Speech by Simon Morley



This exhibition which is called, tongue-in-cheek, A SHORT HISTORY OF MODERN JAPANESE FICTION, was conceived about a year and half ago in close collaboration with Tatsuya Taguchi. I always try to think of a project that will to some extent be site-specific, both in terms of the subject-matter and how the works are physically installed in a space. In this case a number of factors were initially discussed. First, we obviously wanted the new project to be a continuation and development of the themes present in my work as a whole. Second, we wanted the work to fit effectively in the space of Taguchi Fine Art, which was difficult because I had not actually physically seen it. Third, we wanted to come up with a theme that would reflect the fact that I am a British artist showing in Japan.

What, then, are some of the issues underlying my work in general? The interrelationship of word and image (also the theme of my recently published art historical study); seeing versus reading; the relationship between abstract art and conceptual art, and between the aesthetic and the intellectual components of modern art practise; the analogy between the shape of a book and the shape of a painting; the process of making a work through a period of time and how that effects the perception of a work; the fact of being English (rather, by the way, than British) and what that might mean culturally; the literary versus the artistic genre; the relationship to history and certain historical traditions; the irony generated when utopian thinking meets the mundane facts of everyday life.

Quite a lot of different things! But let me try and be concrete. Here in Taguchi Fine Art you see, at least at first, what appears to be a group of same sized monochrome coloured surfaces. But these quickly reveal themselves to be more than that. Each one is a different title page by a different Japanese author of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These are what I call my "Book-Paintings".
The books were chosen after discussions with Tatsuya in order to give the feeling of an overview of modern Japanese fiction. Obviously, they are English translations, and there are omissions.
Have I read the books? Yes! From the beginning an important part of this project was for Tatsuya and I to both read the texts chosen. The result is that I have had a crash-course in your literature, and also in the art of translation. But I will resist the temptation to make any generalisations about either.

Each painting is hand-made. The colours are borrowed from a catalogue of the works by Hokusai, and have been chosen to relate in some way to the books, and also to Japanese woodblock prints - the most well-known kind of Japanese art in the West. Sometimes I have deliberately avoided the obvious in colour analogies - I have not painted the Kobo Abe sand-colour, for example, nor Banana YoshimotoÕs, banana colour. The text is painted only a tone darker than the surface of the paintings. This is important. It slows down the activity of reading and blurs the difference between seeing and reading. I am interested in what happens in the perceptual space that is thereby created. The text is also painted in several layers in order to produce an embossed, tactile surface. This is very important for me too, as it effects the quality of perception.

The central theme of the exhibition is TRANSLATION. Not only from one language to another and one culture to another, but also from one medium to another.
Finally, then, here are three quotations we used in the catalogue for you to think about:

1. "The original betrays the translation."
2. "Inside and between languages, human communication equals translation."
3. "Good translation is not merely translation, for the translator is giving the original through himself, and finding himself through the original."



Sept. 11, 2004. taguchi fine art, ltd., Tokyo