps more significantly in his off-screen life. Besides him kicking ass, there was something about his dress sense, the way he walked, his mannerism that somehow brought people together. And of course, many artists find inspiration from other cultures. When we think about break dancing and body-popping, we see a mish-mash of inspiration from moves the dancers would have witnessed in a kung fu movie by a cartoon character. The 1990’s hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan is another example of artists finding inspiration from cultures outside their own.

In addition to being involved in Afro-Caribbean culture in your youth, you were also involved in your school’s Anti-Nazi League. You said that ” I think mainstream society at the time was not ready to see a Chinese punk rocker walking around in the suburbs of Yorkshire.” How do you think alternative scene culture has influenced your artwork? 

It goes hand-in-hand. My life is my work and my work reflect my life. I am as interested in pop culture as I am in embracing sub-cultures. In my artwork, I avoid easy classification. I resist clear demarcations and I would not box myself in. I don’t want to make work that is easy to interpret. I like to subvert, to delineate, to contest the status quo. I am not interested in things easily understood.

“I prefer complexities, making works that are multi-layered and generous to being interpreted in many ways. I am looking for possibilities.”

What is the most interesting history/story you have come across during your work? 

I was dropped off once inside a dense bamboo forest in southern China, roughly the size of England, and stayed there making a film for a month. It felt as if I was the only human being there for about ten days before an old guy walked by. He stood there momentarily watching me filming the forest and then said bamboo made China before he disappeared. He is not wrong when you consider what one can make out of bamboo. For example, hats, chairs, ladders, chopsticks, tables, raincoats, shoes, window blinds, houses, baskets, toothbrushes and so on.

You have spoken about experiencing racism as a young boy when you first moved to the UK. Is this something that you have explored, or would consider exploring in the future, in your work, especially considering the recent rise in hate crimes against Asian people? 

I’m thinking a lot about the soil beneath our feet as we walk the earth. I have a vivid memory of being seven years old, having moved from Hong Kong to Sheffield and being pinned against a brick wall outside my house by two boys who lived a few doors away.

“After they had dished out their beatings, they finished off by scooping handfuls of soil before stuffing it in my pants and shouting get back to where I came from.”

From a conceptual point of view, there is something really interesting about some sort of walking performance, retracing one’s journey backwards, to one’s former home. It is no longer there to be found, yet quite ubiquitous is a trail of soil connecting the start of the backward walk to somewhere without an endpoint.

A lot of your work revolves around your family and their personal experiences. What are their reactions when they see your final artworks and how do they feel about being involved in your work?

I think the reaction varies depending on the project and who it’s about, or who it’s not about. It can be a very intense experience for whoever I am focusing on. We all have pasts we rather leave behind. And so, it can sometimes feel uncomfortable when I ask too many questions about a particular moment in time that someone does not want to revisit.

I have collaborated with my mum more than once. The first time on a monograph that involved many trips down her memory lane. I think my dad was a bit jealous the project was not about him, even though he features fleetingly in the project. In the end, the work was about my mum.

“I wanted to give her a voice so that the work acted as some sort of redress for herself and countless women of my mother’s generation, who mostly spent their lives serving the interest of their husbands.”

That project premiered at the Victoria and Albert Museum as a slide projection installation inside the Raphael cartoon court. It is a massive room, so the projection had to be huge to avoid being lost in the space. Naturally, the museum draws massive visitor numbers, which my mother and I was not prepared for. So on the opening, it was quite daunting having so many people filling the room, staring at the slide show, then staring at my mum. I don’t think she felt comfortable being famous for five minutes.

What advice would you give to young creatives who are interested in archival works and exploring their own culture? 

Be open-minded about what is on the surface and what one might discover beneath by digging deeper. Be equally open-minded that whatever is revealed, whether from a photograph or one’s own culture could well be staged, manufactured or mediated. Also, be mindful one may never find all the facts or all the truths behind something. And bear in mind having all the facts and truths does not mean one will make interesting work.

“It can be useful learning when to stop one’s investigation or research. Sometimes the not knowing can be the work itself.”

What projects are you working on at the moment and what plans do you have for the future? 

