The St Mary’s Campus Library is pleased to display woodcut prints by Tokyo-born, London-based artist Yuko Shiraishi, handprinted by Matthew Tyson.
Shiraishi is a painter, printmaker, installation artist and curator whose work investigates the properties of colour. She is recognised for her minimal style, in which bands of contrasting colour are delicately layered alongside one another in simple composition. Pared back to its essential elements, Shiraishi’s work prompts us to think more intuitively about tone, line, and shape.
Her work follows a long tradition of artists who wanted to better understand the relationship between colour and our own visual perception. As far back as the 1940s, artists like Mark Rothko sought to do away with traditional forms of representation, instead choosing to focus solely on harnessing the emotional intensity of colour.
The set of prints on display belongs to the series ‘A Day’. Here, twelve images suggest the passing of a twenty four hour period, as shifting tones reveal a vibrant progression from dawn, to sunrise, to the deepest dark of night. The series reflects on ideas found in the historic traditions of ukiyo-e woodcuts, a genre of Japanese printmaking that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries, depicting narrative scenes of contemporary life in Japan.
Alongside her work in print and painting, Shiraishi has also produced many large-scale art installations and commissions. In 2009, she created ‘Space Elevator Tea House’, a skeletal building constructed from stainless steel and plexiglass replicating an early 17th-century Japanese tea house simultaneously advertised as a means of space travel, acknowledging the persistent tension between traditional and modern endeavours.
In London, she has completed several major public commissions including a design for the reception of the BBC Media Centre in White City, a multi-floor mural for the Moorfields Eye Hospital Children’s Wing and ‘Canal Wall’, a 70-metre mural along Regent’s Canal. Her work is held in many major collections including Arts Council England, the British Museum and the National Museum of Art, Osaka.
The display at St Mary’s was organised and funded by Imperial Health Charity. For more information visit Art in hospitals.
For further information about the printer please contact info@imprints-galerie.com.
Yuko Shiraishi woodcut at St Mary's Campus Library