So it’s that time of the year. the KAIR exhibition is upon us and everyone looks sleepy.  Art is the flavour of the month (or perhaps not); I want a taste and I’ve made some weird cut-out small paintings.
They are tests for potential larger versions (or perhaps alternatives).  I felt inspired by possessions (clutter), storage, emptiness, fear, onsen, depopulation, myths and 怪.  I’m not entirely happy with these; of course, they are prototypes, rough, ugly, straightforward.
It’s Baby Steps at the moment.

I’m not sure what they mean or what they are trying to say, yet.

I start by painting the background.  Usually the background is a squalid room in a traditional Japanese style.  Then I simply stick cut-out objects onto these backgrounds.  I don’t believe it’s a particularly exciting technique but I find it satisfying mainly because it’s a new way for me to add layers to a painting.  I was aiming for a sort of visual richness found in photocopied paper prints of scanned analogue photographs (visual attrition?).  Why?  I became obsessed with a website featuring foreclosed property for auction.  The quality and style of the images on the website (digitally degraded, emotionally vacant, purely functional, drab, boring) intrigued me and I liked to imagine the hidden narrative behind the pictures.  Not only was there a visual richness to the images, I felt they had a narrative richness too.

I’ve mounted the small paintings in the washroom area of Shimobun Atelier (Old Shoe Factory).  It’s an interesting room, functional but now defunct, clean, bright, vacant, with dead insects.

I’m not sure how long this will be up.  It’s not really an exhibition, it’s more of an accident of work-in-progress.  I guess I’m just riding the wave that is the Kamiyama Artist in Residence!