Yasuhisa Kohyama
- Mittagong no kaze

Essay by Jacqueline Clayton

In mid 2004, Yasuhisa Kohyama took up a three-month residency at Sturt Craft Centre in Mittagong. For the most part, the pieces in this exhibition were produced during that period. Formally, they are closely allied to recent work made in his studio in Japan, but the colour range - russet, ochre, amber and orange - is a singular and unique legacy of the Mittagong experience. Kohyama has exhibited widely overseas, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Collectors of his work are familiar with its dense, matt, muted surfaces, reminiscent perhaps of the hues of Shigaraki Valley, Kohyama’s long time home and workplace. Rich tonal greys, soft greens and blues play across a highly grogged body, the pieces unembellished with the more familiar traces of long wood firing. Kohyama does not fire for dramatic rivulets of glossy ash and the strongly drawn trace of a flame path. Instead, subtlety of surface is revealed slowly, with attention and time: the understated glow of barely melted ash under a lip or neck, quiet transitions and soft smudged overlays of hushed colour.

In Australia, however, this signature palette has been subject to change. Each day throughout his stay in Mittagong, Kohyama traversed a narrow stretch of bush between his cottage and the pottery. Each day he absorbed the detail of his surroundings: the flight of a bird, the eddy of wind – and its sound, the changing colour of foliage. Under denser skies, brightly coloured native parrots flocked to a wintry eucalypt canopy. Even the sound of wind in these coarser leaves was unlike the breeze through Japanese pine. Alert to his surrounds, Kohyama’s conversations – reflective, wise, amusing – were peppered with references to the distinctive nature of the local environment. In preparing the body of work at Sturt, he speculated on the effect of these variations: a new clay body, vastly different wood, an unfamiliar kiln and firing arrangements.

In late October, on unpacking the anagama and its golden tinged contents, Kohyama spoke enthusiastically. The results were just as he had hoped and had worked so strenuously with assistant Wakae Nakamoto to achieve: “It is just like Mittagong” he declared, “it’s like Australia”. In response, Kohyama has titled this exhibition Mittagong no Kaze. The word kaze means wind or breeze, so translated literally, the exhibition is Mittagong Winds. At first reading, the allusion seems clear. Kohyama’s pieces are titled with references to natural phenomena, particularly the wind; wind is apprehended by the body, is closely connected to daily experience; it may be seen as an agent of navigation and even of change. But in Japanese, kaze is rather more complex. Apart from its primary reference to the movement of air, kaze can also refer to styles and tendencies. Mittagong no Kaze may be a breeze that carries local trends to those who are in its path. Combined with the Chinese character for land, it refers to natural features of a place (fudo), while used with the ideograph for light, it comes to mean scenery and natural beauty. Further, the character for wind often makes up a composite that refers to aesthetic taste and discernment (furyu – wind and flow; fusai – wind and colour; fushu – wind and charm). Plants and fish are dried in the wind, thus securing a concentrated fumi or flavour (wind and taste).

Kaze is an intriguing word, one that traverses simple corporeal pleasures, artistic engagement, the poetic and even the metaphysical. The exhibition title is consistent with Kohyama’s desire to invest the pieces developed for this show with an expression of his residency at Sturt Craft Centre. Mittagong no Kaze is a nuanced and complex clue to a powerful new body of work.

Essay by Jacqueline Clayton. ©