The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is located at 1040 Moss Street. For more information phone 250 384-4101 or visit www.aggv.bc.ca

Web Design, Content and Photos: Kate Cino promoted arts events for 18 years at Boulevard magazine. She has a History in Art degree and a Public Relations certificate from the University of Victoria. 

kate-cino@shaw.ca

Guest artist Yoshiaki Kaihatsu sorts through recyling for his project at the Art Gallery. "Some sculptors like wood or metal," he explains, "but my choice is styrofoam." The artist is half way through his week long residency to build a tea house inside the gallery. A deer’s head will hang near the Shinto Shrine in the Asian Garden.

"Only rich and old people do traditional tea ceremonies in Japan now," says the sculptor. "I use recycled materials to reinvent the ceremony, keeping the parts I value." When in Japan, he asks his tea house guests to create a painting and flower arrangement. But at the opening, he will serve green tea.

Artist Miwa Yanagi looks at social issues of female beauty and belonging in her Grandmothers project. In Geisha (2002) four convivial elders dressed in exquisite robes play with the concept of youth, beauty and happiness. The artist notes that young women in Japan seek social acceptance over personal goals and private pleasures. One of the artist's own dreams is shown in the photograph Miwa (2001). She would like to adopt and raise children of different nationalities to become "global people".

Artist Sayaka Akiyama uses hand-made paper, embroidery, textiles and found objects to reconstruct her journeys. Adrift in a foreign environment, the artist weaves a charming, yet mundane, personal narrative. Humour, surprise, alarm and wonder are expressed in her stitchery steps and poetic musings. Her large installation My domestic walking model (2004) is a hanging tent-like structure. The gauzy material and delicate tracings reiterate the intimacy of her smaller works.

Strange, intriguing and eerily beautiful, Kohei Nawa's PixCell-Toy-Tank #6 (2008) talks about the nature of sensory input. The artist reworks ordinary objects first viewed on-line as pixellated digital images. Once purchased, he alters them with the addition of glass balls. The relationship between sight and touch, virtual and tangible are examined through the act of "re-pixellating" his purchases.

Also in the Exhibition!

Visitors will be impressed by Tabaimo's powerful video installation Haunted House. Using 100's of print images to construct cinematic settings, the artist takes the viewer on a voyeuristic journey. Through disturbing imagery she presents the underbelly of contemporary society.

Manabu Ikeda shows three detailed drawings that are fantastic visual odysseys. Creating mysterious, fecund worlds teaming with ambiguous forms and shapes, the artist points out the potency of natural processes.