I have just completed a new video piece, again in collaboration with my mum, called The Ghost Orchid Gesture. The film unfolds in several typical English landscaped gardens during spring at the cusp of blossoming exuberance. My mum plays the sole protagonist, a masked old woman whose movements embody different creatures and plants. I was interested in using ancient wisdom, folklore and shamanist dancing rituals to explore the epoch of the Anthropocene we are currently living through, where our actions are causing the near extinction of a rare plant species called the ghost orchid. The orchid is not seen in the film, except for the movement of its life cycle as represented by the old woman’s hand gestures, as she mimics the manner in which it may twist and turn against the breeze.

 

Credits

Images · Dinu Li

Claudia Andujar

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NR · WORLD
Online

Feature · Claudia Andujar
Words · Izzy Bilkus

Andujar often applied Vaseline to her camera lens, used flash devices, infrared film, and oil lamps to create visual distortions

The Barbican’s latest exhibition explores the work of Claudia Andujar, a Swiss-born Brazilian photographer and activist who has spent her life documenting and defending the Yanomami, one of Brazil’s largest indigenous peoples. Through a collection of over 200 photographs, an audio-visual installation, and a series of drawings by the Yanomami, the exhibition explores Andujar’s relationship with the Yanomami that spanned five decades, and details periods of direct activism amongst the indigenous communities.  

The exhibition is housed in The Curve, featuring powerful photographs from Andujar’s first six years living with the Yanomami and explores how the photographer used her camera as a tool to drive political change. At a time when the Yanomami’s territory and way of life is being threatened from continued illegal mining and the spread of Covid-19, the exhibition holds particular significance: it shows how Andujar dealt with visually interpreting a complex culture, and how her art serves to amplify the voices and struggles of the Yanomami.  

From the start of her career documenting the Yanomami in the 1970s, Andujar’s photographic approach differed greatly from the traditional documentary style of her contemporaries. The photographs she took during this period experiment with a range of techniques to visually translate the shamanic and ritualistic culture of the Yanomami. Andujar often applied Vaseline to her camera lens, used flash devices, infrared film, and oil lamps to create visual distortions of light streaks and saturated colours that imbue her work with an ethereal quality. The exhibition also features a series of more sober black-and-white portraits of the Yanomami that focus closely on their faces and bodies, using an intense chiaroscuro to create a strong sense of intimacy. 

By the late 1970s, Andujar had reached a pivotal point in her career. With the Amazon region opened to deforestation and invasive agricultural programs, entire Yanomami communities were destroyed. Andujar deepened her commitment to the Yanomami struggle, and in 1978 she helped found the ‘Commissão Pro-Yanomani’ and began a campaign to protect their homeland. Andujar’s artistic career at this point was abandoned in favour of using photography solely to raise awareness for the cause.

As a photojournalist and a European, Andujar’s project is still a complex one: it cannot be wholly separated from the history of the colonial gaze on indigenous people. Yet it is clear that she has been welcomed by the Yanomami – films, drawings and texts by the community leader Davi Kopenawa throughout the exhibition demonstrate. It is without a doubt that Andujar’s work powerfully captures the struggles of the indigenous peoples and delivers both a unique peek into the lives and worldview of the Yanomami and a potent condemnation of the violence enacted on them.

‘Claudia Andujar: The Yanomami Struggle’ is on at the Barbican Centre until 29th August. Discover more here barbican.org.uk  

Tatsuo Miyajima

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NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · Tatsuo Miyajima
Words · Nicola Barrett

“If you want to use technology to create your work, stop studying technology”

Sometimes it can feel like life is dominated by numbers, sums and allotments of time, all looming over us in with the blinking flashing urgency that comes with our increasingly digital environments. With Tatsuo Miyajima’s work, this feeling has become reality. Whilst his art ranges across a wide variety of mediums there is a single focus; numbers. Specifically the kind you find on old digital clocks or calculators. Miyajima is one of Japan’s leading sculptures and installation artists, and his work is centred around his use of LED counters, which flash sequences of numbers from one to nine. His work is also heavily influenced by Eastern and Buddhist philosophy. NR Magazine joined the artist in conversation. 

One of your three artistic concepts is ‘keep changing’. How do you think your work has changed throughout your career?

