This is the third solo show of the female artist at the gallery. Featuring two main bodies of work, the show focusses on her minerology and torn sculpture series. A longtime collector of rocks and minerals as a result of her extensive international travels, Ogawa Machiko (b 1946) equates the joy she feels from her creative process to that of a miner, who after years of excacating, at long last discovers a vein of ore.
Her mineralogy series pays tribute to such discoveries with each fragmented rocklike sculpture seemingly hewn from the depths of the earth and embedded with crystals in its matrix. In fact, they are created through patient sculpting and multiple firings using different clays, varied forms of glass, and added minerals.
Contrasting with these solid rocks, the Torn Sculpture series suggest broken primitive receptacles, unearthed during an archaeological dig and weathered by the elements. Within each fragment, the flowing or pooling glass glaze appears as if water has crystallised onto the surface while buried deep in the earth. In both series, Ogawa uses the warped and fissured texture of the clay body to suggest a desert floor, a mesa boulder, a polar cave or the deepest caverns under a mountain.
