Tension, breaking point moments, transformation and beings on their way to something else. These are reoccurring themes in my drawings. I like to think of my images as crime scenes with clues for the observer to figure out what happened, and what’s about to happen next. I would like to work more with these themes and create suggestive narratives within and between a series of drawings.
I work full-time at a design agency and draw in my spare time. Your residency would allow me dive into drawing in a, for me, unusual and inspiring environment. I think that would be very enriching and developing for my artistry and imagery.
My experience covers several years of art and design studies and professional practice within advertisement and design. I worked in projects with clients including universities, art institutes, Swedish Red Cross, Spotify and Google.
A dark cave and a rustle in the rushes. Someone flees the scene of a crime, or they just went out to get an ice cream in another dimension.
I like to think of my drawings as crime scenes with clues for the observer to figure out what happened, and what’s about to happen next. Only there might not be a perpetrator, and no single way to solve the puzzle.
I wish to lay the foundations for a sculptural and illustrational practice dealing with issues of the self meeting and making reality. To construct objects and spaces as doorways to contemplation where we are allowed to feel lost, lossy and longing.
During a residency I aim to explore the potential in joining my practices of sculpture and bookbinding into a coherent whole by letting three dimensional objects become two dimensional through photography and three dimensional again in the shape of handbound books. My hope is that this could bring my sculptural practice closer to a form of narration.
“Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.” – Wallace Stevens
Upon seeing an orchid fanned out like a tiny piece of firework or a bluebell so fragile and sorrowful in its´ stance, I can´t help but consider them deeply sentient beings.How perfectly they mirror the emotional passages of human life. Some with graceful humility, others with vibrant charm or crass sexuality.But then as soon as I stop to appreciate this, the next realization dawns upon me. Their time of bloom will soon be over.
These works are a celebration of the flora that is now in full bloom in Kofu.
public art / http://ana-gram.wixsite.com/insitu
studio practice / http://ana-gram.wixsite.com/emmaanna
writer, art producer
residency 2018 June
/
エマ・アナ
オーストラリア出身 コロンビア在住
ライター、アートプロデューサー
２０１８年６月滞在
My diverse professional and personal background has previously engaged me as a practitioner in communications/journalism, graphic design and architecture. For the past decade I have worked as an independent artist specialising in creating works for the public realm. I am a graduate of RMIT University’s Masters’ of Art (Art in Public Space) program and an ongoing contributor to the development of its academic program. My public artwork has been exhibited internationally, and won multiple awards in my native Australia. Most recently, I was the announced the winner of the 2017 Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture Public Art Design Concept Award.
I am currently living and working between Australia and Colombia, where I am
exploring research related to fractures / modulation and wounds. I have long held a fascination for Japanese aesthetics and political history. I am curious to explore the themes and forms recurrent in my current public practice in Japan via a series of ephemeral interventions, documentation and process work in June 2017.
As a public artist it is an important aspect of my practice to engage with local communities. I would therefore wish to present my research and work to the community via an informal artist presentation and an open studio event.
パブリックアーティストとして、ローカルの人々を引き込むことはアートの実践において重要であるため、オープンスタジオなどの場でローカルコミュニティーに対して自らの作品や研究について話したいと思っている。Translation: Mina Ino
/
街角の道路の裂け目や、路上の雑草は誰も気にしない謙虚なもの。
作家たちはこれらのいつも見慣れているものに新たな目で問いかけます。
マンホールのカバーや空っぽの掲示板に一時停止したり不思議に思うことがありますか？
路上をテーマに甲府で出会った二人のアーティストたちが二人展を開催します。
/
street 金継ぎ＠colombia
[On The Corner]
On the corner of the street where I’ve been staying in Kofu, there’s this fantastically textured noticeboard. Nothing’s been posted on it while I’ve been here.
Community noticeboards can be wonderful insights into people and place. Being here for a month, with just my two words of Japanese, it’s going to be hard to get too deep into what makes my temporary neighbours tick. I figured I might try and use this board to communicate with them in images and snippets, to see what happens, and if anyone responds. Let’s see if what I’ll add there over the next few weeks survives, or is added to by others.
