Mika's exhibition Fragments has been a huge influence on my thinking and my work for second semester. Her inclusion of the Slipping Away section made up of Japanese kyogi scrolls overlaid with images of homes she lived in became of great interest to me. The juxtaposition between an ancient form of recording (the scroll) and the more recent invention of photography led on to thoughts about how we currently process memories in the intangible world of the digital image as compared with these older more tactile forms of preserving memory - even that of the photo album which abounded say fifteen years ago. In addition something else that really spoke to me about the exhibition was the influence of her cultural roots outworked in the materials she used to print/ hold the photos yet that these materials were also universal - different forms of wood - with connotations of family tree and concepts of having roots. She chose materials that are meaningful for her culturally yet that we can all associate with. I was hoping that my use of Tanganda tea bags which are specifically Zimbabwean yet are recognisable to all as tea bags would be able to touch and speak to everyone.
Didactic - Slipping Away - Japanese yogi scrolls and personal photographs (see below)
Fragments
Mika Nakamura-Mather
Although travel and migration has been a
part of the human condition since we first walked the earth, with the rise of
commercial jet in 1958[1],
a corresponding and subsequent rise in the frequency, speed and boom of international
travel has resulted. The impact of this upon the art world is the upsurge of
what is termed ‘transnational art’ which explores themes of memory, diaspora,
displacement and exile among others.
Claire Harris writes about the mobility of contemporary artists and
explores the concept of the cultural logic of places being carried with the
artist as memories and forming an influence in their work[2].
The work of artist Mika Nakamura-Mather born in Tokyo, then lived and worked in
Sydney, London and now Brisbane, explores these notions of cultural roots and
our human desire to preserve and collect memories. The exhibition Fragments
highlights the tenacity of cultural heritage to remain embedded in our memories
despite relocation. Simultaneously it speaks of the fragility yet enduring
power of our memories of the places we have lived in. It also raises the
question in reverse – what memory do we leave on the places we have inhabited?
Fragments fittingly consists of multiple works, grouped in five sections yet
all related to and in dialogue with each other. This highlights the
multifaceted and somewhat disjointed experiences of Nakamura- Mather’s and our
contemporary itinerant lives yet also shows how the ‘single strand’ of our
lives connects these experiences.[3]
Photography, long heralded as being key impulse of recording memory, forms a
significant component of this exhibition. Colour is also a significant component,
as for the artist; a single colour can evoke memories of place[4].
Wood, as in Nakamura-Mather’s earlier work, also plays a central role. In Fragments, however, she utilizes a
variety of wood forms that deepens the idea of translocation and change yet
simultaneously this common thread runs through the exhibition and highlights
cultural roots.
Mika Nakamura-Mather
2014 Fragments
exhibition, Webb Gallery QCA
image courtesy of artist
Firstly in Slipping Away, the lengthy wood veneer kyogi scrolls placed
strikingly on the floor and overlaid with faded images causes us to think about
older forms of more tangible and tactile record keeping. These contrast with
the current technological ephemeral world of Internet storage and the digital
image. The human desire to preserve and capture pictures to aid our own
memories to recall events as well as the fragility of our memory is explored by
the diminishing of the images. Then, in Paper
Thin Walls, the flimsy looking folded paper houses are also overlaid with
images of architecture. As Nakamura-Mather writes in the didactic ‘the tracing
paper origami homes are my way of investigating this delicate balance between
my recollection of the home and its recollection of me’[5].
Fragility of both recollections is the essence of the works in this section. We
read in the didactic these houses have now been abandoned and are decaying and
raises questions of what trace of the people who lived in them will remain?
These paper houses are placed adjacent to the
sake boxes. Nakamura-Mather has chosen to display these boxes, with their
historical Japanese connections to architecture and rice measuring balancing
vertically, several containing timber boxes within. Fragments of photos have
been turpentine released on particular facets. These boxes are reconfigured and
inlaid with double transparency photo sheets depicting details from the
artist’s various intercontinental homes. In Lifebox
they are lighted from beneath and stacked in another wood form – the cardboard
box. Connotations of moving and storing abound. The boxes are then individually
mounted and well lit on the wall in the Window
Boxes section. As the didactic so aptly describes the lighting causes a
planet like shape to form in the centre of the box – each showing as Nakamura
writes ‘the separate worlds that I have
visited and that make up my personal universe’[6].
Each little universe is contained however in the wooden Japanese Cyprus box, subtly
referencing the artist’s roots, and in this way embedding Claire Harris’s
statement of cultural logic as being transportable.
Mika Nakamura Mather Window Boxes 2013 detail
Mika Nakamura Mather Lifebox
Mika Nakamura Mather Slipping Away
Like Nakamura-Mather I am a migrant and
memory and notions of home are also central to the artwork I make. I responded
to the way Nakamura-Mather uses memories connected to physical places. I
realized these memories were like cultural landscapes we carry within us. Our memories
of places fade just like the places themselves change over time. Nevertheless we
still carry cultural influences from the past to our new environments. The
wooden box transcends its Japanese heritage becoming a universal symbol of packing
and carrying precious moments. Nakamura-Mather has crafted a rich and deeply
layered exhibition, reminding us that we all have memories we store. Whether we
store them in a photograph album, the intangible world of memory or digital
images. But still the question remains amidst constant migration, construction
and ruin what memory do we leave on the places we have inhabited? Or even if
our trace disappears from the physical landscape is it our own memories and
cultural landscapes that we carry within that give us hope? As Nakamura-Mather
writes ‘No matter how much the world around us changes, as long as a single
fragment of the past survives, we still have a story to tell and a history that
helps us to know who we truly are’[7].
[1] Tweedie, N 2008 Transatlantic jet flight celebrates 50 years viewed 12 September 2014 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/3146988/Transatlantic-jet-flight-celebrates-50-years.html
[2] Harris, C 2006, ‘The Budda goes global: some thoughts towards a transnational art history’, Art History, vol.29, no.4,pp.698- 670, viewed September 16 2014 via JStor.
[3] Nakamura-Mather M, 2014, St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital Art Prize 2011-2013, p.15, exhibition catalogue.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Webb Gallery QCA, didactic panel to accompany the installation Paper Thin Walls shown at the Fragments exhibition Webb gallery QCA Brisbane 20 August 2014- 30 August 2014. Visited 22 August 2014.
[6] Webb Gallery QCA, didactic panel to accompany the installation Window Boxes shown at the Fragments exhibition Webb gallery QCA Brisbane 20 August 2014- 30 August 2014. Visited 22 August 2014.
[7] Nakamura-Mather M, 2014, St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital Art Prize 2011-2013, p.15, exhibition catalogue.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Webb Gallery QCA,
didactic panel to accompany the installation Paper Thin Walls shown at the Fragments exhibition Webb gallery QCA
Brisbane 20 August 2014- 30 August 2014. Visited 22 August 2-2013, p.15, exhibition catalogue.
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