Nana Shiomi – A Room of Ones Own – Seasons

Nana Shiomi – A Room of Ones Own – Seasons and

Nana Shiomi – A Room of Ones Own –Still Life are in the Pallant House Gallery Collection.

Ceramicist Kenzan Ogata (1663-1743) and his brother Korin, a painter, produced many
beautiful things. Their theme was nature, this is the basic concept of Japanese beauty. ‘In ‘A Room of One’s Own –Seasons’, their motif of cherry blossoms has turned to cherry mountains. I use their ceramics as icons of Japanese culture and universal truth. Both life and the seasons are cyclical. On the horizon line of both pictures is De Chirico’s running train, a symbol of the time passing

Shiomi pays homage to Virginia Woolf’s influential feminist essay in which she wrote ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’ When Shiomi first read A Room of One’s Own (1929), she was just starting out as an artist and Woolf’s text became a source of encouragement and advice. Shiomi says, ‘When I lost my mother in 2016, I felt like my world was never the same again. However, a British exhibition visitor said this picture talks about re-birth or re-uniting as she sees the picture from left to right, the same way as the English text. Japanese vertical writing goes from right to left. I was saved by her positive way of seeing.’

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Nana Shiomi makes contemporary woodcut prints. After a period of examining Western art, Shiomi moved on to consider her own Japanese culture within her prints. Shiomi makes reference to masterpieces from the Japanese ukiyo-e tradition in her own work. She often employs a stage within the composition of her images to present ideas. Her printing approach can be described technically as a combination of relief/intaglio and water-based woodcut printmaking. It is rooted in the traditional methods of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock, printmaking by hand with a Baren, to which she has added her own experimental printing techniques.

Shiomi’s work is held in public collections including her epic cycle of 100 Prints ‘One Hundred Views Of Mitate’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Royal College of Art Collection; Pallant House Gallery. Chichester; Wimbledon School of Art Collection; Brunel University, Middlesex; Oriental Museum, Durham; Aberystwyth University, Wales; The Johnson Museum, Cornell University Collection, USA; Tama Art University, Tokyo.

Born in Osaka, Japan in 1956, Shiomi studied oil painting and printmaking at the Tama Art University (BA, MA), Tokyo, and in 1989 – 1991 MA Printmaking at the Royal College of Art, London. She has been living and working in London since 1989.

Rabley Gallery and Nana Shiomi co-published “This Side and the Other Side, Nana Shiomi Woodcuts 1996 – 2016, a monograph on the artist’s prints is available from the gallery.