White boat 8
Akio HAMATANI: artist
Akio Hamatani is one of a group of Japanese artists who made radical departures in the field of textile and fibre art in the late 1970s. Based in Kyoto and steeped in its ancient and elegant textile traditions, Hamatani uses thread to construct and define large sculptural forms. In the White boat series he manipulates the natural parabolic forms of suspended rayon threads to build spacial volumes that interact in dramatic partnership with light and air. The work is at once physical and illusory, echoing the Japanese use of textile in theatre and display and creating an extravagant sense of space with the sparest of means. The boat imagery is alternately revealed and obscured as the viewer moves around the work, its apparent solidity a tantalising paradox created by Hamatani's orchestration of space and narrative.
Title
White boat 8
Artist/Maker and role
Akio HAMATANI: artist
Date
1987
Medium
rayon and steel
Measurements
180 x 550 x 200 cm (suspended work)
Credit line
Purchased 1989
The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia
Accession number
1989/0301