Artist Bio
Noriko Nakamura (b.1986, Japan) is based in Castlemaine/ Dja Dja Wurrung. Her practice consists primarily of stone carving, underpinned by her ongoing interest in Japanese animism Shinto, which considers the relationship between the human and material world.
Her recent works explore the complexity of female embodied experiences and reimagine narratives of feminine subjectivity for empowerment. Her works have been exhibited at Murray Art Museum Albury, Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne Sculpture Biennale, and La Trobe Art Institute and Heide Museum of Modern Art. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.
Artist Statement
My stone carving practice explores the complexity of female embodied experience through drawing connections to the force of the earth. I carve my limestone sculptures using only hand tools: pruning saws, chisels, rasps, a mallet and sandpaper to tune into the slowness of limestone’s formation, bringing echoes of an ancient temporal atmosphere. By carving by hand, I aim to incorporate each stone’s physical characteristics and quality, and to imbricate mothering dedication and Japanese Shinto animistic sensitivity to embrace the stories of transformation embodied within the materials themselves.
My recent practice expands on developing a fictional narrative about a love affair between a single mother and a slime mould that lives on her apartment balcony. This story is evoked by my personal experiences around pregnancy, birth, and the anxiety of going into menopause, and uses slime mould as a framework to examine the complexity of women’s bodily transformations. I create installations consisting of limestone sculptures, bronze sculptures and a mural that are elaborated by the scenes in my narrative. Through fictional writing, my practice attempts to conceptually link living organisms that show morphological potentials of in-betweenness in the natural world to female bodily transformations to offer a pluralistic understanding of feminine subjectivity.