For the first 7 years after my debut, I was only making installations that showed LED works in a dark room. However, in 1995, I had an opportunity to do a performance in London, and from that point on, I began to do works that involved people and asked them to participate. Since 2005, I have been working with a wider range of materials, including digital numeric drawings, photographs, and computer programs, in addition to LED works. Since 2010, I have been using AI in my work, and I am still expanding the range of my expression with various materials.

You have said that “art has long been isolated from the real world, and spoiled within a framework of the ‘art world’. Do you think social media apps, such as Instagram and Tiktok, on which creators can show their works is an effective way to break down these barriers?

In terms of the fact that many people can express themselves easily, I say yes. However, the point that the expression is too concerned about the reputation of “likes”. It means No.

How has the pandemic affected you and has it had any impact on the way you approach your art practice?

It was sad that I could not go abroad because of the pandemic. However, I was grateful for the fact that I was able to work calmly. I am also glad that the pandemic has made it clear that art is an essential and important part of human life. It is hard to say right now how this pandemic will affect us in the future. However, I am sure that it will naturally appear in my works in the future.

Tell me more about your recent work Counter Object – 000 (2020). What was the process behind it?

In fact, this work was also born out of the pandemic. 20 years ago, I did an installation in Stuttgart where I placed mirrors of digital numbers on the floor. During the pandemic, the Buchmann Galerie organized a group exhibition, but I could not go to Germany. So, Buchmann suggested that I show something similar to the work I did in 2000. I proposed a new idea. I proposed a new idea, which was to display mirror-like digital numbers on the wall and change them with dice. This is Counter Object – 000, which I plan to develop further by using different materials.

Your art is largely based in technology, are there any new technologies that you are interested in incorporating into your artwork?

I always have a concept and use technology as a tool to realise it, but not the other way around. If technology is the first step in creating a work of art, it will not be art, but only product design.

Although a lot of your work revolves around numbers, the number 0 is never shown in your work, why is that? 

This is because 0 means “death”.

“Death is invisible to the eye. That’s why I always represent ‘0’ as blank, or dark so that I can’t see it.”

Like your work, much of the world relies heavily on technology. Have you ever considered what would happen if that technology was no longer available to us and if that ever happened what artworks would you create then?

If I had been born in the third century, I would have made “mosaics” out of stone. If I had been born in the 13th century, I would have been painting with “tempera”. And if I had been born in the 18th century, I would have definitely painted in “oil”. All these techniques were the latest technology of their time. You can see that artists have always expressed themselves with technology that is adapted to the times.

What was the particular concept behind C.F. Loop: Helix no. 2 and was there any reason why you chose blue for the LEDs? 

C.F. Loop is a Study Model that considers the structure of time. Time is connected to a circle, but it must be an irregularly shaped circle. I expressed this by having the numbers counting 9-1 lined up in a circular pattern. In the series of works, I also used red and green LEDs. Each color expresses the differences of each character.

What exactly is it that you want people to take away from your work? 

I do not impose a concept on the viewer.

“Artworks are not meant to give something to the audience. Rather, I believe it is something that allows the viewer to discover the sensitivity and imagination within themselves.”

What was the most exciting project you worked on and why?

I am currently working on a piece called “Sea of Time – Tohoku”, which will be my most exciting project yet.  After experiencing the 2011.3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, I have created a project plan to work with people in Tohoku. LED devices used in the project represent the eternity of life. I am aiming to ask 3,000 people mainly from the affected areas to set the speed of the LED display to create an artwork. I plan to install it at a high-class location in the Tohoku area where we can see the sea.

Your work Hiten (2020) reminds me somewhat of a map of the world. Were you trying to create any particular shapes with the placement of the LED numbers or is it purely abstract? 

This work HITEN refers to an angel painting in a cave in Dunhuang, China. This angel is clothed in a robe of extreme colors and is fluttering freely in the sky without being controlled by anyone. So it is an abstract way of arrangement, placed so that it can fly freely in the sky.

What advice do you have for young creatives looking to create art with technology?

If you want to use technology to create your work, stop studying technology. There are many technology specialists who are better than you. Instead, you should study philosophy, anthropology, and art, and focus on creating original ideas. Then you can use technology to express them. 

