Hiromi Nakajima & Tatsumi Orimoto  

​

Trees Talking & Breadman Walking 

Port Eliot Festival Saltash 2019

 

​

 

Nestled in the high branches of a Summer Oak, Hiromi Nakajima read from her first book "Short Notes”.  Trees Talking  presented an intimate glimpse into the artist's writings: a ribaldest psychic maze that tears ideas into fragments. Scented with dreams, here is an indigo world where the casual consequence of a fib can teach us not to forget the smallest of secrets.

​

Hiromi Nakajima’s versatility as a communicator is in evidence through her images and writings. Working in diverse media from delicate pen and ink to spray-painted water colours, often creating impressionist Rorschach images. Occupying aliminal space of translation where mountains can at once metamorphose into anatomies before our eyes.

​

With poems and extensive narrative texts that playfully engage with subjects from fairytale imagining to existential reflections all served up with the hesitance of a 21st century subjectivity.

​

Hiromi Nakajima has performed and exhibited artworks in Japan and Europe including Turner Contemporary Margate and

Leaving Language for The Folkestone Triennial Collateral.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Tatsumi Orimoto, The Bread Man, presented ideas on “Communication Art” as well as commentary on themes prevalent in the artist's 40 year archive. A specially curated film was premiered plus photographs from the artist's extensive catalogue.

​

Following this event a rare opportunity was given to the audience members; to be made up with French Sticks and Cornish Loaves as contribution to the creation of a living sculpture. The artist then lead a ritualistic procession through The Port Eliot Festival site.

​

Tatsumi Orimoto has created a unique relationship to performance, film and photography by inviting an audience to become essential participants in the production of artworks. Within a monumentally prolific career that spans more than 45 years, Tatsumi Orimoto began working as an artist with Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys and continues across decades to participate in museum and Biennials throughout the world.

​

Known for his seemingly bizarre activities such as "The Bread Man”, where he appears with his face obscured with French bread sticks, this persona is a clear example of what Tatsumi describes as “Communication Art”.

​

The more recent "Art Mama" series has captured the public’s imagination as it provided an insight into the way an artist took a universal theme such as ageing and transformed it into an inspirational portrait of intimacy. "My mother is 91 years old and has become unable to walk by herself. Perhaps, the worldview may be tougher on her existence, but she looks glorious in my work!"

​

Often incorporating found materials and elements of humour he has ensured that his art is not allowed to drift too far from the lived realities of most people. In the era of instant imaging his strategy seems like a prophetic paradigm, revealing the importance of photography in the construction of identity and memory: to hold onto our experiences we have to become producers of our own mythology.