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her favourite colour was green...

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The bitter-sweet shifting sentiments of her… 

In this collaborative exhibition, Yumemi Hiraki and Corinna Howell reconcile with change and loss towards a loved one, creating visceral layers of forgone memories.

Obaachan:

Yumemi explores the relationship she had with her grandmother, grasping the reality of her recent passing. She reflects on nostalgic memories shared; the play, the songs and her comfort, together with the seeping sense of guilt for the realities of times spent apart and the weight of her untold stories that can never be recovered. As a hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor), an early widower and person with dementia, Yumemi grapples with the significance of her grandmother’s experience as an individual and the unforgiving actualities of aging. This exhibition to Yumemi is a homage to her grandmother and the exploration of these eternal yet fleeting feelings, before they are also, like her, gone forever.

 

Okasan: 

Memories and relationships inevitably evolve and change, and at some point, they may fade or leave. Corinna aims to “fill in the gaps”; she is seeking to reconcile the changes that have occurred to the relationship she shares with her mother who suffers from depression and bipolar disorder. Selecting a few specific memories from years ago that were quintessentially mundane yet heartwarming, she aims to find solace in the reality of the relationship that has ensued. She feels the loss of a personality that her mother once had, and having lived countries apart between Japan and Australia, there is a geographical and an emotional separation. Now as an adult Corinna realises the gravity of her mother’s mental illness, and through her memories, she tries to retrieve and preserve her mother’s past identity that she once knew.

Beautiful words by Yangi Sherpa:

https://www.theyanzieesshow.com/blog/how-to-understand-art

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Apple House

Apple house is an attempt to replicate the tattered state of the original banner of Apple House, the local lolly shop in Yoshino town. Corinna and her mother would ride their bike en route home from kindergarten. Apple House remains unchanged, just worn by old age.

acrylic on cotton cloth, 2021, 180 x 60 cm

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The fireplace was reimagined as a Butsudan (shrine) that is commonly found in Japanese homes. 

The pit fired ceramic pieces are reminiscent of bones. Commonly, Japanese people are cremated in death, and the family uses special large chopsticks to place the remnant bones into the urn.

 

-Pit fired ceramics, plaster plinth, rice, incense

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Yumemi’s grandmother’s spoken stories of experienced events of the atomic bomb day, recollected and written in English.

- Grey lead on gallery wall, watercolour on gallery floor

Collaborative paintings exploring the fleeting quality of the memories Corinna and Yumemi hold. The figures painted - Corinna’s younger self, her mother, and Yumemi’s Grandmother, traverse through the layers and topography of the glass.

The sheets were slumped with impressions of the topography of Kagoshima and Hiroshima.

-Oil on glass and acrylic on gallery wall

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上を向いて歩こう

(ue wo muite arukō)

Japanese lyrics from a 1961 pop song, 上を向いて歩こう(Let’s Walk Looking Up) by Kyu Sakamoto, with modified lyrics by Yumemi’s Grandmother, Kazuko Morinaka. 

 

Original Lyrics

上を向いて歩こう(ue wo muite arukō) - Let's walk looking up 

涙がこぼれないように(namida ga koborenai youni) - So that the tears won’t fall

泣きながら歩く (nakinagara aruku) - While crying I walk

ひとりぼっちの夜 (hitoribocchi no yoru) - Alone in the night

 

Modified Lyrics

上を向いて歩こう(ue wo muite arukō) - Lets walk looking up 

涙がこぼれないように(namida ga koborenai youni) - So that the tears won’t fall

逞しく歩く (takumashiku aruku) - With inner strength I walk

ひとりぼっちの和子 (hitoribocchi no Kazuko) - Alone is Kazuko

 

- cut paper, thread

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