TalkMonday 2 July 2012
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Stop and Think: Berlin based Japanese artist SHIMABUKU talks about his recent works
Drinks reception from 8:00pm
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
In this fast, modern world, new developments and progress are generally considered to be positive, but sometimes it is important to pause from the endless stepping forward; to stop and think. This is the concept which SHIMABUKU has applied to his recent artworks, such as My Teacher Tortoise (2011), which he introduced in this talk. Stopping, the artist says, does not have to be an indicator of one’s fatigue or a sign of giving up; it can be a positive recess and chosen halt of advancement
Japanese artist, SHIMABUKU, collaborated with a chef, Daisuke Hayashi of Sake No Hana, in Wide Open School at the Hayward Gallery on 1 July. In this event, art met food in a unique encounter between the Japanese chef and the artist whose often strange and surreal projects have frequently involved food, as well as tortoises, fish and a touring octopus.
SHIMABUKU also gave a talk entitled “How do you accept something you don’t understand?” at the Hayward Gallery on 3 July.
This event at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation was held in association with the Hayward Gallery.
About the contributors
SHIMABUKU
SHIMABUKU’s performances, videos, photographs and installations are often inspired by chance encounters or discoveries. Travel is a major theme in his work; food is another. Sometimes the two coincide. In Cucumber Journey (2000) he documented an excursion he made from London to Birmingham, travelling by narrow boat on the Grand Union Canal. During the two-week journey, he pickled the cucumbers he had brought from London; ‘a slow trip and a slow food’, as he remarked. Other works have involved taking a live octopus on a tour of Tokyo, and arranging an underwater tryst between a potato and a fish for Fish & Chips (2006). SHIMABUKU see parallels between making art and cooking. He is always amazed by food: ‘there are so many surrealistic encounters between ingredient and ingredient.’ SHIMABUKU was born in 1969 in Kobe, Japan.