Between Being and Becoming

An ability to find form in the formless can be found in the work of Shi Jiayun whose paintings disturb the visual fields between recognition, understanding and perception, lying somewhere in between. As she says: “For me, the practice of painting is not an absolute expression and output from the artist, but rather a constant awareness of the captured external ‘disposition’, which allows me to walk, wander, encounter, and connect, continuously in unpredictable fluid perceptions. 

Emily Moore's new series of textiles range from an update on the art historical tropes of minimalism to the immediate, transient moment of a flower in bloom. Following on from her recent Black Rose works, embroidered onto large-scale swathes of cloth, these more intimate, woven flower portraits made in the South of France present a glimpse of beauty as if seen in an instant. Moore has defined her own term ‘wildness’ in contemporary art, which applies both to her own multifaceted practice but also suggests a loosened, expanded state of painting compared to those more rigid, modernist examples of the grid or the striped form. 

The explosive expanses of floral growth painted by Yuki Sakuta are also instantaneous bursts of colour and emotion, but are in fact imaginary flowerscapes, have been transmuted and translated through reference to fairytales and stories, with titles including words from novels, lyrics from songs, and names of characters from folktales and myths. Her tumbling and generative compositions appear to flow and disperse organically, although they recreate sensations and memories, rather than fixed realities.