Yumiko Ono, Japan -Scotland Resident

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop is excited to announce that Yumiko Ono is the artist selected to represent TOKAS in the final stage of the Scotland-Japan Residency exchange. She will be in residence at ESW for three months between April and June developing a series of new works.

Ono Yumiko completed her BA in Kyoto Seika University (Japan) in oil painting in 2005. Since her BA, Ono studied in Hungarian University of Fine Arts (Hungary), in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (Israel) and studied in Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (Czech Republic) and completed an MA in intermedia in Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (Czech Republic) and second MA honors in ceramics in Stieglitz State Academy of Arts and Design (Russia). All of which were funded by the governments of each country as well as the Ministry of Culture of Japan. Additionally, Ono has participated in residency programs world widely such as John Michael Kohler Arts Center, MASS MoCA (MA), ISCP, Franconia Sculpture Park Fellowship, Retreat (USA), BANFF Centre for Arts and Creativity (Canada), Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan), Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Paradise AIR, Hisai Ars Plaza, C.A.P. (Japan), Gyeonggi Creation Center (South Korea), CCI Fabrika, St. Petersburg Art Residency (Russia), RSJ (Brazil), Meet Factory (Czech Republic) and At Home Gallery Residency (Slovakia). Ono was also awarded Franconia Sculpture Park Fellowship as well as grants from Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation, Asahi Shimbun Foundation, Japan Foundation and was selected as a finalist of CAF award.

Yumiko Ono has done a number of exhibitions mainly in Europe and Japan and more recently throughout the USA and Russia. She has shown her work in national galleries such as her solo show “Epitomes” at MoCA Taipei (Taiwan), solo show “Organic Matter” at Diem Phung Thi Museum (Vietnam), group show “Domani” at The National Art Center in Tokyo (Japan), group show “Bashnya” at Yelabuga State Historical Architectural Art Museum Preservation (Russia) group show “Utopia on the Brink of an International Creative Laboratory Bashnya (Russia), International Art Symposium Elements Cuisine (Slovakia) Kyoto Sento Art Festival (Japan). Her work is in both public and private collections such as John Michael Kohler Arts Center (USA), Kohler Co (USA), Yelabuga State Historical Architectural and Art Museum Preservation (Russia) and Imperial Porcelain Factory (Russia).

Yumiko Ono’s recent theme is utopia, an ideal world that exists in imagination. Ono researches on Socialist architecture as well as Western architecture, which has visual similarities and has been influenced by Socialist ideology and she has been producing mainly ceramics and drawings based on the research. Ono considers Japan, where she was born and raised, as a country between the East and the West and she focuses on the relationship in the field of architecture between the East, the West and Japan concretely Constructivism, Brutalism and Metabolism. By using reference from the existing buildings as well as unrealized architectural plans form those architectural movements, Ono creates fictive architectural work with anti-architectural materials such as ceramics, paper, and textile. Unlike the characteristic of architecture, which is rigid, strong, rational, she uses materials with the opposite characteristics such as soft, fragile, and sensitive, to critique fragility and fictionality of utopia itself. Through those fictive architecture, she aims to create the world which does not belong to anywhere.

Yumiko Ono’s ESW Residency Project continues her research on brutalist architecture in the framework of utopian architecture and production of infinitely scalable sculptures. She aims to create a space free from the boundaries between ceramic, sculpture, and architecture, and Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop is an ideal place for this. Besides, the UK is the birthplace of Brutalist architecture with over 20 notable Brutalist buildings in Edinburgh.

More about Ono Yumiko’s work on her website at https://www.yumikoono.com/