Gutai meets Western Australia a Friendship - Coming in May at 2 Dogs Art Space - Akashi

Sadaharu Horio's New Year Ram at Peter Davidson's Western Australian Landscapes at the Horikawa Gallery in Kobe 2015

Hyogo Prefecture and Western Australia are sister states and for some time now artists from each region have been performing, exhibiting and engaging each other and this appears to be ongoing.

It doesn't matter whether Gutai and Western Australian artists view each others aesthetic ideas at a distance, either from Perth or Kobe in Japan. What is important from these aforementioned encounters between the artists is there appears to be a growing spirit of collaboration.

2006 Sadaharu Horio' performance at a Gallery in China Town and talking with Tomoko Yamada many thanks for Tomoko for her generous translation

The origins of the relationship between Gutai and Western Australia most likely go back to 2006 with a meeting between myself  with Tomoko Yamada (who translated the discussion) at Sadaharu Horio’s performance in a China Town Gallery in Kobe, (as Horio is a original Gutai member). 

Tomoko Yamada knew of Horio because of his canteen installation at the local Kobe shipyards that they both worked in, so she struck up a conversation with him, that was my introduction to Gutai, before that he had never heard of them but it now appears to have become something special  to Western Australians. 

Chiyu Uemae at Gallery Shimada 2006

The next introduction was to another Gutai member was Chiyu Uemae at a major exhibition of his at Gallery Shimada and Uemae's painting was important to him, especially his surface qualities and on the same night Horio was doing a performance, so it was a very rich introductio for him to see such first class artists and there artworks/performances in one night.

A Piece of Horio's performance at Gallery Shimada October 2006

The performance consisted of many sheets of A4 paper been place in rows on the ground floor and then being painted from the floor above the gallery through Horio dipping the elastic material with ball or sock at the bottom  into paint and bouncing it onto the paper (as Davidson remembers)

In 2012 Diokno Pasilin, Martine Heine, Monique Tippett, Pippa Tandy, David Bromfield, Patrizia Tonello Janis Nedela and  Peter Davidson this was a well received exhibition and it was when Horio meet Martin Heine two very good performance artists. 

Horio and Martin got on well even with the language translation difficulties so much so that a performance was organised for both of them at Atelier 21 (above invite) which was a highly successful night. Horio in conversation he told me that Martin was a world class performance artist.

The successful performance night between Horio and Martin can be seen on these links:

http://www.martin-heine.com/Art_Performance-folder/Japan%20Horio%20html/19%20horio%20&%20martin.html

You tube 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJk_e-fIclw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKl4dbVfRAA&spfreload=5

Martin Heine and Tomoko Yamada putting Pippa Tandy's photographs up at Gallery Horikawa Kobe 2012

David Bromfield and Martin Heine discussing the hanging of the artwork at Gallery Horikawa Kobe 2012

ATARIMAENOKOTO「BASHO TO KODOMO」 あたりまえのこと「場所と子供」

Osaka

adding coloured traces to Horio's performance

The ongoing engagement between Horio and the Western Australia's has continued through small and large galleries as evidenced in the above visit to Cynthia Ellis's solo exhibition and below with his works in the very successful  Harmony and Peace exhibition at Gallery Opera Labo Nishi Ku Kobe.

Gallery Opera Labo

Presents

Harmony and Peace exhibition

by artists from

Japan and Western Australia

Masters Japan

Unknown sumi e wall hanging early 18^th Centaury

Ando Hiroshigie 1853 Woodblock Print, title; Famous Places in the Sixty add Provinces - Shimofusa Choishi no Hama (beach of Choshi)*

Masters Australia

Frank Norton (1916 -1983) Marine artist/official war artist*

Mac Betts (1932 – 2010) Landscape artist*

Martin Heine (1957 – 2014) Western Australian/ German*

 

Contemporary

Artists

Japan

Chiyu Uemae*

Ryoko Kumakura*

Sadaharu Horio

Shu TakaHashi*

  

