Pictures of Twilight - The Evening Scene in Modern Painting - Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art

Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art

Some exhibitions in Japan have a way about them in springing the most wonderful artistic discoveries upon you through revealing artists that are sublimely beautiful by the way they create artworks that the word painter doesn’t seem to do them justice. I am not sure what to call such artists but they sit not in a kind of academic or academy hierarchical  system but like poets of colour, line and form operating way out from the avant-garde boundary riders  only to be introduced into art world once they've left this planet and my guess is that is the only way this particular type of artist can exist is alone, ignored and mostly impoverished.

Such artwork discoveries within outstandingly curated exhibitions like the aforementioned titled one above are one of my great joys of going to museums where those faraway, tucked away, stunning images by outsider artists but seen a remembered by scholarly curators are bought into the public memory, its bliss and this show there is many to be seen.

The title of this exhibition is wonderful Pictures of Twilight that time of the day where long or momentary reflections take place as one gazes slightly skyward towards the horizon at the shifting nuances of the heavenly hues transforming into themselves into nocturne, this societal memory appears to be a universal moment, common to all peoples and if this show is anything to go recorded by its artists and poets.

For example, there is one smallish post card size water colour work in this exhibition by OSHITA Toijiro 1870 -1911 titled: Setting Sun n.d. 9.1 x 14.2 cm, it is a stunning example of grand small scale beauty of the artist's evening gaze out across a water-way towards the setting sun, its poetry in painting with an immediacy due to the size of the work and how that limits the influence of delay in praxis, the paper is imbued with delicately laid floods water colour in the evening lights of yellow ochres, merging into light purple magenta hues downwards and outwards towards the horizon with a contrast  of a low key tan purple distance landscape across the water as a boat gently drifts over the glassy magenta, grey, purple, olive-yellow aquatic stretch with a coral-red setting sun flickering off the water as the vessel sails though it into the nocturne, it’s a wonderful sensory experience to witness in paint.

Then there is the woodblock prints of KAWASE Hasui1883 – 1957 especially his image Twelve Scenes of Tokyo, Dusk at Kiba, 1920, 36.3 x 24.2 cm again the beautiful hues of evening reflecting on a glassy river silhouetting the growing urban heavy industrial terrain of Tokyo, its working-class beauty.

Other surprises in this show were some of the more obscure European works that were on show especially Alfred SISLEY’S painting titled: Riverside Reeds at Sunset stunning image and he must be one of most under-rated painters of all the impressionists and there is another great small painting on exhibit by John CONSTABLE titled: Trees on Hampstead Heath at Sunset, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 25.2 x 29.2 cm, these are just a few of the amazing array of wonderful images within this exhibition and if you're in Osaka or Kobe make sure you get to this exhibition at Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art it’s well worth the trip.

Takehiro Terabayashi - Small Life - Yoshimi Arts- Osaka

Painting by Takehiro Terabayashi  - courtesy of Yoshimi Arts 

Takerhiro Terabayashi painting exhibition titled:Small Life at Yoshimi Arts in Osaka is a series of small scale, very interesting, well painted canvasses of what one might call the humble apartment belongings of a hardworking Japanese salary man.

The Japanese are hard workers they're also very minimal in what they have within their household belongings being just a few utensils, some furniture and electrical appliances, its impressive to see coming from the west, especially Australia where people have big houses, cars and unbelievable natural resources that allows free entry into art galleries, museums and hospitals this doesn't happen in Japan. 

For all genders, its brutally tough in Japan and in this series of paintings by Terabayashi one gets to see a range of images that resonate the bare necessities attached to that hard work ethic, for many of the paintings don't exhibit opulence or the extravagances of a rich or overly comfortable existence. But a salaryman's life of existing in a smallish apartment with just enough room to paint, eat, work and sleep.

In some ways looking at Terabayashi's painted possessions (pots, old phones, stoves tops, door handles and latches)  executed with forensic detail and passion, reminds me of the painting by Vincent van Gogh titled: Bedroom in Arles (first Version 1888) who also  painted his meager belongs.

This is a great show but as I have said before it is time for  Terabayashi to travel to Europe or more specifically London and study at the National Portrait Gallery the surface qualities by the likes of Lucian Freud, Diego Velázquez,  Rembrandt etc..., for a least a year or two, for I think it will help him to be an even better painter than he is now.

Hearsay - Wanneroo Art Gallery - Western Australia

Michael Doherty: Moondyne Racing the Sun 2014

oil on canvas

20 cm h x 30 cm w

Image Courtesy of the artist 

Hearsay is a great exhibition at the Wanneroo Cultural Centre about twenty-nine kilometers north of Perth. During the nineteen seventies and eighties I remember driving through this area when it was dotted with market gardens run by Slavic, Italian and Vietnamese peoples along with a growing suburbia and intermittent areas of picturesque bush by the lakes. This exhibition takes the campfire stories from the local Wanneroo community and has turned them into a rollicking good exhibition.

One example of a family barbeque story goes back to my Melbourne Auntie’s car breaking down at the Wanneroo Lion Park with a car full of kids on a very hot day and she was too frightened to wind down the windows, is a true story still often recalled with stress to her!

There are many very good artworks within this Hearsay exhibition which are integrated with memorable period objects on loan from the museum nearby recording events that happened historically within the area of Wanneroo.

 As a kid Wanneroo seemed far away from the city and a long trip to get to this outer suburb town. Rebecca Dagnall’s  Digital Print entitled There is unrest in the forest there is trouble in the trees # reflects in some ways how the mind can alter what is actually out there. While more often than not it’s just bush with a few kangaroos loitering around for food, it’s a good artwork precisely because Dagnall’s image resonates with a kind of omnipresent menace of something unseen, swathing through the trees; as kids we used to think this invisible thing amongst the darkened trees was the Bogeyman which had  a real and terrifying presence for us.

Another particularly likeable artwork is Claire Davenhall’s Moon Boots with large heavy nails smashed into them, fixing them firmly in place; this artwork alludes to the convict escape artist Moondyne Joe, also known as Joseph Bolitho Johns. Moondyne was a robber and thief of minor scale but his efforts kept landing him prison and he kept escaping. In this artwork Davenhall has created an amusing ironic piece in that despite all the Prison authorities’ best efforts, he kept escaping custody and, in the last attempt, he did so in just in his boots.

If Davenhall leaves us with Moondyne's escape. Michael Doherty brings him very much to life in a smallish but savvy oil painting titled Moondyne Racing the Sun  2014 depicted with his fellow gang members in the distance almost as if they are about to go on a criminal jaunt around Perth or, alternatively, are they police trackers? Doherty’s painting reflects the harsh Australia light on a hot unending bush with its associated sands cooking the local plain between the coast and the hills in Perth. Doherty captures Moondyne’s criminal Alpha male personality well in paint and it fits into this well curated Hearsay exhibition succinctly. 

Other fascinating artworks are by Anne Louis Richardson, Ron Nyisztor and Christophe Canato which also merit closer analysis but instead do come and have a look at  Hearsay in the Wanneroo Gallery as it is well worth the trip.

Link to Gallery 

http://www.wanneroo.wa.gov.au/wanneroogallery