Credits

Images · Tatsuo Miyajima
https://tatsuomiyajima.com/

Luna Ikuta

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NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · Luna Ikuta
Words · Nicola Barrett

“We recognise the past, present, and future but it makes me think perhaps there is a beyond”

Ghostly white flowers float gently against a sea of black. Delicate pale fish weave their way through the waving fronds of these transparent florae. Luna Ikuta creates these mystical aquatic landscapes by stripping away the colour and chlorophyll from living plants. This process involves “extracting the living cells from plants while leaving the ECM (extracellular tissue matrix) intact.” The flowers are then submerged underwater which causes them to sway softly mimicking the movement caused by light breezes in the natural world. 

Ikuta’s aim was to de-sensationalise peoples perception of the outside world by showing them the wonders that could be found in their immediate surroundings. The flowers she used were found on walks around her home in Los Angeles. By transforming them into translucent wraithlike forms these artworks evoke the image of ‘reincarnated spirits’ whilst allowing people to marvel at the natural structures found in their local environments. NR Magazine joined the artist in conversation about her work. 

With your botanical artworks, how long does the process of stripping away the living cells of the plants take? And how long does the ECM (extracellular tissue matrix) last once you have completed this process?

Each plant behaves differently but on average it takes about three weeks. Even though completing a tank arrangement from start to finish takes about a month to create, the transparent gardens are all ephemeral works. These installations eventually disintegrate and disappear after about six months. The works are filmed shortly after they are installed and embalmed as digital relics. 

You have stated that you believe black to be the richest of all colours. Is that why you have chosen to use exclusively black backdrops with all your botanical artworks?

I like using monochromatic palettes in a lot of my works across various mediums. In my sculptural works, I am obsessive about texture and am drawn to muted palettes for I feel excessive color distracts from form and adds unnecessary noise. These botanical works are also an extensive study of texture and form. Each plant was made transparent using a process revealing intricate vascular networks and structures otherwise invisible to our eyes. In these artworks I want the focus to be about the subject and to transport the viewer into an otherworldly space illuminated solely by the ghostly flora.

You stated that you are inspired by Japanese culture. Was there any particular aspect of this culture that influenced your botanical works?

I was born in Tokyo, Japan but was raised in the US. I travel back to Japan to visit relatives every year and grew up in a bilingual household. As I’ve grown older I realise this is my particular advantage to always be living between those two worlds. For that reason, it’s not too important for me to identify with one or the other when it comes to my work because I am just me. The Japanese inspiration comes more from a place that’s difficult to express in words.

“I am mainly interested in making work that connects to the human spirit.”

Do you think there is an intrinsic link between art and science that people tend to overlook as there is a tendency to view the two fields as separate?

As a multimedia artist I’m interested in material science, so I have always seen an intrinsic link between the two. I believe art benefits from science when trying to create experiences that are foreign to everyday life. The science behind the process of creating the Afterlife series also plays a role in the narrative of the work. These artworks combine sculpture, digital media, chemistry, and biology to create an experimental installation that transforms our natural world. The plants are no longer alive but are preserved as ghostly skeletons in the liminal space between life and death. This art practice is also an ongoing experiment. I never know the result of the clearing process for each plant and sometimes it doesn’t work out. This creates challenges and discoveries that propel new ideas and I am always learning. 

You have a background in industrial design, how does that inform your art practice? 

Industrial design covers a very wide spectrum of trades. What I value the most from this background is that I know how material things are made. I am very hands-on and have experimented with everything from woodworking, metalsmithing, ceramics, 3D modelling, architecture, etc. By having a foundational understanding of various production processes I can be autonomous and it’s very freeing. As an independent artist, every project has my hands on it from the finished artwork, documentation, to building out entire showrooms. My practice ranges from sculpture, installations, furniture, digital media, and now aquarium art. The biggest challenge is answering “what kind of art do you do?” since my methods of making are always changing per project. 

Would you ever consider taking other biological forms than plants and stripping away their living cells to create artworks?

I have only scratched the surface of the botanical world using this process and there are so many more plants I would like to work with. I started to see that once you remove the plants from their natural context, they can transform into something entirely different from their original character. In one of my tanks, I placed Chrysanthemums, Sunflowers, and Queen Anne’s Lace as the foreground of the landscape and they resembled very close to sea anemones. Grass looks like aquatic snakes, and some plants look like clams when placed in a specific way.

