Akiko Kawabata
UTAKATA - A World Like A Bubble
24 September - 10 October
11:00 -18:00, Sunday, Monday closed
Utakata is an old Japanese word for something fleeting, something that appears and disappears like a bubble.
In this exhibition, Akiko Kawabata takes the image of a bubble as a way of looking at moments that exist only briefly. A bubble catches light, colour, sound and reflections from the world around it, creating an ever-changing view. It overlaps, expands and eventually bursts, and the world it held disappears almost as suddenly as if it had been a dream.
Working with colour, form and collage, Kawabata seeks to hold onto this fleeting shimmer. Fragments of colour, images and materials come together through an intuitive process of assembling, layering and rearranging, allowing unexpected forms and relationships to emerge.
In UTAKATA, collage becomes a means of responding to what cannot remain. Rather than preserving a fleeting moment exactly as it was, Kawabata gives it another form.
Akiko Kawabata
Akiko Kawabata is an Osaka-based artist working across collage, objects, painting and installation. After studying painting and sculpture independently, she began exhibiting in the early 2000s, initially working primarily with sculpture and installation.
Her recent practice centres on iro-asobi (“playing with colour”), an intuitive approach in which colour, fragments and everyday materials are combined and rearranged. Rather than beginning with a predetermined image, Kawabata allows forms and relationships to emerge through play, chance and the process of working with materials.
Across collage and objects, she explores the possibilities that arise from unexpected combinations of colour, form and material. In her latest UTAKATA works, this process turns toward fleeting moments and her desire to give another form to something that is already disappearing.