My paintings explore memory and disorientation. Drawing from personal experience, my work explores the tension created by disrupting imagery, questioning non-objectivity and recognition. In my paintings and drawings, I use photographs as a jumping-off point to construct an imaginary space through form, colour, and texture. I use an exploratory approach, layering materials and images, allowing the process to guide itself. This journey evolves over time and I am always surprised by where it takes me.
Being in Kofu made me want to know, in a physical way, what it is like to live here. I wanted to explore the textures of the city – something that can be felt directly. After a long walk one morning, I decided to make charcoal rubbings of different surfaces. Like woodblock printing, these would be prints of stone and metal from the city. Back in the studio, I turned these prints into drawings, emphasizing gesture and movement by removing certain marks, and adding others with drawing materials. A sense of history and the “artist’s hand” is very important to me. As I worked, the dark charcoal dots left by raised surfaces became pixels that coalesced together and formed patterns and shapes, which reminded me of how digital images are formed.
Similarly, I took an interest in the weeds found on street corners and in crevices – humble plants that nobody pays any mind to. We don’t notice the things around us once we get used to them. Our daily life passes by without much attention paid to many mundane artifacts. Do manhole covers or dandelions deserve pause and wonder? In this digital age of constant information bombardment, it is our attention that the social media industry harvests. In 2017, people in Japan spent over four hours per day on the internet. These attention merchants want us to dedicate more and more time online. Where we put our attention shapes how we act – which directly impacts our world. It is an important choice that we make every day.
AIRY has hosted artists from all over the world and supported them on their works, exhibitions and everyday needs. AIRY staff noticed the importance of a map that shows places to get vegetarian or halal food and art supplies in Kofu city. This project “A Map for You” was started for this reason.
今、このプロジェクトに賛同してくださるお店を探しています。お店の情報は、私達の作成するGoogleマイマップ、“A Map for You”に掲載します。さらに地図（URL）は将来的に甲府駅周辺、各大学、飲食店、スーパーなどに置かせていただきます。
We have been researching shops, cafes and restaurants for the map. Their information will be on Google My Map “A Map for You”. You can find the URL of the map around Kofu Station, universities, cafes, restaurants and supermarkets.
国内外のアーティストが甲府・高砂湯を舞台に〈水〉と〈コミュニケーション〉をテーマに銭湯という空間を多角的に再考する2日間。
This exhibition explores the theme: Water and Communication, with the artwork in various mediums at the former bathhouse Takasagoyu.
/
この展覧会は、海外のアーティストと、県内を拠点に活動するアーティストとが、銭湯の二大要素である〈水〉と〈コミュニケーション〉を切り口に、絵画/音楽/ダンス/文字などのメディアを用いて、多角的に銭湯という空間を再考するコラボレーションである。また舞台となる「高砂湯」の歴史を紹介し、地域との文化交流を図る。
Bathers is a weave of overlapping and interconnecting visual narratives about people frequenting the Takasago-yu during the decades it was open to public. The work meditates on the function of the onsen as both a space for public interaction and for private relaxation.
Water Talks is an interactive audio work / instrument that uses Finnish onomatopoeic* phones imitating the sounds of water. It is an invitation to the exhibition visitors to play the tunes, to compose their own flow of water and to bring back the water sounds to Takasago-yu, where these sounds are no longer heard as it is closed from the public. The work is ongoing artistic research of the artist, studying the onomatopoeic qualities and differences in Finnish and Japanese language and the connections and translations between sound and image.
/
参加アーティスト紹介③
チョン・ホイ・イ｜Cheong Hoi I
Macau
mokuhanga
《Ms.Fuji in TAKASAGOYU》
I like meditation in bath, relaxing and focus only on the mind.
But being in a sento is totally a different experience, people gather together after work, friends come together after school, grandmom brings their daughters, etc. You will hear people laughing, kids playing, elderly teaching, talking and sharing. Suddenly, bathing is not a private activity, it is more like engaging with our daily life and our community. I want to portrait the same idea for this sento to keep on going.