“Nature has a beautiful way of effortlessly mimicking other life forms in ways I never noticed, and this space is more interesting for me to play with.”

Some of your works involve live fish. How do you deal with the practicalities and ethical concerns of using live animals in your artworks?

My pet Bettas! As a practicing aquascaper, I have experience in monitoring water conditions to make it safe for fish. They are beautifully majestic creatures and I am grateful for their involvement in my films.

Do you think people have become more appreciative of nature due to covid and subsequent lockdowns and if so how is that reflected in your botanical works?

During lockdown, all I did was go on walks outside. It seemed like my friends were all doing the same. Social media was depressing, and the news was even more depressing! On these daily walks, I would observe flowers blooming on the hillside of my house and these subtle changes in the landscape became my elusive “pandemic clock” measuring time. I enjoy watching the life cycle of nature because it’s a quiet but hopeful message. Flowers bloom and wilt but come back again next season. We recognise the past, present, and future but it makes me think perhaps there is a beyond. If so, I wonder if death is really something we have to fear? A lot of my work uses plants that are foraged from my immediate surroundings, so despite awful 2020 I am thankful for the time I had to fully immerse myself into California’s nature.

What advice would you give to young creatives who are interested in combining art and science?

You don’t need to be a scientist! 

Are you working on any projects at the moment and what plans do you have for the future?

Yes!  I am currently exhibiting these works, AFTERLIFE, at The Transparent Garden which is both my studio and showroom. This gallery showcases eight physical aquaria, each paired with a custom-built LCD screen preserving the video form as collectible art objects. This show was the first time I had shown the physical tanks to the public. I am also releasing a series of NFT’s of the filmed aquariums that will be released on Superrare July 5th. AFTERLIFE ends on June 13th but I really enjoyed meeting everyone who came by the space and I am excited to continue using this gallery as my experimental playground. I am also installing my first permanent public arts sculpture in Los Angeles. I have been working on that piece for over a year so I am excited to see it finally rest on site. Oh and Daruma 2022! 

Credits

Images · LUNA IKUTA
https://www.lunaikuta.com/

Judy Watson

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Feature · Judy Watson
Words · Nicola Barrett

“In making the work I make I am lifting up my ancestors and their stories and learning more from them every day”

Judy Watson is an Australian artist whose practice is based on her exploration of her matrilineal Waanyi Aboriginal heritage and the experiences of Aboriginal people since British colonisation. Exploring Waanyi culture through the lens of collective memory, she then incorporates these histories into her artworks, often drawing on archival research and documents.

Watson’s work a preponderance of aboriginal blood uses copies of documents from the Queensland State Archives which are then layered with ‘blood-like pools of red paint, symbolising the pain and deaths of Aboriginal people.’ The documents in question are evidence of the discrimination Aboriginal Australians faced, including voting rights.’Full blooded’ Aboriginal people were not allowed to vote but ‘half caste’ Aboriginal people were. The artwork highlights the awful treatment of Aboriginal peoples in Queensland as a reflection of the ongoing effects of British colonisation.

This artwork will be part of A Year in Art: Australia 1992, a free exhibition at Tate Modern. The exhibition brings together a selection of over 25 works, many on show for the first time in the UK. The exhibition explores how artists have acknowledged the continuing relationship Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have with their lands, as well as the ongoing impact of colonisation and the complexities of representation in Australian society today. The exhibition is available to view from June 8th 2021 until Spring 2022.

When it comes to ideas of social change you have described your work as subtlety discreet with a strong message that insinuates itself into the viewer’s consciousness, do you think that aesthetically pleasing and subtle artworks can be used as an effective form of activism?

Yes, I think the power of aesthetics and subtlety can embed themselves into people’s memory and slowly leak their contents into their consciousness before they can put up resistance. Sound and smell can be a strong activation as well.

Do you think this exhibition, and your artwork specifically, will make British people more aware of the issues of British colonialism and how that affected/affects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders? 

Yes, if people look into the work, they will get a sense of the oppression of Aboriginal people under the ‘Act’.