The Wild Swans Art Group

Western Australia

Caspar Fairhall

Chelle Bourne

Cynthia Ellis

Connie Petrillo

Diokno Pasilan

Duncan Mckay

John Cullinane

Kevin Robertson

Lynne Norton

Michael Doherty

Peter Davidson

link to the Wild Swans Art Group from Western Australia

http://thewildswanartsgroup.blogspot.jp/

To Tomoko many thanks to them and how they've generously give there time to make these unique exhibitions over the last decade to come to fruition. Without Tomoko the translation of complex ideas may never have been communicated so well and my friends for helping me find Horio's performances around Kobe and Kyoto otherwise one may have never arrived.

Also to the many Gallerist/ Curators  who have generously given there advise it has been appreciated. 

The Next Exhibition

Yujo - A Friendship
 Gutai meets Western Australian Artists 
at 
2 Dogs Art Space Akashi 
May 2017 
exact dates to be announced

Gutai artists

Chiyu Uemae

Sadaharu Horio

http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/gutai/data/manifesto.html

The Wild Swans Art Group 
from 
Western Australia

Caspar Fairhall

Chelle Bourne

Cynthia Ellis

Connie Petrillo

Diokno Pasilan

Duncan Mckay

John Cullinane

Kevin Robertson

Lynne Norton

Michael Doherty

Peter Davidson

other artists from 

Hyogo Prefecture and Western Australia (Sister States) that will be on exhibit 

Western Australia 

Ron Nyisztor

Shelly Cowper

 Melissa McDougall
Pippa Tandy 

Five women artists from Western Australia

Title: Night Passage

Artist: Shelly Cowper

Etching on Paper

Gwen John's art, in its quietude and its subtle colour relationships, stands in contrast to her brother's far more vivid and assertive work. Though she was once overshadowed by her popular brother, critical opinion now tends to view Gwen as the more talented of the two.^[42] Augustus himself had predicted this reversal, saying "In 50 years' time I will be known as the brother of Gwen John

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwen_John

I have always liked the English Artist Gwen Johns a stunning painter and the aforementioned quotes for me is true but now there is another group of women moving out of their comfort zone and now exhibiting in Japan  (like Gwen Johns went to Paris) and risk in life and art is necessary its seems to learn and create. 

Audience 2 Dogs Art Space

Currently on show at 2 Dogs Art Space, Akashi - Japan there are five Western Australian Women Artists being Pippa Tandy Fine Art Photographer, Chelle Bourne painter,  Connie Petrillo artist/ curator,  Shelley Cowper printmaker, Lynne Norton painter/printmaker, Cynthia Ellis Painter. 

This current exhibition by these aforementioned artists from Western Australia reveals a strong commitment to praxis to theory, these images are not just decorative but resonate a passion that only comes from a long and sustained period in studio work that resolves particular ideas that they have discovered within there chosen motifs. 

Getting the artworks ready

For example, for Shelley Cowper its the sailing she did around Australia in a yacht and being on night watch, for Connie Petrillo it is the relationship between the female and societal memories, Chelle Bourne it's the historical relationship of the delicate needle work designs and textures that her grandmother used to do, Pippa Tandy lives and breathes with her camera, its now an extension of her being and she shoots motifs almost spontaneously, Cynthia Ellis its about paint and Lynne Norton's prints  are from her observations  at opera, akin to Degas.

 Many thanks to the artists for participating all the way from Western Australia 

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year from 2 Dogs Art Space

To all our supporters out there Merry Christmas and Happy News Year for 2017 

take care and look after yourselves 

SEE YOU NEXT YEAR.

Works in Progress Paul Humphris from London

Paul Humphris with artworks in progress

Paul Humphris current praxis is about the neon remembrances of living and working in Japan, whilst walking through the endless shopping arcades of the Kansai region. If you've been through these unending mazes of shopping arcades in the cities of Japan, you will more than likely know what the neon, fluorescent sales signs are about, with the constant shop lights flickering omnipresently day and night, it  is truly overwhelming to one senses at times.

