Time: 1pm 2pm
Exhibition of choice: Dialogues by Chiharu Shiota The New Art Gallery Walsall
Aspirations/Dreams/Hopes
Welcome to the workshop, In todays workshop you will be making a piece based around the
work from Chiharu Shiota's current exhibition in the Walsall gallery. The main piece of interest is
the large installation piece “Letter of thanks” (2014) A nightmarish web composed of wool meets
you when you enter the space, a spiders web that dominates and demands you look upon it. The
letters are an interesting part of the work, ranging from children to the elderly all from Japan.
Added to the wool you get the image of a tornado tearing away these personal letters to loved
ones and other memorable memories contained on the pages. Shiota’s piece is based around
the idea that these letters are trapped in a moment of time, stuck in a loop that exists whilst at
the same time is viable across the four dimensions. This is a rather beautiful piece but at the
same time it could be seen as a dark and depressing piece to view upon.
What will you be doing?
To get a feel of what this piece is like to experience we have come up with a program that will
involve you in both the writing and making sections of the project. As the name hints we will be
asking you to write down on pieces of paper what your aspirations, hopes and dreams are. We
feel that by implementing them into a tornado of wool we will be able to get a similar response to
that from “letter of thanks”.
stage 1:
The first stage will compose you and the group writing around 1015
letters or statements of
either what your dreams are, what your hopes are and what your aspirations are. It is completely
up to you in how long each of the letters have to be. As long as they they are one of the three.
Stage 2:
This is where the fun begins, within the workshop area we will transform the four walls into a
tangled mess from the wool provided, we will use pins to hold the wool to the walls without
having to use materials such as glue.
Stage 3:
After the wool has been placed around the room we will intertwine the letters amongst the wool
to create a scene of destruction, your hope and dreams seemingly being ripped away in a
nightmarish tornado confined to this room.
Exhibition of choice: Dialogues by Chiharu Shiota The New Art Gallery Walsall
Aspirations/Dreams/Hopes
Welcome to the workshop, In todays workshop you will be making a piece based around the
work from Chiharu Shiota's current exhibition in the Walsall gallery. The main piece of interest is
the large installation piece “Letter of thanks” (2014) A nightmarish web composed of wool meets
you when you enter the space, a spiders web that dominates and demands you look upon it. The
letters are an interesting part of the work, ranging from children to the elderly all from Japan.
Added to the wool you get the image of a tornado tearing away these personal letters to loved
ones and other memorable memories contained on the pages. Shiota’s piece is based around
the idea that these letters are trapped in a moment of time, stuck in a loop that exists whilst at
the same time is viable across the four dimensions. This is a rather beautiful piece but at the
same time it could be seen as a dark and depressing piece to view upon.
What will you be doing?
To get a feel of what this piece is like to experience we have come up with a program that will
involve you in both the writing and making sections of the project. As the name hints we will be
asking you to write down on pieces of paper what your aspirations, hopes and dreams are. We
feel that by implementing them into a tornado of wool we will be able to get a similar response to
that from “letter of thanks”.
stage 1:
The first stage will compose you and the group writing around 1015
letters or statements of
either what your dreams are, what your hopes are and what your aspirations are. It is completely
up to you in how long each of the letters have to be. As long as they they are one of the three.
Stage 2:
This is where the fun begins, within the workshop area we will transform the four walls into a
tangled mess from the wool provided, we will use pins to hold the wool to the walls without
having to use materials such as glue.
Stage 3:
After the wool has been placed around the room we will intertwine the letters amongst the wool
to create a scene of destruction, your hope and dreams seemingly being ripped away in a
nightmarish tornado confined to this room.
References:
Images;
Fig 1: Shaw, J. 2014. letter of thanks. [image online] Available at:
http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/chiharushiotadialogues
[Accessed: 5 Mar 2014].
Website:
Chiharushiota.
com. 2014. Chiharu Shiota. [online] Available at:
http://www.chiharushiota.
com/en/ [Accessed: 5 Mar 2014
Images;
Fig 1: Shaw, J. 2014. letter of thanks. [image online] Available at:
http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/chiharushiotadialogues
[Accessed: 5 Mar 2014].
Website:
Chiharushiota.
com. 2014. Chiharu Shiota. [online] Available at:
http://www.chiharushiota.
com/en/ [Accessed: 5 Mar 2014