Japanese ceramics artist Asumi Mizuo has found a unique way to create beauty out of imperfection.
Asumi Mizuo had her first taste of our collective fascination with Crown Lynn as a Tokyo-born student on an exchange in New Zealand.
Now the Auckland-based artist uses the ceramics in her work, collecting pieces of discarded, chipped and broken Crown Lynn and mending them using the traditional Japanese repair technique, kintsugi. Cracks and chips are filled with a lacquer, then covered in a fine gold powder; and while cracks are filled they are also left visible, creating a special type of beauty out of imperfection.
Though some kintsugi involves intentional breakages, Mizuo only works with already damaged pieces that come with their own history. She discovers these broken Crown Lynn objects in second-hand stores and church shops, although she notes that this is getting much more difficult as prices rise and cracked pieces are discarded.
Mizuo's work will be exhibited at City Gallery, Wellington, alongside the Crown Lynn: Crockery of Distinction exhibition until April 25.
10 FAVOURITE THINGS
1. The Crystal Palace Theatre, and garden next to it
A great heritage building on Mt Eden Rd which used to be a picture theatre. There is empty land next to it which drops away from street level. It makes me think of the solitary garden looked after by a robot in Castle in the Sky - a Hayao Miyazaki film.
2. Artist Tacita Dean
She engages with found images and objects by respecting their individual history or context. She appreciates what it is, but adds her own poetic understanding into the production.
3. Freemans Park apartment blocks
I like this residential apartment block for its 60s architecture, and the spacious planning. Also it reminds me of the apartment block I grew up in Tokyo. It had lots of big trees, playgrounds and weeds growing wild.
4. Teaching of Islam by Shinro Ohtake
The one painting I ever really wish to own at any cost. Unfortunately, it's in the collection of the artist and he is rather famous. I would need to be pretty rich, so instead I have a postcard.
5. Small white cracked cup
I got this in an antique market in Japan three years ago, but I think it's European. It's very thick and glazed inside, and I think it has a perfect curve. The cracks and black marks give great patina to it. I'm still deciding whether to mend it with gold or keep it as is.
6. Split/Fountain
A bookshop, studio and project space on K Rd. I like the space as well as the projects held there. They have a great range of books from independent art publishing around the world, and artists' editions only available here. It's an unusual, but successful architectural collaboration of skinny floor space with a high ceiling, huge bookshelf and vintage furniture. It is also my studio shared with three other creative practitioners.
7. Japan by et al.
Artwork by et al. - hand-drawn scripts and diagrams on to an old German travel guide book of Japan. I love this most as I am a collector of old images of Japan and et al.
8. Collier's World Atlas and Gazetteer, c. 1943
I also collect old atlases and maps. This one was perhaps published in the most difficult time to produce atlases. Of course you can't see people on the map, but thinking about what was happening there at the time, it's interesting and depressing at the same time.
9. Children's reference book, published c.1938
I have a collection of children's encyclopedia from the 1930s-60s. They're a great source of quirky images and ideologies and a great starting point to think about how ideas about things shift. This one was published just before WWII started.
10. St Kevin's Arcade
One of my favourite old buildings in Auckland. Beautiful, well-kept and well-used. I love how most of the shops still retain the original leadlight windows, wooden frames and doors. It makes me think of an old railway station I've never been to.
