AOF AWARD
Open to BAFA graduates of Hong Kong Art School (the foundation director’s alma mater) who excel in artistic research during their final year project.Inaugural AOF Award:
The foundation is delighted to announce the winner of the 2024 AOF Award, Yuko Fukuba Johnsson.
The artist was presented with the scholarship at a ceremony during the opening of the graduate exhibition at Hong Kong Arts Centre earlier this month. Her installation is on view through 22 July.
Please join us in congratulating Yuko!
The Seventh Heterotopias (2024)
Yuko Fukuba Johnsson
Local raw materials, minerals, clay, pigments, found objects; Dimensions variable.
“The series of artworks started with my fear that I would get dementia in the future, as my mother and her mother. I wished to preserve my precious memories before they faded away from me.
Both stones and ceramic materials as geological components contain a history of hundreds of millions of years. One piece of rock in the local park in Tokyo might have witnessed my childhood days with my father who has already passed away. That idea transformed the stone into evidence of my memory representing the place. I pick up the stone, wrap it with ceramics and raw materials while layers of colours and textures implying the story or the scenes to preserve. The firing process integrates the place and my qualia to become a container of my memory. The heat of 1280 Celsius reveals the hidden layers of minerals because of the clay shrinkage and suggests no memories remain perfect, yet it gains its own beauty.
In this series, I use two fundamental characteristics of ceramics, the historical function of the container and its permanence as fired mineral components, to materialise invisible memories eternally through encapsulating them within ceramics.”
母方の直系２代が認知症を患っている経緯から、将来は自身も母や祖母のようにという蟠りが常に内在します。それは認知症患者が自立した状態を維持するのが難しい現状や病気への理解と共存を目指すサポートの不足といった現実に対する憤りに近い感情から始まったものの、帰結したのはまだ「わたし」として生きている間に自身を構成してきた大切な思い出が消滅していくことへの恐怖でした。
今シリーズでは、陶磁器が歴史的に持つ「容器(container)」という機能に加えて焼成された鉱物としての「永続性(permanence)」という特徴に則り、消えゆく思い出をセラミックスに内包させることで永遠に物質化させることを試みています。
思い出のある土地で拾った石を、広義では同じ鉱物である陶磁器原料を使用した記憶を象徴する色と質感の層で包んで1280℃の高温で焼成することで、場所という客観と思い出という主観が結合します。制作過程で生まれるセラミック層のひび割れから内層のストーリーが垣間見られますが、それは同時にどんな思い出もそのまま留められることはなく、不完全な美として心に存在していることの象徴でもあります。
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ABOUT HONG KONG ART SCHOOL
Hong Kong Art School (HKAS), founded in 2000 and co-presented with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University), is a division of the Hong Kong Arts Centre (HKAC). Closely associated with HKAC’s environment and creative enterprises, HKAS offers a unique setting for students to draw on a vast spectrum of artistic practices.
HKAS is an accredited institute staffed by a group of dedicated artists and art educators, who are active and distinguished practitioners in the field. The School’s award-bearing curriculum focuses mainly on the area of Fine Art (Ceramics, Painting, Photography and Sculpture). Its scope covers programs with academic levels ranging from Higher Diploma to Bachelor Degree. The short courses and the outreach projects of the School that run parallel to the award-bearing curriculum span a wide variety of artistic disciplines, and genuinely bridge art and the community.
More information about the school can be found here.