Sayaka Akiyama – Artist’s Talk
9 September 2004 / 18:00 - 20:00As part of ‘Fashion Manchester’ Castlefield Gallery invites you to meet and discuss the work of artist Sayaka Akiyama.
Akiyama will be discussing her practice, and her recent crossovers between art and fashion. Her work ‘Around Trip in France with Friends John & Yoko’ was recently selected by fashion branch ‘Issey Miyake Co.’ to use as a detail in their ‘Pleats Please’ line, due to premiere early next year.
Akiyama is currently Artist in Residence at artgene Gallery, Cumbria. Her recent works ‘ALUKU’ (walking), began in 1998 at the Kyoto Junior College of Art and Design when she attached a “Human Manpokei” (Human Walk Recorder) to her body — a piece of paper and thread that recorded the rhythm of a walk she made of six rounds of the college grounds.
Her finished works, a record of her day-to-day movements stitched in various coloured threads on paper maps, document how she establishes a life for herself in new places, both in Japan and abroad.
Akiyama’s work, writes Mika Kuraya, curator of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, “maintains the feeling and pace of a solitary human being walking as well as the rhythm of a human hand tracing the path with a needle at a similar leisurely pace.”
MORE ON SAYAKA AKIYAMA:
Sayaka Akiyama was born in Hyogo, Japan in 1971. She studied at Kyoto Junior College of Art and Design where she received a BFA in 1999, and Joshibi University of Art and Design, Kanagawa where she received an MFA in 2000. Akiyama’s work has been shown in numerous museums and galleries in Japan, including The Ueno Royal Museum, Contemporary Art Factory and Sumida-ku, Fuji Television Gallery, Toyko, Joshibi Art Museum, Kanagawa, and Stella Hall, Osaka.
Sayaka Akiyama will be exhibiting ‘ALUKU. My Domestic Walking Model (Barrow-in-Furness)’ at artgene Gallery from 31st August to 23rd September, 2004.
The exhibition is supported by:
The Great Britain SASKAWA Foundation
The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., ART BY ZEROX
CCA Corporation
art gene
Cumbria County Council
Barrow Borough Council
Arts Council England, North West