Nobuko Tsuchiya uses a variety of media to create imaginative sculptures that evoke an arresting narrative quality. Her work incorporates found household objects including mop buckets, table legs, rags and plastic tubing. Her enigmatic sculptures resemble minimalist mechanisms devoid of function, primitive robots, or curious experiments.
She begins by collecting materials she is intuitively attracted to and combining them into polymer-like structures which are then cast. For Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019 Tsuchiya spent a month in the gallery at Leeds Art Gallery assembling her work. Visitors could see the exhibition in progress and the final work was on display during the festival.
Tsuchiya approaches her materials as repositories of memory and experience, as well as signifiers of the future; “I treat these physical and imaginative aspects equally, combining and recombining them until I’m able to construct a story embedded within an object”.
Tsuchiya has exhibited internationally, most recently at SCAI The Bathhouse, Tokyo, 2018.
Find out more about the artist by listening to our audio guide
b. 1972 Yokohama, Japan
Lives and works in Japan
Originally opened in 1888, Leeds Art Gallery has one of the most significant collections of 20th century British art outside London.
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