Teruyoshi
Yoshida - September
Claire has been working at ‘Fushimi-Inari’,
this is one of the familiar shrines situated in the southern
part of Kyoto. It is known as ‘Fushimi no Oinari-san’
(meaning ‘foxes of Fushimi’). This shrine was
dedicated to the Foxes that were supposed to encourage successful
business and therefore on the first day of every month people
would come to pray here. As we walk
to the main shrine of Fushimi-Inari we pass through Senbon-torii
(literally meaning ‘a thousand gateways’). Cool
air from the mountain soothed me after I had been walking
in the heat of late summer.
Claire chose to work on the narrow stairs
that are situated on the way to another shrine deep into this
area. These narrow fifteen steps are next to the Aokigataki
(waterfall of Aoki).
In order to find inspiration for her
work, Claire has been travelling around Kyoto and Nara. Each
time I saw her, she showed me her notebook which was filled
with her ideas and photos of unfamiliar scenery.
September 3rd 4.30pm
Meeting up with Ms. Kawashima at Fushimi-Inari station, we
went to see Claire at work on site. We walked past the approach
to the shrine, through the precincts, through the bamboo grove
and then through the thicket. It was a tranquil, twilight
hour. We felt the cool air near the waterfall and finally
found her.
She was taking a break and we could see
that she had been bitten by mosquitoes. This showed the harshness
of working in this outdoor environment. We took some photographs
of her and the site and then at 5.30 we left Claire there.
September 4th
I have the prints of the photographs that we took yesterday
at the shrine. They reminded me of Claire’s notebook
with her sketches of her ideas. The photographs looked almost
the same as her initial idea.
September 23rd 2.30pm
Claire and I met to talk over the collaborative projects for
Through The Surface, with the help of our interpreter, Mr.
Itakura. I have left one of my previous works with Claire.
In the work I applied gold and silver leaf on the surface
of the fabric. Claire said that the piece was her inspiration
for our future work. The surface of my old piece has been
worn out over 20 years, therefore it has the look of ‘KIRE’*.
I am simply looking forward to see her plan of response to
this piece. I have decided to the type of fabric for our work
in response to the photographs that Claire has been taking
since she arrived in Japan.
Claire has seemed to have been interested
in the constantly changing surfaces of decaying objects. It
appeared clearly in her notebooks in an accumulation of photographs.
I did not dare to ask her the reasons, Claire would probably
speak about it herself in the future and I would love to hear
it, if possible. Our discussion lasted until 5pm and we both
agreed to each make some 50cm x 50cm square pieces which could
be any thickness. We will then exhibit the works one by one,
next to each other.
Claire will work on her piece with a
strong, heavy, closely woven fabric of cotton that has her
photographic image on the surface. She will then apply vinyl
and nylon materials. I will use the same type of cotton that
has gold and silver leaf on the surface, which I will then
work into.
We will carry out the process in our
different locations and we sincerely look forward to complete
the collaboration at the site of the Through the Surface exhibition.
* KIRE means fabric in general, especially
old worn out fabric. It also means the fabric of Buddhist
monks’ garments
top
Claire
Barber - September
Last diary interlude : Reflections on
Gold
The image at the beginning of this website
`A Folly` illustrates a work I made in Australia, and it was
this work that caught the attention of Yoshida and lead him
to choose to work with me as my mentor.
‘A Folly’ was created in
1998, while I worked in Australia during a Sir Robert Menzies
Fellowship. During that time I walked, hitched, took long
bus journeys and rode creaking bicycles in search of remote
gold-mining ghost towns in the western Australian desert interior.
Even today, with the relative comforts of contemporary life
it was a harsh experience.
I walked around mounds of earth and rusting
spades, small scars on the landscape and traces of past mining
activity. More alarming were the enormous cavities in the
landscape and lorry load after lorry load of earth being shifted
in the modern day search for the elusive and desirable nuggets
of gold.
I felt discomforted by tales of past
heroes who had sacrificed home, family, possessions and even
sometimes their own lives in their obsessive pursuit for gold.
Thus `A Folly` was born. I wore a gold
dress in the abandoned ghost town of Kanowna and carefully
cut small square fragments from the dress which I lay over
the red dusty ground like a bridal train or a path of gold.