You talk about collaborating with family members on your artworks. Did they have any specific input/influence on a preponderance of aboriginal blood, and if so in what way?

I spoke to my mother, Joyce Watson about this work. She is also trained in printmaking, in fact, I was one of her first art teachers at Art School in Townsville. After making this work I took Mum and Dad into the Queensland State Archives with me. I showed them the files held on my grandmother, Grace Isaacson (Camp) and her mother Mabel Daly, among other members of my matrilineal Aboriginal family. I made a second artist book: ‘under the act’ based on these files. My mother is very supportive of me using this material in order to show the public what it was like for our people to live their lives under this institutionalised brutality and bureaucracy. My grandmother, Grace Isaacson gave permission for us to access her files.

You speak about collective memories as an inspiration for your work, have you found that a lot of personal histories and information have been lost due to a fear of discrimination from British colonialism? And if so did you find that loss of personal histories frustrating when researching during your process?

Many people have helped me to uncover documents and history about my Aboriginal family. I did interviews with my grandmother Grace, my mother Joyce and other family members from Mt Isa over the years. I’ve also undertaken a lot of research as have others about these untold stories of colonisation in Australia. It was hard at first to find these stories but we achieved it with persistence and hard work. There is more to be unearthed in the future.

Can you tell me about your creative process for a preponderance of aboriginal blood? How did you come up with the idea and how did you go about the physical process of making the artwork? 

I went to a talk by Loris Williams (an Aboriginal archivist) and Margaret Reid at the University of Queensland about Indigenous people and the right to vote in Queensland. They showed amazing documents on their PowerPoint and this is where I first heard the terms: half-blood and a preponderance of Aboriginal blood. Immediately I knew that this is what I wanted to make work about. I had been asked to make an artist book for the commemoration of Queensland women and the right to vote. I knew I wanted to focus on Aboriginal women in particular. I asked permission to use the images from Loris Williams’s talk and it went from there.

I’ve discussed the making of the work in previous texts that you can access from the description in ‘a preponderance of aboriginal blood’.

In previous works you have united your Aboriginal heritage with your English, Scottish and Irish ancestry such as standing stone, kangaroo grass, red and yellow ochre, is this also the case with a preponderance of aboriginal blood? How else do you navigate the contrast of these ancestries within your work?

My work ‘burnt shield’ which is in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery could be the shape of a European family shield. It could also be the female shape of the pubic area, or the waterhole at Duwadari waterhole, Lawn Hill Gorge, Boodjamulla National Park in NW Queensland. Sometimes I have referenced my skin colour, derogatory names and imagery associated with flayed skins. These are earlier works, both in prints and works on canvas.

You stated that shared experiences are an important part of your work. How do you feel to be a part of this group exhibition and is there any other artists artwork that particularly resonates with or stands out to you?

There are many amazing artists whose works resonate with me.

Sometimes I know them and sometimes I don’t but their work goes beyond the knowing.

You describe discovering how your Aboriginal ancestors were treated as a ‘heavy burden’, do you consider your artistic work/process as a way to work through, express and deal with that ancestral trauma?

In making the work I make I am lifting up my ancestors and their stories and learning more from them every day. I want to pass that knowledge onto my children and to others in the wider community.

What other media (i.e. books, films, documentaries)  would you personally recommend to people who are looking to learn about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures and the effects of British colonialism? 

Tony Roberts ‘Frontier Justice’, Timothy Bottoms ‘Conspiracy of Silence’, Bruce Elder ‘Blood on the wattle’, Rachel Perkins ‘First Australians’. So many books, videos, resources…

What artworks are you currently working on and which topics do you plan on exploring in the future?

I am currently making two bodies of work for different projects and venues that I can’t reveal yet.

One project is looking at climate change. The other is looking at a big issue affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in custody. I am also working with more research around the Aboriginal women in my family, the stations they worked on, the maps of the country. Other imagery will appear as I go through the process of making the work.

My public artwork ‘bara’ will be installed soon at the Botanical Gardens in Sydney, looking down at the Opera House. It is a large work in marble that represents the bara / fish hooks made from shell. These were predominantly used by Aboriginal women in Warrane / Sydney when they were fishing in their Nawi / bark canoes in the waters around Sydney, catching fish for their families in Gadigal Country.

