Group show at Maronie Gallery, Kyoto ギャラリーマロニエで「外から来た人たち」

It's been a crazy few weeks and amidst all of it, my two fellow Textiles Master's students and I managed to pull off a group show at Kyoto's Gallery Maronie. Every year the textiles department provides funds for us to hold an exhibition, both as a chance to show our work and as a part of our assesment. I suspect they also want us to experience the "character-building" process of staging a group exhibition. 

先月は制作とオーストラリアから遊びに来た家族と出掛けたりしたため忙しかった…のに、7月22-27日三人展もなんとか無事に開きました！京都のギャラリーマロニエで大学院染織コースの同級生の二人と展示しました。毎年、大学の研究室が展覧会用のお金を出してくれます。作品を公表するチャンスでもあるけど、グループ展を開く大変さも体験させようとしていると思います。

Since none of the three of us currently in the graduate textiles program are from Kyoto, we decided to use that as our selling point. We are from Hokkaido, Australia and China and whilst each of us are making dyed artwork, we each of course have a different style. 

大学院染織コースにいる三人とも京都人じゃないから(北海道、オーストラリア、中国出身です)、それをテーマにして、「外から来た人たち」というタイトルを付けることにしました。

The term "gaikokijin" or "gaijin" in Japanese is sometimes used with undertones of discrimination so I don't really like using it. However we decided to call our exhibition "Soto kara kita hitotachi" which in Japanese means "people who came from outside". For me, this was not meant to be a kind of self-defamation but rather to point out (almost with a touch of sticking it to the man...or the professors) that we all came together from different backgrounds and places and we too have valid ideas and expressions to share. 

「外人」や「外国人」は時々差別の意味を含めて使われている言葉なので、あんまり好きではないですが、ここで「外から来たのに大切な表現がある」という事実を強調したかったので、こういう風なタイトルにしました。

So let me share with you some images from the exhibition all set up. 

さて、会場展示風景を見ましよう。

My works spread across two walls. 私の作品

Takahashi-san and Luo-san's works on the other two walls

I had two new works on display and one additional work "Fragmentation : Red-tailed Black Cockatoos" which I completed this past January. I showed you some images of my "Murmurations" piece a little while back, so now I'm excited to show you the third series of work I displayed which is also my newest called "Degradation" 

今回は新しいシリーズ一つ、新作一枚と今年1月に染め上げた作品を展示しました。セキセイインコをモチーフにした「Murmurations」という新作を前にここで載せたから、今回は主に新しいシリーズについて説明したいです。

Degradation Series I-III L to R, Mallee Emu Wren, Orange-bellied Parrot and Superb Parrot. All three are Endangered Species. 崩壊I～III。全部絶滅危惧種の鳥です。左から、クリビタイエミュームシクイ、アカハラワカバインコ、三日月インコ。

These pieces incorporate two techniques that I'd tried in previous works and liked. One of them is layering sheer fabrics on top of each other. I did this with a piece in April, putting a heavy layer of stencil-dyed silk at the back and a hand-drawn resist dyed sheer organza at the front. This time I did much the same but had 3 layers. I tried to account for the way the patterns and colours on the three layers would overlap, so as not to end up with muddy colours or a strange composition when they were all stacked up. I hope the three layers create a sense of depth.

アカハラワカバインコ Orange-bellied Parrots piece. You can see the 3 layers overlapping. The very back is a pattern of coastal heath bushes.

このシリーズで前に成功した技の二つを生かしました。（偉そうに言ってしまってすみません！）一つは、透明の絹を重なるというやり方でした。3月に作った大文字の作品では、裏の型染で染めた紬に、オーガンジーを友禅で染めた表を重ねてみました。透けている感じが好評だったから今回は3枚も重ねました。重ねたら鳥はどこに来るとか、どの色がどこに来るのをできるだけこと前に考えました。3枚があるから奥行きが出るだろうと思っています。

using a Japanese style scrubbing brush, called a tawashi, to dab nori onto the fabric, a.k.a tataki-nori. 束子でたたき糊を置いた。

A second trick I included again here was "tataki-nori" is a way of flicking or dotting resist paste onto the surface of the fabric to make a speckled pattern. I used it this time to mask out areas of the design that were supposed to represent habitat degradation. (I don't think this came through strongly, though) It's a nice technique to introduce textures because katazome and yuzen are so often about clear lines and edges.

雲のようなところはたたき糊で防戦したところです。the white cloud-like areas you can see are where I used tataki-nori to resist the dye.

もう一つ使ったやり方は「たたき糊」でした。糊を生地にたたくのように置くと、点々の模様やテキスチャができるやり方です。型染と友禅はよく「線」と「空間」の世界なので、テキスチャを入れると面白いですよね。今回、絶滅危惧種の鳥の原産地が崩壊されている・消えて行っていることをたたき糊の雲のようなところで示そうとしました。表現は弱いと思いますが。

A few more photos of the series. I included some snatches of text from good old John Gould for texture and extra interest.

the work floating around in the aircon in our exhibition

superb parrot

The exhibition was well received I think. I'm planning to exhibit these works again later this year, probably in Canberra and possibly also at a group show I'm participating in in New York (!!), stay tuned for more on those soon!