London based contemporary Japanese artists and London-Tokyo digital projects present new works at the Pump House Gallery.
London based contemporary Japanese artists and London-Tokyo digital
projects present new works at the Pump House Gallery from January 11 to
March 3 2002 as part of the Japan 2001 celebrations.
Hiroko Nakao received an MA in Fine Art from the RCA in 2000. Since then
she has exhibited her elaborately layered collaged paintings and
installation works at Pump House Gallery, in the new project space at
Victoria Miro Gallery, Snow Gallery and the 2001 Basel Artfair. Her work
incorporates fabric, stitching, lace, paint, butterflies and dolls in a
world of ornate pink theatre. Before studying as an artist, Nakao
studied fashion design in Tokyo and her association with clothes and
making is clearly felt in her work. Nakao often incorporates herself in
her work, either in images as a strange flying insect or in live
performance when she wears opulent costumes, turning her body into the
canvas. Nakao now lives and works in London.
Masakatsu Kondo's exquisitely detailed landscape paintings straddle both
traditional and contemporary realms. 'These pictures are not photoreal
but hyperreal, the products of a highly selective process of editing and
amplification aimed at jolting us out of habitual ways of looking'.
Kondo does not present a naturalistic view of the organic world but
rather the vision we are dealt in magazines and calendars. From these
sources, the artist copies, traces and expands to create idealised
landscapes resembling digitally manipulated scenes. Kondo also looks
back to the bold compositions and colours of Japanese master Hokusai.
Mountains are a recurring symbol, seen by the artist both east and west
of his childhood home in Ngoya. He has recently exhibited work at
Zwemmer Gallery London, Turnpike in Leeds and Oriel Mostyn.
Kazuko Takahashi's series of photographic portraits are of Japanese
women living in the UK. Bedecked in their exquisite and immaculate
kimonos, the women stand alone framed by their traditional British homes
and surrounded by a crossover of western and eastern furniture and
momentoes. The women are entirely authentic, wearing their own kimonos
and photographed in their own homes, yet they are strangely dislocated
from their surroundings. Takahashi studied photography at the Surrey
Institute of Art and Design, graduating in 2000. Born in Hiroshima in
1970, she now lives and works in the UK.
Urban Feedback present engaging interactive media experiences that
captures and relay a sense of the experience, form and structure of
Tokyo through the relationship between time-based media and the
subtleties of interaction. London Tokyo is inspired by the chaotic
energy of the two cities. Fragments from street sounds, texts and films
are fused together forming a dynamic reactive collage. Different
juxtapositions of media are created, reflecting atmospheric journeys
through streets and city spaces with the chaos of overheard
conversations, texts, sounds, symbolic and subliminal imagery. Tokyo
Nomad is a reactive environment of animations and films which, over
time, reveals ambient views and impressions of Tokyo. It forms a
backdrop, window or view of Tokyo, the city you inhabit, or the city you
dream of visiting. Urban Feedback are London-based designers Giles
Rollestone and Kathryn Best.
a.. For information about the artists, or about events and talks
accompanying the exhibition, contact Kieren Reed on 020 7350 0523.
b.. SCRAMBLE, a japanese artists' film night at the gallery curated by
Ken Kondo takes place from 5.30-7pm on Saturday 23 February 2002.
c.. Gallery open Wednesday - Sunday 11am-5pm (Saturdays 11am -4pm)
d.. Admission Free
japan four is sponsored by Japan 2001, Asahi and Apple.
pump house gallery is part of Wandsworth Borough Council.
* Image by Hiroko Nakao, Untitled 2001
pump house gallery
battersea park sw11 4nj - London
t. 02073500523