Mr Jizolark’s concrete data developed, after a year of living in a beach shack, in an island community on the Seto Inland Sea, Japan, in 2016. Conspicuously present in this work is the human absence. We can appreciate the poetic narrative, documented in the futile process of ‘collecting’ castoffs and found in the foreign re-positioned constructs. The opportunity to collate object, image and cultural artefact – found on my daily walks on the beaches reflects a composite history that is both private and public.
The benefits of seclusion gave me insight into the processes of letting go, something antithetical to the notion of collection, with its emphasis on accumulation and holding onto rather than surrendering. Mr Jizolark considers objects, reclaims and displays them but remains free of any attachment to them. They are given a fresh purpose by arranging them on a stage in order to respond to the sacred ritual of showing and seeing. Left only with partial impressions of their utility within the action of presentation one can observe and contemplate these objects to sense their value.
In the material there is a preference for the forgotten, the broken or the used. A powerful tendency to search for materials marked by layers of lost time. I set out to investigate these consumer relics, considering the Japanese notion of ‘mono no aware’. The objects are valued for their rich simplicity and fragmentary nature.
morgan veness 