YUKI ARUGA
A SENSE OF PLACE
27th November - 12th December 2021
Electro Studios Project Space
St Leonards on Sea
Responding to the title, A Sense of Place, this mixed group show explores themes of family, heritage, migration, displacement, identity, nostalgia, memory and loss through paintings, drawings, sculpture, installation and mixed media.
A MEMORIAL TO NOTHING
Installation
Soil, rice, moss, oil on oak sleeper 2020
170cm x 40cm x 70cm
This installation, based on loss and legacy, is like much of my work, a nod to my Japanese heritage. The soil used to create the dorodango mud balls, (a Japanese art form of compacting earth into spherical, polished objects), is taken from a burial site that I’m personally connected to.
The size of the dorodango balls is related to this loss and, along with the bed of rice that they rest on, are symbolic of growth and fertility. The materials emulate various Japanese gardens and design features- the rice like the raked gravel in Zen gardens, the green carpets of moss gardens and weaving stepping stones in order to slow the pace of a visitor so they arrive at their destination a little calmer. Although a bit sombre, like a lot of memorials, it’s a piece that’s been pretty cathartic to make and to contemplate.
Dorodango is a Japanese art form of creataing polished spherical objects from soil. The Dorodango mud balls that appear in A Memorial to Nothing are made from earth taken from a place related to a personal loss. Their sizes are related to this loss, as well as notions of femininity and fertility. In both Asian and European cultures, rice is used in rituals that celebrate and prepare us for the beginnings and endings we encounter in our lives - it can be a symbol of fertility, a way of warding off evil spirits or simply something that sustains us. Both the rice and moss call to mind the green carpets of Japanese moss gardens and the carefully raked white gravel of Zen gardens.
The oak sleeper, a headstone to the work, is painted in oil to appear like marble on one side. The marble and the wood together, offer the idea of passing time - the growth rings of trees, and the strata of the land.
Informed by personal experiences and mixed Japanese-British heritage, Yuki’s practice addresses notions of loss, longing and identity.
She draws inspiration from nature as well as Japanese and European still life paintings and religious iconography of the 16th-18th century.
Her paintings often feature dark, expansive spaces in which subjects are held unfathomably suspended, alluding to the idea of the void and the numinous. More recent sculptures in wax and clay, and installations using paper, rice and soil, are symbolic of legacy, desire and rebirth.
Materially the works are often part of a Western tradition, while conceptually they are rooted in Eastern philosophy and Japanese aesthetic principles. Almost as a metaphor for her mixed-race heritage, the works lie somewhere between; between abstraction and figuration, the real and the virtual, East and West, presence and absence.
Read more about A Sense of Place here
She draws inspiration from nature as well as Japanese and European still life paintings and religious iconography of the 16th-18th century.
Her paintings often feature dark, expansive spaces in which subjects are held unfathomably suspended, alluding to the idea of the void and the numinous. More recent sculptures in wax and clay, and installations using paper, rice and soil, are symbolic of legacy, desire and rebirth.
Materially the works are often part of a Western tradition, while conceptually they are rooted in Eastern philosophy and Japanese aesthetic principles. Almost as a metaphor for her mixed-race heritage, the works lie somewhere between; between abstraction and figuration, the real and the virtual, East and West, presence and absence.
Read more about A Sense of Place here
EXHIBITION ARTWORKS
Read more about the artist here
EXHIBITION INSTALL PHOTOS