I love meditation in bath, surrounded by people that you love.
*Hoi I is a former residency artist March 2018 who lives/works in Macau
I have been having an improvisation workshop in former Takasagoyu since March. There is no more hot water in the bath tub. Though it is a very dry space, we danced in reaction to the details of the old bathhouse like faucets, tiles, spots on the ceiling, mirrors, so on. In this exhibition, we will see the reborn Takasagoyu that is filled with “steam” and “sound” created by various artists. I am excited to see how our dancing body meets those elements and how we can share our body and sensation with people who gather in Takasagoyu. It will be a thrilling encounter.
A video work shot in “CAMPBASEL Revisited”, Basel, 2017. The recorded performance is ritualistic and dedicated to everyday life related to site-specific water (In the video, a performer scoops water from Rhine river and offers the water to an installation modeled after Shinto decoration). It’s being shown for the first time in public.
This project is searching for waterfronts and transferring. Looking for waterfronts during traveling and repeating to soak papers into the water and dry. No drawing, No creating anything. This is simply records of traveling to seeking Oasis. It is an act as calling to art, and it is also an artwork itself. I long for water because it constantly changes shape and being fluidly without staying in one place.
/
【高砂湯クロニクル】
コーディネーター神田裕子によるインタビューを元に「高砂湯クロニクル」を展示します。
The meaning of Takasagoyu Chronicle, The owner Fukuoka Family a long term history.
高砂湯の９０年に渡る長い歴史を辿るとき、現オーナー福岡二三子さん（現在９６歳）が前職である増冨・天使園で戦争孤児たちの養護に当たった時代は外せません。
父池田九郎氏が戦後設立した「瑞牆山少年の町天使園」を献身的に運営して「ふみこ先生」と慕われました。
その後しばらくして縁あり甲府の高砂湯へ入った二三子さん、多くの人に安らぎを与えた銭湯は昨年閉業しましたが、今でも天使園時代の教え子さんたちが甲府を訪ねてくることを楽しみにしています。
参考：山梨日日新聞１９９２年（平成４年）記事
/
①へイッキ・ロンッコ｜《バスタイム》
Heikki Rönkkö (Finland)｜Bathtime
この作品は水と熱の視覚的な物語です。 Bathtime is a visual narrative of water and heat.
Water Talks is an interactive audio work / instrument that uses Finnish onomatopoeic* phones imitating the sounds of water. It is an invitation to the exhibition visitors to play the tunes, to compose their own flow of water and to bring back the water sounds to Takasagoyu, where these sounds are no longer heard as it is closed from the public. The work is ongoing artistic research of the artist, studying the onomatopoeic qualities and differences in Finnish and Japanese language and the connections and translations between sound and image.
I like meditation in bath, relaxing and focus only on the mind. But being in a sento is totally a different experience, people gather together after work, friends come together after school, grandmom brings their daughters, etc. You will hear people laughing, kids playing, elderly teaching, talking and sharing. Suddenly, bathing is not a private activity, it is more like engaging with our daily life and our community. I want to portrait the same idea for this sento to keep on going. I love meditation in bath, surrounding by people that you love.
/
④アンバー・アブレット｜《銭湯に行くとき、私は髪をスカーフで巻く》
翻訳：三森なぎさ 朗読：井野美奈
Amber Ablett (Norway) ｜When I go to the sento, I wrap my hair in a scarf
A sound, text and image work where the audience are invited to sit in front of the mirrors in the sento to read and listen to a text while looking at themselves. Through this work, Amber is trying to open up questions of the body, self-identifying and the way in which we be together. From her position as a female, British, Irish, Trinidadian artist at home in Norway, Ablett seeks to engage with wider contemporary social questions of place, nationality, identity and language. Her work investigates whether, if our identity and language are both constructed and controlled by the society around us, can speaking be a route to revealing and understanding who we are?
