Noriko Nakamura
Harvest
7 June - 1 July 2017
Noriko Nakamura is a Japanese-born, Melbourne-based artist who uses stone carving and organic elements to make installations that draw on ideas of animism and ritualistic practices. Using traditional hand-carving techniques Nakamura transforms limestone from inanimate and heavy into a playful form suggestive of movement and lightness. She is interested in this transformative process and how the manipulation of materials is used to imbue a material or object with significance, changing its meaning and our relationship to it.
For her current exhibition Harvest, Nakamura was influenced by Japanese mythology regarding the origin of foods. Through this exhibition Nakamura explores female sexuality, spirituality and position in society.
After the deity Susanoo was banished by his sister, he visited the deity of food, Ogetsuhime, and requested food. Ogetsuhime welcomed him and prepared a feast with food that came out of her nose and spewed out of her mouth and bottom. Susanoo was disgusted and killed her with a sword. Ogetsuhime‘s dead body continued to produce food and her body parts were planted in the ground to grow and be harvested.
Silkworms came out of her head.
Her eyes became rice.
Her ears turned into millet.
Her nose transformed into red beans.
Her vagina turned into wheat.
Her bottom became soybeans.
Nakamura completed a Fine Art Foundation Diploma at Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London, before receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts and BA Fine Arts Honours from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2012. She has presented solo exhibitions at Sutton Projects, Melbourne; West Space, Melbourne; TCB Art Inc, Melbourne. Her work has been exhibited at Aperto, Montpellier France; XYZ Collective, Tokyo; RM Gallery, Auckland; Dog Park Art Project Space, Christchurch; Murray White Room, Melbourne and National Gallery of Victoria Studio, Melbourne. Nakamura is recipient of the 2017 Maddocks Art Prize and 2013 Sainsbury Sculpture Grant. In 2015 she undertook a residency at Youkobo Art Space in Tokyo and is currently a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary.