Credits

Jean Dubuffet

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NR · WORLD
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Feature · Jean Dubuffet
Words · Izzy Bilkus

Chaotic yet vibrant visual tumult, mirroring the hectic pace of life in the last quarter of the century

Barbican Art gallery presents ‘Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty’, the first major UK exhibition in over 50 years celebrating the career of Art Brut pioneer Jean Dubuffet. The exhibition explores Dubuffet’s rejection of conventional notions of beauty in favour of more subversive forms and presents the artist as a multifaceted innovator of the immediate post-war period, adept at translating his creative vision through a vast range of artistic mediums, creating works out of mud, glass and cement.

Walking through the exhibition, visitors can track the course of Dubuffet’s career, as his practice and inspiration evolves and progresses. Abundantly inventive and playful, Dubuffet’s oeuvre includes assemblies of butterfly wings, scrawled illustrations, viscous and visceral painted landscapes and female nudes – monstrous and captivating – that all come together as a chaotic yet vibrant visual tumult, mirroring the hectic pace of life in the last quarter of the century. 

A defining feature of the exhibition is Dubuffet’s variety of technique and materiality. His work prompts a unique kind of introspection and contemplation, as he captures the sombre essence of the post-war period. Dubuffet’s scenes and caricatures rail against traditional ideas of beauty and capture the beauty of the mundane and something in a gritty and poetic way.

The exhibition is on at the Barbican until the 22nd August.  For more information visit Barbican

James Barnor

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Feature · James Barnor
Words · Izzy Bilkus

Exploring the nuances and societal transitions in the 1950s and 1960s, as London was blossoming into a multicultural capital

London’s Serpentine Gallery presents an overview of the career of British-Ghanaian photographer James Barnor. Working over two continents and over six decades as a studio portraitist, photojournalist and Black lifestyle photographer, Barnor’s career covers a multitude of photographic genres and offers a wider social commentary, documenting major socio-political changes in London and Accra.

On the cusp of Ghana’s Independence in the early 1950s, Barnor set up his famous Ever Young studio in Accra. Arriving in London towards the end of the decade, he began working with the South African magazine Drum, capturing the experiences of the African diaspora and the style and creative spirit of the period. Barnor returned to Ghana in the 1970s, where he continued his work with portraiture, established himself in the music scene and created the country’s first colour processing lab.

Barnor’s street photography explores the nuances and societal transitions in the 1950s and 1960s, as London was blossoming into a multicultural capital. Returning to the city 1994, Barnor’s work focussed on documenting the Black communities that had settled in London – something that had previously been documented by mostly white, European photographers. His portraits of the African diaspora in London focus on the members of the Black Power Movement, while also capturing different fashion trends present in Britain’s Black community during the 1960s.

Barnor’s body of work spans six decades and possesses a clarity of vision and a sense of community and sensitivity that he both extends towards and brings out in his subjects. The Serpentine’s exhibition displays Barnor’s work from 1950-80 and draws from his archive of around 32,000 images, all mapping the flourishing cultures of two cities and reflecting Barnor’s ceaseless uplifting and creative energy.

‘James Barnor: Accra/London’ runs until 22nd October at the Serpentine North Gallery.

Motoi Yamamoto

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NR · WORLD
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Feature · Motoi Yamamoto
Words · Nicola Barrett

“Our lives, that we live here now, it is always wrapped up in ephemerality”

Soft white piles of salt weave across the floor in delicate and intricate patterns that fill entire rooms. These transient installations are the result of hours of painstaking work from artist Motoi Yamamoto, for whom these creations are a way to remember his sister, who he lost in 1994 to a brain tumour, and his wife, who passed away in 2016 due to breast cancer.

Yamamoto states that he “keeps creating so that I will not forget memories of my family.” He considers the long hours he spends on each artwork as a way to help him to retain those memories. “I look for a convincing form of acceptance to come to terms with the parting of ways.”

On the last day of each exhibition, Yamamoto invites the public to help him destroy the artwork, gather up the piles of salt, and then return them to the sea. The cyclical nature of this act is inherently spiritual and references the cultural use of salt in Japanese traditions such as funerals. NR Magazine spoke to the artist about his practice.