Within Humphris’s praxis there is the usage of neon pens that one can buy at many of the shops that dot the arcades, they’re not overly expensive, nor is the paper and this tends to escalate the sensation of the cheap purchases one can make from countless shopping forays into the oversupply of cheap goods.

Interestingly, Humphris creates these artworks in silence back in Britain, he creates an almost meditative praxis within his studio, to bring the remembrances experienced in Japan as clearly as he can into coloured textural traces on paper and this is curious because it has being shown the silence may well  replenish and enlarge the brain in this article by Carolyn Gregoire  Senior Writer, The Huffington Post link to article

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/silence-brain-benefits_us_56d83967e4b0000de4037004

This is a good exhibition by Humphris and one looks forward to what he returns from London with the next time he comes to Japan.

The discovery of the human "inner GPS" and maybe its partial relationship to painting/drawing.

Sake cups and small bottle 

Drawing 

by 

Peter Davidson 2016

The aim:
To draw the motif strictly as observed from its public surfaces 
(meaning only what the eye can see)

Over the many decades of one's drawing studio praxis there has been a focus on constructing images from the public surfaces of a chosen motif, just like the above sake cups with the influence of delay (the period between the initial drawing beginnings of the image to the final end common standpoint, being the completed artwork) and human optical flux. 

Whilst drawing from the motifs public surfaces in the studio, the realization that these small drawn pencil markings or traces, were almost as if one was using a internal navigating system, going back and forth across the given picture plane from optical analysis then externalizing it in real time as an artistic mark,  this methodology was gleaned from the British artist William Coldstream who was Head of the Slade School of Art, University of London in the sixties and seventies.

These drawing and painting praxis traces which I might call aesthetic navigation marks have been going on for  three decades.  More particularliy these aestethic navigational traces began in1986 after reading a book published by the Tate called; The Hard Won image with Coldstream's painting in it titled; Reclining Nude 1976 this image  and his artistic praxis  idea of measured exactitude in painting and drawing has continued to nag my curiousity. On The Tate Galleries website there is  good coverage of Coldstream's painting ideas here;

Coldstream had employed a rigorous measuring method since his return to painting in 1937. The small vertical and horizontal marks, with which he marked the relative size and position of different elements, began to perform a denotative role in such wartime portraits as that of Havildar Ajmer Singh (Tate N05687). They became increasingly dominant in his subsequent work and could be said to reach a climax in Reclining Nude, 1974-6. The artist described the practice to Sylvester as ‘the old idea: you look at what you’re painting and you hold your pencil or brush out in the ... picture plane ... your arm straight out and the brush up vertically and you mark off with one eye shut’.^[9] He acknowledged the various flaws in the system: the discrepancy between the flat picture plane and the three-dimensional world and the difference between viewing the world with one eye and the painting with two. However, Coldstream was not ‘in the least discontented with this nucleus of unreason in his style’,^[10] and he, himself, described his measuring processes as ‘simply rituals and methods of somehow getting one going’.^[11]

Now it may be reasonably true to say that Coldstream’s intentionality's of studio praxis in lead pencil or oil traces, on canvas or paper did not equal his utterances by his own admission. 

Nonetheless, recent scientific discoveries being the human "inner GPS" by John O’Keefe May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser (Mapping the brain’s GPS system has earned three neuroscientists the 2014 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. John O’Keefe of University College London shares the prize with husband-and-wife duo May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim) caught my attention and it is my belief that Coldstream, like myself were both very interested in unity and the diversity of this kind of painting/drawing navigational/mapping from the optics. But unlike Coldstream, one has had the luxury of knowing partially how the inner GPS works, whereas he didn’t, so it was very hard for him to articulate a formal theory, hard for me to actually!

