About the Exhibition

Three artists I work with were selected for the first ever Open exhibition at Oxmarket Contemporary in Chichester. Cara Macwilliam featured with the newest of her small vibrant coloured ‘Energy’ drawings, Valerie Potter featured with a small cross-stitch embroidered work, and Terence Wilde featured with a detailed black and white pen drawing. The works selected for the open all fall under five categories: applied arts (craft), drawing & illustration, painting, print & photography, and sculpture.

About the Exhibition

Arusha Gallery presented Conjure, a group show at its new exhibition space in Bruton, Somerset, co-curated with Chantal Powell. It featured hand built ceramics that speak to the artist's hand and realm of the unseen. Shinichi Sawada featured with two works. The full list of exhibiting artists were:

Anna Hughes, Anousha Payne, Ashleigh Fisk, Bea Bonafina, Bella Hunt & DDC, Carl Anderson, Chantal Powell, Hannah Rowan, Jame St Findlay, Katia Kesic, Mel Arsenault, Rafaela De Ascanio, Rosie McLachlan, and Shinichi Sawada

Tristan Hoare presented Cracked, an exhibition curated by Leonie Mir and dedicated to hand-moulded ceramics made without the use of a wheel. By removing the structure provided by a wheel, the exhibition focused on contemporary artists who construct, sculpt and mould clay, demonstrating what can be achieved with ‘a little bit of mud and a little bit of genius’ (Paul Gauguin). 

Among the many artists that they exhibited, they were excited to be including Shinichi Sawada’s ceramic creatures. “Their eccentric, thorny exteriors are a mixture of historical totems and mass-manufactured motifs from popular culture.”

Participating artists included:
Aaron Angell, Amy Bessone, John Booth, Shawanda Corbett, Tommaso Corvi-Mora, Karin Gulbran, Ruan Hoffmann, Takuro Kuwata, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Fausto Melotti, Sterling Ruby, Shinichi Sawada, Peter Schlesinger, Katy Stubbs, Kaori Tatebayashi, Alessandro Twombly, and Sophie von Hellerman, amongst others.

About the Exhibition

The Outsider Art Fair presented Super-Rough, a large-scale group exhibition of close to two hundred sculptural works by approximately 60 self-taught, visionary and vernacular folk artists from around the world. Overseen by Takashi Murakami, in collaboration with several dozen Outsider Art Fair dealers and gallerists, the show took place in a raw, expansive ground floor space in SoHo, New York City.

Super-Rough, a word play on Superflat—Murakami’s highly influential term for a new genre of Japanese Pop Art that emerged at the turn of the millennium, proposes the private andidiosyncratic universe of Outsider Art as an alternative to the ongoing spectacle of contemporary art and popular culture. Also referencing Outsider Art’s DIY dimensionality and handmade aesthetic, Super-Rough offers a diametrical departure from the slick seductive surfaces of a shiny consumer consciousness. At the same time it reflects Murakami’s understanding that in visual culture there is equivalence to all manners of art, a super-flattening of prior hierarchical distinctions between fine art and popular or vernacular arts, between what is professional and institutionally ratified and what is self-taught.

Shinchi Sawada had six ceramic works in this exhibition.

About the Exhibition

Innen Leben - A solo exhibition featuring the clay sculptures of the autistic Japanese-based Shinichi Sawada (b.1982). Without being able to express himself verbally, Sawada shares with us mysterious figures of the outside world.

The exhibition started at the Museum Lothar Fischer, Neumarkt (23.2.-14.7.2020) alongside the ink drawings of Alfred Kremer. Following this, just Sawada’s work travelled to the Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin ( 13.9.2020-14.3.2021). It was the first museum solo exhibition in Europe for Shinichi Sawada. For both exhibitions the catalogue Shinichi Sawada was published in German and English. Please contact the museums for this catalogue. It is priced at 10 euros, plus shipping.

Below is a short promotional video from the Georg Kolbe Museum about the show. Unfortunately, much of the show’s run at this venue was disrupted by Covid-19.

The Georg Kolbe Museum show was profiled in Monopol Magazine in March 2021, stating “Over the past two decades, he has developed a unique formal language that invites you to question traditional categories and ways of thinking.” Read the piece in German HERE.

About the Exhibition

A new touring exhibition in Tokyo, Japan that toured across six venues was titled ‘In a sky full of shining stars, unknown gems can be found - To feel change and expansion in our universe.’ This exhibition featured 16 Japanese outsider artists and two American outsider artists, Mr Imagination and CJ Pyle. Two of the Japanese artists of note are Shinichi Sawada and Norimitsu Kokubo, who are represented by the Jennifer Lauren Gallery.

“The artists we are introducing create in deeply unique and idiosyncratic ways. Artists that are compelled to fill a page to the brim. Artists that are compelled to tie and bend leaves. Artists that are compelled to draw only on pieces of discarded wallpaper. The logic and systems we see these artists adopt can challenge some of our most fundamental notions of what “art” is. Our reaction is not their concern. These artists are simply compelled to create. This series of exhibitions will travel across 6 different exhibition spaces in Tokyo (including the Kichijoji Art Museum and the Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery), featuring the works of 16 Japanese Art Brut artists and 2 artists from overseas. This series of exhibitions also features the input from a range of specialists from folklorist, photographers, and museum director (to be referred to as the “new angle navigators”). They will be offering their professional and multi-faceted insights into Art Brut, the potential of art in society and the human compulsion to create.”

More can be read about this special art brut exhibition HERE in English.

Edward Gomez also reviewed the show HERE.