Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, 7 October – 5 November 2016.
“I use red because it symbolises the colour of blood and therefore human relationships connected to one another. When the red string behind a rope is visible, you can view the connections in society.
Chiharu Shiota, ‘An interview with Chiharu Shiota by Andrea Jahn’, 2016
“For her inaugural exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Chiharu Shiota has created Absent Bodies, an immersive new installation that embraces the architecture of the gallery. The hand-woven environment forms a microcosm where objects have been suspended in time and space. Viewed through labyrinthine layers and planes of red thread, the presence of two chairs evokes a conversation, a relationship, between two beings, perhaps in the past or the future.
At the opposite end of the gallery are three sculptural objects State of Being (Books), 2016. The contrasting shift in scale, from the macro to the micro, offers a different entry and bodily connection to Shiota’s lyrical spaces. Chiharu Shiota has often used domestic elements in her installations: beds, shoes, suitcases, pianos, chairs, the traces of human life and parts of a deconstructed idea of home. The books in the works State of Being (Books) evoke the quest for and the circulation of knowledge..” *
camera: lx100