Not being a medical scientist of any sort this is just a hunch that Coldstream like myself was interested in how this human navigational mapping or "inner GPS" through optics reveals itself within his studio praxis in painting/drawing with its subsequent delay in transferral from observation onto canvas or paper. 

Whether the human "inner GPS" effects the artist praxis is true or not, I don’t know but looking at Coldstream's praxis over fifty years and mine going on thirty years, there appears on the face of it,  to be some relationship one might suggest between painting/drawing and the artist's "inner GPS" but then again I might be completely wrong.

Tate Gallery Coldstream Link;
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/coldstream-reclining-nude-t02079/text-catalogue-entry

The human inner GPS
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/neuroscientists-garner-nobel-discovering-brain%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98inner-gps%E2%80%99

Michael Doherty - Two Dogs Art Space - Akashi - Japan

Painting by Michael Doherty

There is no doubt the response to the Western Australian artist Michael Doherty's  painting in Japan has been very positive and this is unusual because Kobe is within the Japanese Aesthetic Golden Triangle so it's a hard place to impress and this he has done.

Western Australia is Hyogo's Prefecture sister state and in as much as it is far away, it is not that isolated but it is when it comes to viewing artworks, as the Internet doesn't give you the full story, for there is scale, dimensions and the impact of the art object just to name a few. But nonetheless, exhibitions such as Dohertys that are now coming out of Western Australia are giving the Japanese audiences a live chance to experience one artist's idiosyncratic memory, and what interests him paint in that faraway terrain.

Doherty's painting are strange but odd is good that's for sure for nowadays a lot of art appears to a brand label, almost an expected taste when one visits the gallery but when viewing his images that supposed art flavour is usually shattered by the weird accumulations of objects, he desires to render in oils and that's a great system within studio praxis to achieve, being the continued search for new motifs to paint either internally or externally from ones memory.

At times when viewing Michael's painting the memory of the English romantic painter John Martin resonates within one's memory, due to the phantasmagorical subject matter he desired to paint, and it seems not dissimilar at times to some of Doherty's painting as seen below in John Martins illustration Paradise Lost. Book 3, line 365 (The Court of the Gods) London c 1827.

Doherty is fast becoming one of Western Australia's most original painters that is now getting recognised internationally and deservedly so, 2 Dogs Art Space has pleasure in bringing this current series of paintings to Japan.

Link to John Martin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_(painter)

Diokno Pasilan Still Life Drawing Project

Diokno Pasilan's Still life

Motif

Image courtesy of the artist 

Some of Diokno Pasilan's memories originate from his encounters of living in the Philippines and Australia, both countries are islands, one a lot bigger than the other but nonetheless sailing boats, ships and small water craft have played a large part within their histories for survival.

The above still life by Pasilan looks playful, almost like someone is having fun by stacking the boats up to see what they might look like as a shape, the audience who gaze upon it may liken it to ships out of water, it appears at this point the artist's human curiosity starts to kick in for where does the motif start, which boat is subtracted or added to the motif's form and how does he articulate this within studio praxis. 

Why does memory perform such strange tasks of arranging what might be considered an odd array of different coloured boats and why does Pasilan draw in charcoal,  eliminating the colour, reducing the number of boat shapes to an almost skeletal form, like a fish back bone without a head or tail.

Image courtesy of the artist 

One doesn't think artists can have all the answers of their artworks, for somethings artist's create contain a certain mystery in the way they manifest themselves, from human remembrances into a drawing.  And all the text in the world isn't going to adequately explain why Pasilan has created such an image but it now floats on the Internet for the audiences engage with their memories of ships sailing through the passages of time, oscillating down ones nervous system colliding with other remembrances through human delay.

One of the nice traits of Pasilan's drawing the audience is free to engage as he has created craft (charcoal drawing) to set themselves free to travel their own oceans of memory. And in a way the drawing above by Pasilan in its engagement with the spectator reminds me of  a statement by the American Artist Dan Graham "my art is for the people" and so is Doiknos it seems.