Tomoko Takahashi at the De La Warr Pavilion

Tomoko Takahashi at the De La Warr Pavilion

INTROSPECTIVE RETROSPECTIVE

3 July - 12 September 2010

This summer the De La Warr Pavilion brings you Introspective Retrospective, an exhibition by Japanese artist, Tomoko Takahashi. One of the most engaging installation artists of the last 20 years, Tomoko Takahashi has established her reputation through the playful recycling of everyday detritus of everyday life into illuminating works of art.

This exhibition is the first time that a comprehensive collection of Takahashi's work has been shown together anywhere in the world. Comprsing installation, sculpture, collage, drawing, film and an interactive website, the exhibiton reveals the depth of her understanding. Scavenging from skips for raw materials, the artist champions the obselete and disregarded. These random objects are positioned and arranged precisely to give her work their particular beauty. This intricate process is an important part of the work and often involves her living in the installation space prior to the exhibition opening. Her fascination with the different ways in which we inhabit space becomes apparent through the complex and sprawling installations that she produces.

Living and working in Bexhill over the last few months, Takahashi has produced a major new installation for Gallery 2 entitled Paperwork @ the Seaside that engages with the Japanese phenomena of manga. She has trawled through dozens of volumes of manga comics, copying, categorising, and arranging the images into different subject matters which she has used to create a unique installation work. The piece highlights our need to make sense of the world and the bombardment of information with which we are confronted each day.

Takahashi has recreated her installation, Wet Paint, (for Rupert Carey, Bedroom: Sculpture Version (May 2010) which is housed in a shed and can be viewed on the Sun Parlour at the end of the First Floor Balcony.

Tomoko Takahashi was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2000. She has work in Saatchi Collection and Tate (London). Her last major exhibition was at the Serpentine Gallery in 2005.

Introspective Retrospective acknowledges the support of the Sasakawa Foundation.