Last week I entered the strange, strange world of Megumi Ishibashi.
This is a world where large, contorted, fibre-glass figures leave flight trails that arch across the sky or
struggle to escape from the arse-holes of technicoloured fish.
We built a new language and then we talked about studio spaces, art outside the gallery and residencies.
It was fun; I gave her a sketchbook.
I hope she likes it…
On September 23rd I visited Ono Garou for the first time.
It was in the basement of this dilapidated apartment block in Ginza that we came across Junichi Saito and a masterfully executed presentation of a single piece of sculpture in an awkward corner under the stairs. Pure theatre, excellent!
And so Volume 7 has been left in the (white cotton-gloved) hands of Saito-san, ready to begin its journey…
Last night a friend took me to an izakaya.
The amazingly delicious food,
subdued lighting,
and restrained atmosphere,
were followed by a quick game of pachinko:
Welcome to Japan.
I’m in a different part of Sagamiono compared to where I was last year so this morning I went for a short walk to see what’s what.
I can now confirm that I live above a shop called Dog Style [ed:it’s a pet shop]; next to a fire station (calm down Cath!); and just around the corner from the Co-op (you still get carved up by trolleys in the aisles, but people will bow and apologise profusely whilst they’re doing it!)
Oh, and I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but somewhere close by plays the Westminster chimes over a loud speaker at noon each day. If I remember correctly, this is also what they use at Joshibi University to signal the start and finish of lunch, so I wonder if I’m going to start developing some sort of Pavlovian response to it…
Yesterday I completed page 2a and so today I posted Volume 2 to the next artists: Karin and Reuben at Springhill Institute.
A few pages from Volume 0 compiled at the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks launch party.
A few images from the launch of the the Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks project.
[photos by Nikki Pugh, Makoto Shindo and Karin Kihlberg]
Working with Springhill Institute I will develop a creative strategy for investigating an artistic landscape. This will initially involve the design and hand production of a series of books of ‘blank pages’ to which artists will be invited to contribute a fragment of their current work. Each participant will then be asked to pass the book on to an artist of their choice for completion of the next page. In this way, the process of gathering these contributions will result in a sort of highly subjective cartography that maps out the current terrain of specific individuals and also the links between a progression of artists.
The journey of each book will be logged here and it is hoped that the final contributor to each volume will then return the book to me.
In the first instance I will make 26 books each with 26 blank pages. In addition to starting trails here in the UK, I will also take several books with me when I go to Japan in September. Here they will act as a means to develop existing relationships and also to initiate new ones.
To signify the start of the collation process, we hosted a one-night event at Springhill Institute in which artists were invited to leave their mark on blank pages that will then be compiled to form the first volume.
Peer-to-Peer Sketchbooks is funded by Springhill Institute through the Springhill Project support, 2006.
The weather was a bit cold and rainy, but the food was plentiful and the music was loud so we soon settled into it…
A Flickr slideshow of the day can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikki_pugh/sets/72157594234326888/show/
Liam was let loose with a camera. Here is the renga session at the 3 Estates Festival as seen through his eyes…
…and his speciality grape-in-a-doughnut™ added a certain je nais ce quois too!
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