Patricia Swannell & Kazuhito Takadoi | Alliance & Exchange

About

In April this year Patricia Swannell and Kazuhito Takadoi were invited to Sharjah in the UAE for research and to give a workshop with local artisans. The experience unexpectedly turned into a close collaboration where both artists shared their techniques, thinking processes and making. In spite of each artist having their own distinct language and works, the result was an inspiring dialogue and understanding of each other’s creativity and production. Although their works are so different, the artists share a rapport with the natural world, using and being inspired by organic materials and approaching their practice in a measured, serene and obsessive way.

After that enriching experience, jaggedart invited Patricia and Kazuhito to work together for a second exhibition at the gallery, but this time creating works jointly. The result of this close collaboration will present surprising works that will no doubt be a celebration of nature and alliances.

Each one of the artists will present their own works, some reflecting the skills they have learned working together.  There will also be around five works that will be made together. For the joint pieces, each artist will  start the work and then it will be adapted according to instructions from the other artist, or passed on to the other artist to complete. Thus, print, painting, drawings will be sewn, embroidered or constructed.

Patricia’s drawings, prints and paintings explore our relationship with, and effect on, the natural world around us. Trees, the lungs of the earth, are potent signifiers. Rooted in the ground while reaching to the sky, they connect us to both past and future human generations. Her work represents a meditation on time – embedded in the environment we inherit and the legacy that we leave behind.
 

Her focus on environmental matters is also reflected in her work for The Royal Botanic Garden Kew at Wakehurst Place which highlights the conservation work of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. Her project, Legacy; A Reciprocal Tribute, at the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Wood, Leicestershire, started in 2014, will continue for the next six decades, recording the growth of the woodland by photographing the same family every year as the trees in the background shift, grow and transform alongside them. Patricia has completed her MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School in 2009 and has been showing with jaggedart since 2007.
 

Inspired by the rich woodland surrounding his birthplace of Nagoya, Japan, Kazuhito Takadoi grows and hand picks grasses, leaves and twigs from his garden, sowing each blade through the paper.  As the grasses dry and mature they embark on a subtle colour shift, comparative to seasonal change.  Kazuhito’s exquisite works are full of dichotomies:  His work is both minimal, yet opulent.  It is simultaneously fragile yet has strength, and combines the formality of Eastern discipline with abstraction from Western art.

Kazuhito trained in Agriculture and Horticulture in Japan the US and in the UK, before studying Art and Garden Design in the UK. Kazuhito has just been awarded a Special Mention at the 2019 Loewe Craft Prize. His work has been recently purchased by the V&A Museum and will be displayed at the Toshiba Galleries at the Museum as from October 2019.

The works that Kazuhito Takadoi made in Sharjah in collaboration with the local artisans who weave with the leaves of the palm trees, were shown at the London Design Festival in September by Irthi Contemporary Arts Council, a division of  NAMA WOMEN ADVANCEMENT ESTABLISHMENT.