Machiko Ogawa Exhibition

Machiko Ogawa’s first exhibition in Europe will open at Erskine, Hall & Coe in June. The exhibition will comprise of 27 hand-built works in porcelain, silica sand, Feldspar and earthenware.

 

Born in 1946 in Sapporo, a city of the Hokkaido Prefecture of Japan, Machiko Ogawa studied crafts at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and graduated in 1969. From there, she went on to study ceramics at l’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art in Paris until 1971, and then in Burkina Faso, West Africa until 1975.

 

Machiko Ogawa’s work is deeply influenced by her travels as well as her fascination with fossils, minerals and the earth. She has explored many diverse places including subsaharan Africa and South America. “It is my passion for the earth that drives my continual search for the essential in art. The vessel form, with both interior and exterior space, enables me to best pursue this quest—it is not about making vases. Rather, I am inspired by the concept of emptiness within the whole. It is in the dialogue between form and void that I find artistic freedom.” —Machiko Ogawa

 

Ogawa has been acknowledged for her unique and significant contribution to the arts. She received The Japan Ceramic Society Award in 2001, the 58th Minister of Education and Culture Award for Fine Arts in 2008 and the Prize of Excellence from the Musée Tomo in 2010, among others.

 

The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo are among the many public institutions that have acquired her work. As Issey Miyake has written of Ogawa, “I feel overwhelmed by her tremendous spirit when I look at some of the work that will be shown in London. Delicate jade-color glazes that remain in the bottom of bowls that look like broken shards of ancient earthenware; and that suggest the deposition of memories and time.”

 

A catalogue accompanying the exhibition will include an essay by Issey Miyake. The show will also be fully illustrated on our website on the day it opens. For further information, please contact the gallery: mail@erskinehallcoe.com, +44 (0)20 7491 1706.