Artist talk: Over the Parched Field

16 February 2012

6:00 – 7:00pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:00pm

Daiwa Foundation Japan House

Akiko Takizawa is a Japanese artist based in London. The exhibition, Over the Parched Field, showcases a selection of Takizawa’s photographs since 2006, including new works made especially for the exhibition. This is Takizawa’s first solo show in London.

The talk will be by Dr Simon Baker, Curator of Photography and International Art at the Tate Gallery, and the artist of Over the Parched Field, Akiko Takizawa.

Akiko Takizawa

Akiko Takizawa was born in Fukuoka in 1971 and completed her MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in 2006. Her interdisciplinary practices involve not only photography but filming and performing art. Her work was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2006 and the exhibition toured from Liverpool to London. Her work was shortlisted for the Hitotsubo Award, one of the most prestigious photographic competitions in Japan. She was also awarded the University of Abertay Visual Arts Prize (2002), the Dundee Contemporary Arts Print Studio Residency Prize (2002), the London Print Studio Award (2002) and the Printmaking Today Award (2000).

Dr Simon Baker

Dr Simon Baker is Curator of Photography and International Art at Tate. He has researched, written and curated exhibitions on surrealism, photography, and contemporary art, including the recent Tate Modern exhibitions Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera (2010), and Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters (2011). He is currently working on a major exhibition of the works of William Klein and Daido Moriyama for Tate Modern in October 2012.

Women Work in Wood (WoWoWo)

Women Work – in Wood is a touring celebration and showcase of leading female contemporary furniture designers and makers, working in wood, and will include work from London-based Tomoko Azumi, and Denmark-based Akiko Kuwahata, as well as various other international, established and emerging designer makers, who  have all responded to a design brief to develop and encourage innovative design in furniture using sustainable processes and materials.

The design development has in each case been documented to illuminate the decisions regarding techniques and process.  These narratives, as well as the more personal deliberations to do with career paths, will form part of the exhibition showing the richness of skill and approach and add to the debate about design, responsibility, opportunity, expectation and so forth.

The number of women furniture makers is on a steady increase in Europe and particularly the UK. This exhibition is the first dedicated showcase of contemporary work by woman designer makers.

24 September 2011 – 30 October 2011

Walford Mill Crafts, Dorset

For more information, please click here.