Olivia Arnold + Mineko Shimazawa

Chasing Light

25 October – 5 November 2023

Meet the Artists:
Saturday 28th October, 11am – 1pm

Catalogue & Price List
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ONLINE VIEWING ROOM

Saint Cloche is excited to reveal our next pas de deux – Chasing Light, bringing together two serene artists who embody boundless potential unearthed by ‘less’ – Olivia Arnold and Mineko Shimazawa.

Mult-disciplinary artist, Olivia Arnold uses meditative mark-making to instil awareness and to be grounded in her environment, while ceramicist, Mineko Shimazawa manifests her love of nature and its essence from invisible realms through her creations.

There is an exquisite, alluring space sublimated with a gentle energy in the artist’s works, and although their motivations may not be the same, there is a shared sense of restraint and mutual enlightenment. Something profound emerges from the intentional void.

Olivia and Mineko were selected by Gallery Director Kitty Clark as the recipients of the Little Things Art Prize 2022 Gallery Award.

About Olivia Arnold

Olivia Arnold is a multidisciplinary artist working on Cammeraygal land. Since graduating from the National Art School, Olivia has developed a practice that has a strong focus on materiality and observation of her environment. Meditative mark making is a key element of her work, connecting to a process driven background in printmaking, and continued exploration of drawing.

Olivia’s work is primarily site specific, documenting the architecture, interior space, and changing light in her everyday surroundings. She extends the life of transitory shadows and silhouettes by recording them in slow methodical processes. She is interested in the juxtaposition of labour-intensive drawing techniques, with ephemeral and experiential subject matter. Working mostly in monochrome, she allows her marks and bold palette to be the focus of each work. The abstracted forms of her documented shadows create a playful game for the viewer, to identify the objects and scenes she depicts.

This series of work has allowed me to slow down and mindfully connect with my environment. I trace the shapes formed by light around my studio and home, capturing fleeting moments.

By spending time with these abstracted scenes through repetitive mark making, I am able to engage in an active state of looking and be grounded in the spaces I inhabit.

– Olivia Arnold

About Mineko Shimezawa

Mineko Shimazawa is a translator-turned ceramist based in Mount Kuring-gai, the land of Guringai people, Sydney. Originally trained in Linguistics, she was involved in developing machine translation systems and later became a translator herself. She embarked on a journey into ceramics after retiring from work.

Mineko’s love of nature and her desire to express unseeable feelings in tangible forms urge her to create ceramic vessels with her own style. She endeavours to capture the serenity of the sky, the feel of the wind and the beauty of blossoms in her ceramic pieces. She mainly works on porcelain, whose surface mirrors the serene depth of the sky, allows a soft shadow play and renders rich hues of the sky colours.  Now, she regards herself as a translator between nature and ceramics.

In 2022, Mineko Shimazawa completed the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics at Hornsby TAFE. She is a finalist for Gosford Art Prize 2023 and the winner of the Emerging Artist category, Klytie Pate Ceramics Award 2023.

Living on the high side of a valley, I often wake up to a spectacle of colours in the sky—a sea of deep indigo slowly transforming into layers of soft pink and pale blue. The magical apparition of colour gradients never ceases to fascinate me at dawn, dusk, and nightfall. Imagining a little piece of beautiful sky gently descending into my hands, I curl the slab, knead in colours, and lay it on supports for firing.

My aim as a ceramist is to encapsulate the serenity of the sky, the play of light, and the gentle caress of the wind in my ceramic pieces. I strive to capture the beauty of nature in every piece I craft.

– Mineko Shimazawa