Yobitsugi: Beyond Repair

Andrew Palmer | Anna Frijstein | Bouke de Vries | Caroline McCarthy
Hiraki Sawa | Jeremy Hutchison | Livia Marin | Poppy Whatmore
Rosa Nguyen | Yukako Tanaka
curated by Paul Carey-Kent and Yuki Miyake

Kintsugi (‘golden joinery’), is the Japanese art of repairing broken – typically by using lacquer mixed very visibly with powdered gold, silver, or platinum – so that the breakage and repair is valued as part of the history of the object, rather than something to be disguised. The purpose is ‘to give a new ‘landscape’ and ‘life’ to a so-called ‘broken’ vessel by creatively incorporating many strands of its identity: the owner’s memories, the maker’s inspiration, the vessel’s personality, and the happenstances of history. One of the techniques used is yobitsugi (‘invite connection’), which repairs a broken vessel by combining it with a broken piece from elsewhere, bringing new life and character to objects and making the philosophy of kintsugi particularly clear. In just that spirit, the artists in this show go ‘beyond repair’ to embrace and incorporate damage or error as the creative inspiration for their art.