© Susumu Matsuura

Artist talk

Tuesday 29 January 2019
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Private View and Artist Talk: Susumu Matsuura in conversation with Dr Lee Campbell

13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle (entrance facing Regent's Park), London NW1 4QP

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

This event provided the opportunity to have a first look at the work of Susumu Matsuura and hear him discuss the ideas and inspiration behind his work.

Susumu’s theme is “humans”, and most of his work expresses human emotions. He is interested in looking at the two-sided nature of human beings, who harbour both positive feelings and greed.

In 2016, Susumu’s hand-produced silk screen artificial propagation city was displayed in Tokyo. This work was based on his view that even natural objects found in cities have been put there artificially.  The theme of this work is that all objects there are operated by human hands.

Susumu went on to produce a series of works called Caress a Cat, which explores the theme of “healing”, expressing the stress and loneliness he felt while traveling across Europe.

After returning to Japan, he produced the work Archives of the amorphous clouds of people, a woodblock print depicting the similarity of faces in a crowd whom he photographed in sightseeing spots while in Europe. The work presents an image of people gathered in a “location”, which is also created by people, as a kind of moving swarm.

The works on show at the Foundation have “human feelings” as their main theme: symmetrical portraits inspired by the Rorschach test; the feelings of depression that the artist himself has experienced; or the healing process of pet therapy, as in Caress a Cat.

The Hokkaido Shimbun on Susumu Matsuura's exhibition

A video of the talk can be found here:

About the contributors

Susumu Matsuura

Susumu Matsuura (b.1989) specializes in silk screen print making. His works resemble traditional portraits with a somewhat cynical touch. He received a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Dohto University, Hokkaido, Japan.  Susumu has won several awards, including the Shouou Foundation Award for Art Studies Abroad in 2016, which led him to travel and work in Europe for a year. His solo exhibitions include: persona (2013), Red and Blue Gallery, Tokyo; artificial propagation city (2015), Sapporo station Art box, Japan; artificial propagation planet (2016), Tokyo Wonder site Shibuya, Japan; stranger (2017), gallery  PRÁM, Czech Republic; and healing (2017), Agalab, Netherlands. His work has also been displayed in numerous group exhibitions, including: Tokyo Wander Wall 2015, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan; 60th CWAJ Exhibition, Highfield Hall Falmouth, America; Shell Art Award 2017, National Art Centre Tokyo, Japan; CampBasel Revisited (2017), A-Space, Basel, Swizerland; and Who are you? Susumu Matsuura – Hanae Nakamura Contemporary Print Exhibition (2018), Abashiri Museum, Japan.

Dr Lee Campbell

Dr Lee Campbell is an artist, curator and lecturer at Central Saint Martins and across Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon colleges, UAL. Lee’s art practice combines performance and fine art methodologies to explore how meaning is constructed through politics of space. His work also explores how the politics of artist are articulated through visual and verbal languages expressed through various artistic mediums, including performance, photography and film. His working methodology puts emphasis on embodied experience, drawn from his experience as an artist who uses the body as the core principle for making work. Lee’s research has been published internationally, including in PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, Body Space Technology and Performance Paradigm. He is currently working on an edited collection Leap into Action: Critical Performative Pedagogies in Art & Design Education. He is a current studio resident as part of Conditions artist studio programme. For more information, visit Lee’s website: https://leecampbellacademic.blogspot.com/

 

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