I’ve noticed that you use a fine white seas salt to create your works, have you ever considered using other types of salt like pink rock salt which typically has larger crystals? 

I’ve only used it once in the past. In 2011, I used pink Himalayan rock salt in a large-scale solo exhibition in a museum. It was a work that looks like a Japanese rock garden. But one of the major reasons I use salt is its transparent whiteness and beauty as a crystal, so I think I will continue to use salt that looks white in the future.

Do you consider the process behind your work as a form of therapy that can help you work through and deal with the trauma of personal loss? 

The reason why I make art is to realise the farewell to the precious persons in a convincing way. I keep making art so that I don’t forget memories of those precious people.

“I see my work as ‘a mechanism to fight against the self-defence instinct of oblivion’.”

Salt has a particularly traditional and spiritual significance in Japanese culture, but also in many other cultures and practices around the world. What do you think it is about salt that makes it a globally significant and spiritual substance? 

Salt is a food necessary to support people’s lives. It is familiar but takes a considerable amount of time and effort to collect, which makes it both rare and essential. Another major advantage of salt is that food can be preserved and stored for a long time by salting. These are important functions of salt that support our life.

You have spoken about how you spend much of your time raising your daughter and that you want your work to look to the future. Do you involve your daughter in your art practice and does her view of the world offer you inspiration for your work? 

Basically, making art is a means to solve my own problems. But as she grew up, I sort of adopted changes in her will and mind and opened up opportunities to think about my work together with her. For example, one of the major reasons why I use blue as the underlying part of my work comes from the words my wife spoke before she died, but I asked my daughter about how bright and vivid the blue colour should be, and I decided to use the colour she chose for the work I am going to show this fall.

Both the process you use to create your works and then the returning of the salt to the sea when the installation is over, have an element of ritual to them. Do you think these acts could be considered a form of performance art? 

Certainly, there are performance elements in “public production” and “project to return to the sea”. However, it only looks like a performance as a result if you try to categorise it. It’s not my intention to establish it as a performance.

The patterns that make up your work are very organic in their form, is there a particular reason behind this? How do you plan out the designs?

The labyrinth-like complex shape was originally triggered by the winding form of the brain as my sister died of a brain tumour. And labyrinths have a meaning of rebirth. I began to draw the swirling works “Floating Garden” because the form of a vortex has a similar meaning to that of a labyrinth, mainly in East Asia.

What was the most challenging installation you worked on and why? How did you overcome these challenges? 

One of the most difficult works was a solo exhibition at a church in Cologne in 2010 in cooperation with MIKO SATO GALLERY. From 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., I worked more than 14 hours a day. Because I decided that the area originally planned was not enough to face the majestic space, it was necessary to take far more time than initially planned. With the help of the gallerist, the director, and many others, I managed to create a very satisfying work. The time I spent in Cologne is my treasure.

There is an ephemeral nature to both your completed artworks and the medium you use to create them. Do you think that nature is something that originally drew you to creating art in this way?

Since my sister and wife passed away at a young age, I always spend a finite time, permanently conscious of death. Even while I’m answering your question I am using my limited lifetime. There is no doubt that it is a very precious and limited time. Our lives, that we live here now, it is always wrapped up in ephemerality.

What advice would you give young creatives who want to create installations but perhaps don’t have the space or the resources to do so? 

After my wife died, I cancelled all my work to rebuild my life with my daughter. And I printed out hundreds of photos of my memories with my wife and put them on the wall of my room. That’s when I became suddenly aware that creating an installation and putting photos on the wall are equivalent to me.

My aim is to remember people who are precious to me, and I want to make sure that I never lose sight of the fact that creating installations with salt is just a means to get closer to that aim.

What projects are you working on at the moment and what plans do you have for the future? 

This year I am working on a new project. The Oku-Noto International Art Festival is a big challenge. Create huge installations in what was once a nursery. It is a plan to combine an area that uses a large amount of salt with an area drawn with paint. I’ll paint the walls, ceilings and floors of the nursery with the light blue colour that my daughter chose.

From next year onwards, I would like to realise exhibitions overseas again, for example in Germany, France and other countries.

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