It was symbolic of a charmed but unrewarding marriage with
the landscape. What a folly! Now standing cold in my delicate
cage of gold I was shivering on the edge of the path, knowing
that even one footstep would scatter the fragments and ruin
my path of gold. Nothing could be so beautiful yet so useless
as a dress of gold within the dry desert interior.
Yoshida has developed work with gold
leaf squares for twenty years, while I have had a relatively
brief flirtation with gold in the desert interior Australia,
thus, this mentoring relationship has given me the opportunity
to re-address my relationship with this mineral and its seductive
qualities.
During our first meeting I asked a little
about his work with gold and what it meant to him. He said
his work was about beauty and tactility and illuminated his
meaning with a comparison between Japanese and English tea
drinking habits.
In his opinion Japanese had a greater
sensitivity to touch which could be revealed in the Japanese
manner of holding the cup or bowl of tea in the hand and feeling
the warmth of the tea in side, while the English held the
cups by a handle and were thus divorced from this immediate
sensual experience.
Inspired by Yoshida`s comment I began
covering teacups and saucers in seaweed so that his analogy
was taken a stage further so that now even my lips could not
feel the warm brim of the tea cup. It was necessary to wait,
until the seaweed weathered and broke from the surface of
the cup to reveal the smooth the rim of the cup. I realised
that the restraint incurred in this process actually magnified
rather than reduced the sensuality inherent in taking in a
warm cup of tea.
My delight in finding what I have called
`the golden fridge` ( see previous diary interludes) gave
me another opportunity to discover another way that I may
respond to Yoshida`s work.
There I witnessed how a remarkable alchemic
like process of weathering had transformed a bland artificial
cool into a silver specked golden form. Subsequently I have
sought to travel through the surface of other weathered matter
and detritus and attempt to illuminate the unexpected and
graceful beauty held within their forms.
Complications with working on location
at `The Golden Fridge` pushed me to look at my immediate environment
of Nishi-Otsu with closer scrutiny. What has intrigued me
has been a disused shower shop poster. I have looked at it
most days and noticed how the pale pink painted surface of
the woman`s body has slowly become tainted and tanned by the
rusting steel beneath. In the dump around the back I found
a fragment of foam bath. I carefully placed pins into its
surface, following the crevices of the weathered form I then
developed an intimate relationship with this challenging landscape
for two intense days. I compared my exploration to cycling
through the interior of Iceland last year. The foam became
magnified in my view and took on a quality of a landscape.
The rusty portions of the foam were reminiscent of lava fields
I had cycled over and also had to be carefully negotiated
with intuitive and intelligent decisions as to where I would
place my pins while the powdery foam reminded me of endless
grey sand dunes I had traversed in Iceland, in these areas
I had to discriminate between the texture of foam which was
too soft to hold my pins with the firmer, more adherent surfaces..
Passing by the disused shower shop I
sometimes cycle onto a large car park, at the base of which,
are vines heavy with fruit. Sheets and duvets are straddled
over the ground, sumptuously absorbing the ripe liquor of
the red fallen fruits.
My most recent discovery was made only
a week ago. I was enchanted to find an abandoned workshop
in the bamboo forests just meters from Harumi`s house.
Wood cascades from collapsing ceilings,
the metal crumples and falls as the fabric of the building
is truly being revealed in all its beautiful nakedness as
the building dramatically decays. I have been sanding the
steel sheets covering the whole back side of the building.
This has enabled me to penetrate through the surface and reveal
a delicious, sensuous surface, an echo of a satin shimmer,
that shines and glistens in response to the flickering light
through the bamboo leaves above. This may sound all too romantic.
My hands are blistered and soar, I am physically exhausted,
the mosquitoes devour me and I am constantly alert to sounds
in the forest all too conscious of the fresh wild boar and
monkey prints in the muddy ground by my own booted feet.
This is where I shall finish, bags need
to be packed, final works documented goodbyes to friendships
made. Nishi-Otsu - what a surprising place to live, constantly
inspiring, challenging and provoking my thoughts and attention.
Not so many more sweaty rides up the mountain side to Harumi`s
amazing abode and I shall be back in England and experience
the warm taste of tea with my friend.
Sayonnara Nishi-Otsu, Sayonnara Japan
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