CURATION⇄FAIR Kyoto Japan
CAVES is pleased present a two-person exhibition bringing together the work of Naarm/Melbourne-based artists Anna Varendorff and Noriko Nakamura. Across their respective practices; metalsmithing, sculpture, jewellery, stone carving and installation, Varendorff and Nakamura share a profound commitment to the act of ‘making’ as the conceptual heart of their work. For both artists, handmaking is not incidental but essential: a way of thinking, a form of inquiry, and a means of encountering the world through material.
Varendorff considers the act of making as integral to the human condition, employing it as a means of critical examination. Working in brass and stainless steel, she crafts objects with tight curves, gentle loops and long rigid lines that stand alone while existing in dialogue with the organic. Varendorff moves fluidly between fine art, commercial design, and public commissions. Nakamura centres slow, labour-intensive process as the conceptual core of her practice, using traditional hand-carving techniques to transform limestone from inanimate and heavy into playful forms suggestive of movement and lightness. Nakamura’s framework is
spiritual and ecological. Her practice draws on personal experiences of motherhood, cultural heritage and an enduring curiosity for the material world shaped by unseen life forces, informed by the Japanese Shinto animism perspective. Her work involves ideas of animism, ritual practice, and relationships between humans and the material world. Both artists are interested in how the manipulation of materials can be used to
imbue an object with significance to change its meaning, and our relationship to it.
Varendorff’s and Nakamura’s practices operate across a spectrum from intimate objects to larger installations, and both have over the years a significant exhibition history with CAVES.
Their connections to Japan are different but equally formative. Japan is a site of enduring interest for Varendorff: she participated in a residency in Onishi, Gunma in 2016 and has returned many times to visit art sites and festivals, a thread that runs through her practice. For Nakamura, Japan is not a site of interest but of origin. Born in Japan and based in regional Victoria, Australia, her Shinto-informed animism and cultural heritage are woven into the very substance of the work.