ShugoArts is pleased to present Echoes―Crashing waves, Tomoko YONEDA's solo exhibition from Saturday, June 4 to Saturday, July 9, 2022. Based in London, the photographer Tomoko Yoneda sustains her international art practice in which she creates works around historically significant locations where tranquility has prevailed over time, as well as places, people and objects that conceive memories of wars and disasters. Through her works, Yoneda helps the viewers to gain a new sense of recognition by analysing history with her detailed research then translating it to photographic expression in order to reconstruct stories that were held within her initial motifs.
In this exhibition, the viewers are ushered to share the same lens with Yoneda who observed conflicts around the world that have not ceased to exist even in the 21st century. Yoneda depicts the form of human society that keeps updating its locality through destruction and reconstruction while capturing unnamed and natural beings living in peace. This innate sensibility assigns an unwavering poetic tone to her art practice which has lasted for more than 20 years. This exhibition features artworks that were photographed in France, Belgium, Bosnia, Sakhalin and the demilitarised zone of the Korean Peninsula from the early 2000s to 2020.
Tomoko Yoneda, Window I, Soviet Border Guardhouse, Saaremaa Island, Estonia, (2004). Chromogenic print, image: 65 x 83 cm, edition of 10. Courtesy ShugoArts.
Tomoko Yoneda, Ridge—Viewing the location of ‘Mosquito Crest’, Battle of Brunete, Spain, (2019). Chromogenic print, image: 19 x 24 cm, edition of 25. Courtesy ShugoArts, Tokyo.
Born in Hyogo, Japan, in 1965. Lives and works in London. In 1991, she received MA in Photography from Royal College of Art in London. Yoneda continues making works projecting the memories and history associated with places and things.
ShugoArts, established by Shugo Satani in 2000, values its locality, selects its artists regardless of their time and place, and sends out its activities from Tokyo.
Today, it has gotten much easier to appreciate various artworks of all times and places and their meanings, as well as spaces exhibiting artworks, need to be redefined, including contemporary art galleries. ShugoArts prioritises how to realise artists’ own growth as artists or make the most of their accomplishments. In order to nurture their abilities and possibilities, we provide our space for artists to express themselves freely and follow their artistic journeys side by side. Under any circumstances, our mission is to work and grow together with artists who ceaselessly create artworks, which shine a light on life and give it validation.
ShugoArts holds about 7 exhibitions a year and participates in national and international art fairs while simultaneously managing commissions for public spaces and organising performance and talk events. In addition, we also would like to be a part of art histories at large by creating invaluable archives and assisting art institutions.
