notes from the drifting spaces
Blair’s art notes…
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Journey skywards – Tokyo Skytree and Umihotaru Sea Station
grey-white-grey no rust steady waymarker visitor blanketed platforms contained taiyaki and colonel saunders ready for christmas deep blue negatives and folding darknesses drawing looking up straining higher shards segmented triangulated steel glass black flashing yellow next to grey shadows smooth time tarmac slowed right down drifting wheels spinning units glittering objects acceleration past watchtowers over
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Danjuro Ichikawa – The World of Aragoto
A few days after a friend kindly let me know about this exhibition (and giving me a ticket!) I headed to Yurakucho and over to Hibiya Koen on a chilly damp day, and past the old pines and sparrow filled gardens down to the Hibiya Library Museum. Nice to revisit this area where I spent
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Trip to Noto Hanto peninsula, Ishikawa Ken
The towering Niou guardians upon entering the thousand year old Myoujoji Temple (Nichiren Shu), on the West side of Noto. Sacred rocks and shinto shrine, brief stop on the road north towards Wajima.. Lunch stop restaurant had its own guardian, a slightly plump dragon with a chainsaw, sculpting a mushroom. Pic on right was the
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Tokyo Art Exhibitions – MOT and David Lynch at LAFORET
During my show in Omotesando I was delighted to see David Lynch had an exhibtion on at the Laforet Department Store’s Gallery, just down the road at the Harajuku crossing. I popped in a few days later. The building’s quirky angled and funky interior design and disco colours were really 80’s and the general mood
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Recent artworks formed in and around Shibuya and Omotesando…
Using calligraphy boards, pens and mixed media I’ve made a series of around thirty new pieces, which I’m planning to continue. The local environment was an excellent area for creativity … Flashing colours, strange kitsch and metal fading into black-blue… Standalone doors to nowhere, windows into new worlds…
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Traces of Time | 時間の足跡
Here are a selection of images of the show plus some Omotesando street views around Gallery 80 in Omotesando Hills building (Aoyama area, Tokyo). It was a very pleasant time of year with the Autumn leaves gathering and crisp clear blue nights…
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Exhibition poster
The poster worked out well and was a simple way to set the tone of the show, with one of the studio installations/ sculptures featured – metal, card, paper, oil paint – plus we got the other shot in Harajuku for the gallery profile…
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Journey to Tokyo from Glasgow by jumbo jet and shinkansen
After arriving in Japan I had a couple of weeks to prepare the works, organise mounting, liaise with Gallery 80 and develop my self-styled ‘black box’ multimedia construction. Time was pressing but with lots of kind and well timed help we had everything organised. Special thanks to Aki-san, Tanaka Shin-san, and gallery visitor turned assistant
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Artist Book – ‘Grey Torn Alloy and Other Exerpts’
Have been pretty busy with exhibition prep not to mention an artist book I started to develop a wee while ago and had to get really stuck in to get it finished. This is the first time to self publish and has opened up plenty of new creative possibilities and the process of investigating bindings