TOMOKO YONEDA – BEYOND MEMORY
2015-06-15Tomoko Yoneda’s photographs of landscapes and interiors might seem on first glance beautiful locations without any historical importance. We can enjoy the considered and tranquil view and then move on to another equally beautiful scene.
Yoneda seduces us with her images and on first viewing it is easy to miss the clues to the other narratives within the pictures. After reflection we realise that these photographs depict something more complex and troubling. Upon reading the captions we learn that the histories of these locations undermine the alluring nature of the scene before us. Every building and every landscape has been marked in some way by destructive forces.
Only after extensive research and investigation does Yoneda pick her subjects. . The sea, the forest, flowers or derelict buildings have been chosen to illuminate historical conflicts from the late nineteenth century to the present. The artist has asked these nonhuman forms to ‘speak’ to us about the past. The historical range of the exhibition covers the First and Second World Wars, the Second Sino-Japanese War through to the aftermath of the Cold War. The geographical range of the exhibition extends from northern Europe, to Brazil onwards to Bangladesh, and from Japan to China by way of Taiwan.
Exhibition runs through to August 7th, 2015
Grimaldi Gavin
27 Albemarle St
London
W1S 4DW