/
⑤中楯純｜Jun Nakadate
sound performance《yukue》
/
⑥片瀬あや｜Aya Katase
improvisation performance with the group ‘Water Drops’
A video work shot in “CAMPBASEL Revisited”, Basel, 2017 (Participated as a member of AIRY). The recorded performance is ritualistic and dedicated to everyday life related to site-specific water (In the video, a performer scoops water from Rhine river and offers the water to an installation modeled after Shinto decoration). It’s being shown for the first time in public.
This project is searching for waterfronts and transferring. Looking for waterfronts during traveling and repeating to soak papers into the water and dry. No drawing, No creating anything. This is simply records of traveling to seeking Oasis. It is an act as calling to art, and it is also an artwork itself. I long for water because it constantly changes shape and being fluidly without staying in one place.
Performance, text, conversation, research, sound, video
residency May 2018
/
アンバー・アブレット
ノルウェイ
パフォーマンス、テキスト、会話、リサーチ、音、ビデオ
２０１８年５月滞在
/
Amber Ablett works with conversation, research, performance and text, with a step away from the spectacle, rather concentrating on the long term ponderings that art can introduce. From her position as a female, British, Irish, Trinidadian artist at home in Norway, Ablett seeks to engage with wider contemporary social questions of place, nationality, identity and language. Her work investigates whether, if our identity and language are both constructed and controlled by the society around us, can speaking be a route to revealing and understanding who we are?
Ablett’s work takes the form of long term investigations into the way we communicate and relate to language, shared with audiences through sounds and video installations and performance events. There is a strong emphasis on the discussions that art works can provoke outside of the gallery space.
In Bergen, I run a small café within an art center, with an aim to continue the dialogue around the exhibitions shown in the main gallery space. Rather than in a lecture or in a seminar, we see the best place to talk about art to be with friends over food or drinks, and we bring this ideology to the way that we run the café.
I would like to hold a similar one-off event at AIRY, where we can use the dinner table and food as an informal and horizontal environment to talk. Basing an artist presentation over a meal rather than as a formal presentation, I would hope to leave room for talking and discussion so that I am also learning from those around me.
作家はノルウェーのベルゲンでアートセンター内にある小さなカフェを運営している。目的はギャラリースペースの展示についての会話をそこで続けてもらうことにある。教えたり、セミナーを開いたりすることというよりいう信念がある。甲府の滞在においても、食べ物を囲んで日常的で形式ばらない、だれもが横並びで平等に話せるような会を開きたいと思っている。一方的なフォーマルなプレゼンテーションではなく、議論や会話が生まれ、その中から学びを得られるようなものにしたい。translation: Mina Ino
/
AUDIO SCRIPT FOR PERSON A:
When I go to the sento I wrap my hair in a scarf.
When I shower,
go out in the rain,
the sauna.
I keep my head above water when I swim.
I never jump in.
I wash my hair once a week,
when I am alone, I dry it.
Pull out the curls.
私は銭湯に行くときスカーフで髪を包む
シャワーを浴びるときは
外で雨にあたり、サウナにゆく
私が泳ぐとき顔は水面からあげておく
飛び込んだりはしない
髪を洗うのは週に一度
一人になって、髪を乾かす
くせっ毛を引っ張りながら
(Take the piece of paper from the person next to you. Say thank you.
When you have finished reading it, give it back to them.
Pick up the middle piece of paper in front of you.
When you have finished reading it, give it to the person next to you).
Born and raised in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, my dad is Dutch, my mother Indonesian. Currently studying Interactive Media Design at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, Netherlands. I’m in Japan, as an artist and intern to explore self and surroundings.
I often use my multi-cultural influences in my work. Considering myself to be a juxtaposition of nonconforming conservative, I muse over identity, heritage and religion. In recent works, I play with notions of perspective, challenging norms with the goal to see without stigma, and help to broaden viewers frame of reference.
