FABRICA GALLERY SERVES UP TWO HEALTHY HELPINGS OF JAPANESE
By Doug Devaney
19/04/2004
Photo: Surface of the Lake by Teruyoshi Yoshida. Photo by Doug Devaney.
Doug Devaney crosses town and cultures to investigate Fabrica's latest offering.
East meets West for the third time this year as the last instalment of the Through The Surface project visits Brighton’s Fabrica Gallery until May 26. The purpose-built exhibition features individual pieces by textile artists Teruyoshi Yoshida and Claire Barber.
For centuries, Japanese culture has been something of a closed book to Western eyes. What they made of us is also anyone’s guess.
However, with the increase in Manga influences on anything from children’s TV to Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, and with the Tokyo youth of Lost In Translation clearly becoming more westernised, both cultures seem to be reaching some kind of understanding.
Photo: Untitled work by Claire Barber. Photo by Doug Devaney.
That’s where Through The Surface comes in, with 14
Japanese and British textile artists sharing ideas and techniques. If only it were as simple as that.
"It was very interesting how the Japanese artists were, in that they insisted the British artist experienced Japan," points out Lesley Millar of the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, speaking on one of the four video displays accompanying the exhibits.
It seems that it was hugely important that the British artists understood some of the culture they were living in before trying to interpret it. Certainly, that appears to be the case with Claire Barber who spent two weeks in a Japanese household. "It was very interesting," she says.
Photo: Surface of the Lake by Teruyoshi Yoshida. Photo by Doug Devaney.
No doubt it was fascinating, but what of the work? Yoshida’s installation, also known as Surface of the Lake is a stunning combination of gold leaf and cotton that resembles an alien landscape garden.
Using traditional silk-screen methods, of the kind used to make kimonos, this apparently delicate work has in fact been a feature of exhibitions for the last 20 years.
Yoshida believes it is not just looking at an object that helps us to understand art, it is also a matter for the body. So it is that visitors to the gallery become part of the installation itself.
As they move around it, the draft they create causes the gold leaf to lift up slightly, like shiny butterflies trying to leave the ground.
Photo: Claire Barber in her studio. Courtesy of Fabrica.
This mixture of familiar and foreign also informs Claire Barber’s untitled work for the gallery. At first we seem to have stumbled onto an extra-terrestrial game of chess, but on closer look there are silhouettes of garden gates clearly visible on the talcum powder-covered floor.
Suddenly we are no longer strangers in a strange land, it’s just that we have to look harder for things to be revealed. Even the 'chess-pieces' turn out to be tea cups covered in tent material.
"I think that, in Japan, they’re quite reserved and there’s a lot of social barriers," explains Chloe Hoare, a spokesperson for the gallery.
"[Claire] spoke about Geisha girls: when they’re training to be Geisha girls they cover themselves up with this make-up and they leave a little bit of a gap at the back of their necks which is really supposed to be sensual.
"I think that’s where she got the idea of the gates and the talcum powder. It’s all about covering up and being enclosed."
Photo: Untitled work by Claire Barber. Photo by Doug Devaney.
To add a couple of cherries to this cultural cake, two musical pieces have been commissioned for the Fabrica exhibition. This time, contrast seems to be the order of the day.
Edward Dudley Hughes is composing a contemporary classical piece for flute, harp, strings and tape called Memory of Colours, which has its premiere on May 8.
Meanwhile, from a rather different musical hemisphere, comes Pendle Poucher (aka idmonster). With two laptops, one speaker system and a whole lot of improvisation, Pendle intends to explore the threshold between difficult listening and pleasurable listening.
What these two clashing musical styles have in common is also up for debate with a talk at Fabrica on May 13.
Although this is the last of the three Through The Surface exhibitions, the project itself is far from over. The exhibitions will be touring various venues in this country throughout the rest of 2004, then moving on to tour Japan in 2005.
