“I’m trying to take back control, to preserve time by stopping the clock on flora and fauna.”
Tristan Hoare is delighted to present Still Life, a solo exhibition of Kaori Tatebayashi’s ceramics and our second collaboration in Fitzroy Square. In Still Life, Tatebayashi steps away from the floral 'cultivated' garden, presented to audiences in The Walled Garden in April 2020, into a botanical vision focusing on wild plants which will reclaim the gallery’s Georgian rooms, immersing viewers in a still-life installation.
Still Life presents a life-size immersive tableau in which audiences will become part of Tatebayashi’s ceramic installation. Weeds and ivy burst from the shadows and crawl across the walls of the gallery towards the light, reclaiming what appears to be a dilapidated house. Ceramic fruit on pewter platters, a ceramic loaf of bread and a slice of a ceramic melon are laid out on an abandoned dining table in the middle of the second room; the presence of humans is felt through their absence. “I’m trying to take back control, to preserve time by stopping the clock on flora and fauna” comments the artist. Moments of their fleeting lives are captured within clay, echoing the French for 'still life’ - ‘nature morte’ - ‘dead nature.’ Clay ends its organic life in the firing process and what remains - the ceramic - is a memory of the object whose shape it now takes on.
Still Life celebrates nature as ‘the ultimate artist’ in Tatebayashi’s words. The plants choose her and in turn she captures and organises them in her Still Life, taking back control for a brief moment.