サウジアラビア、リアドに生まれ育つ。父はオランダ人、母はインドネシア人。
現在は、オランダ・ハーグにある国立美術学校(Royal Academy of Arts)にて、双方向メディアデザインを学ぶ。作家は、アーティストそしてインターンとして、自分自身と取り巻く周りの環境を探求するために日本に滞在している。
My first hours alone in Japan I chose to distract myself by looking for a book to read, to dive into a story that wasn’t my own. After a pace up and down the aisles I realize there are no English books. Of course, what did I expect? I’m in Japan. I leave the shop feeling even more alienated. But that’s my privilege, I expect there to be something for me to understand, which isn’t always given. Which is how I feel in love with Japan. It reminded me of my Innocence.
Reminded me that not I don’t understand everything, that sometimes things are out of my control, that things don’t always conform to my comfort.
So, I tribute my painting to those who have taught me, given me experiences and changed my point of view during my stay in Japan.
I work with video, sound, photography, text and matter. My works are usually spatial installations. An important part of my work is creating the content of the work together with people from different positions and backgrounds. I’m interested in the relationship between sense of sight and other senses as well as translations between visual world and language.
I have a project that I would like produce during the residency that would include interaction with the local community and people from different age groups. I will present the project idea here shortly.
During the residency I will do research and produce a new work that is connected to Japanese language and its onomatopoeic qualities. I’m interested in onomatopoeia and the differences in it within different languages even when the underlying sound which the onomatopoeia is imitating is roughly the same in each place. I’m interested to discover if onomatopoeia can tell something about a certain culture through the use of sound.
I have started to do research about the onomatopoeic qualities in Finnish language and especially onomatopoeia connected to sounds of nature. I find there are some cultural similarities between Japan and Finland and I think both of the cultures have a strong connection to water. That is why I want to concentrate on collecting onomatopoeic words connected to water both in Japanese and Finnish languages. I’m looking for the similarities and differences between them and what kind of connections and feelings the words can carry depending on your knowledge of the language.
During the residency I will collect Japanese onomatopoeic sounds connected to the sounds of water. I will record different persons from different ages performing the sounds. I will then combine them with the Finnish onomatopoeic sounds I have recorded before the residency. The final outcome of the work will be a spatial installation, where the different sound sources will create a spatial flow of onomatopoeic sounds of water mixing the two languages together.
このワークショップは、あらゆる年齢の人々に開放されています。
*オノマトペ擬音語は、それが描写する音を模倣、類似または示唆する単語
—
artist:Mari Mäkiö
schedule:10:00-11:00 sun 4/22
venue:Takasagoyu (former public bath)2-16-10 Asahi, Kofu city
class size:10 people, deadline 4/20
fee:￥400 former onsen rate
application:Accepting name and contact address via DM
—
In the workshop Tip-Tip, Plop-Plop – In Search of Finnish Onomatopoeia we will listen to Finnish onomatopoeic* sounds imitating the sounds of water performed by Finnish people. While listening we will think about the feelings and images they evoke and try to draw and paint them on paper. At the end of the workshop we will go through the results discussing the images evoked by the sounds and think about the differences and similarities between Finnish and Japanese language and culture. The workshop is part of the artistic research of artist Mari Mäkiö and the results of the workshop will act as an inspiration for her sound installation that will be presented at an exhibition at Takasago-Yu Onsen at the end of May. The workshop is open to people of all ages.
*Onomatopoeic is a word that imitates, resembles or suggests the sound that it describes.
I am a comic book artist rooted in the Finnish contemporary comics scene, which is characterized by artist-led creative freedom, DIY mentality and aversion to easy categorization.
My works are narratively and structurally experimental silent explorations of the human condition. They deal with wide societal and philosophical themes through apparently stereotypical and simplified characters and exaggerated conflict-based dramaturgy, somewhere between silliness and profundity.
This “existential slapstick” utilizes as well as questions various orthodox forms and conventions of the (western) comics art form, all the while aiming for visual language and narrative content unbound by tradition or prejudice.
Bathers is a weave of overlapping and interconnecting visual narratives about people frequenting the Takasago-yu during the decades it was open to public. The work meditates on the function of the onsen as both a space for public interaction and for private relaxation.
