Message to Japan

Hello from Toronto, Canada! Hope everything is going well over there in Japan.  Hopefully some of the things we have made will bring some smiles to your faces.  The world remembers and cares and is trying to help.  All the best.

Artist information

Tom Ngo is a mixed media artist presently based in Toronto, Canada. Through his art Tom employs architectural absurdity and whimsy as way of questioning rules within our environment. Concurrently, Tom is an intern architect at the esteemed office of Moriyama & Teshima Architects in Toronto. Tom’s close relationship with the architectural practice gives him insight on its limitations and aspirations and helps form the foundation of his work. Tom is represented by LE Gallery in Toronto.

Official Website: TOMGNO

Message to Japan

Dear friends, survivors, future gazers, forward thinkers

In the past year and half since the terrible disaster in Tohoku, we have followed, with special interest and sympathy, your struggle to regain some sense of normalcy and reclaim your lives from beneath such a catastrophe. We remain aware of your continuing challenges with adequate housing and infrastructure, your concerns about radiation, the economy and so on. We have been humbled by the stoicism and the tenacity exhibited in the face of such hardship, and are confident that of all the people on this earth, the Japanese have the spirit and ambition to use this tragedy as an opportunity to re-imagine a better and more sustainable future for us all.  Our thoughts are with you.

Lightbox to look at the Sun under the Sun powered by the Sun

Incredibly materialistic capitalist lifestyle founded on a culture innately socialist in its ideas and structure (Canadians could never imagine the choice of pens at any stationary store in Japan); standing as the only non-Christian G8 country (in fact there is no religion in any monotheistic sense), the pervasive fatalism that immediately contradict the equally common and strong sense of “self-responsibility”; sappy macho athletes (like soccer players!) publically sobbing over the lost game — Japan has an extremely unique and paradoxical way of being which we had always described simply “different” if not “weird”. Since the series of extreme events after 3/11/2011, we clearly see the potential that this unique nation shines a positive light over the path to a better place that all of us could follow.

Our work too has been conceived upon a mélange of all these thoughts and ideas — the abundance of cool gadgets and materials (and the price!) we so adore and that no one else offers, the redundancy and nonsense essential in any communication, an ancient reverence towards the Sun (nature) which persists to this day, worshiped almost unconsciously — and the “path”, the whole new path we, who happen to be the survivors must find, so not to waste the lives lost.

We have chosen to live as artists but do not particularly believe in the “power of art” to overcome problems we face in the world. All we know is that this is the way that suits us to communicate something, often about art itself, which is ultimately about something beyond art. Communication is everything, yet artists cannot really claim what we are doing is communicating anything. A lovely contradiction which reminds us of the “weird” being of Japan. It is in this spirit we have brought our work into this exhibition.

Artist information

smfoundation is Shinobu Akimoto and Matthew Evans who sometimes collaborate in the same apartment in Montreal, Canada, and other times across the Pacific. Akimoto has practiced art and life in canada since early 1990s and now divide her time between Japan and Canada; Evans is a Canadian artist currently based in Montreal. He lived in Japan between 2003 – 2008. For more information about
Shinobu Akimoto: www.shinobuakimoto.com
Matthew Evans: www.thepopmodule.com

Message to Japan

Like the thought of ripe, delicious tomatoes at the end of summer in mind as I water my plants this morning, my contribution to this project is a small way of saying that Japan and the glorious times ahead of it are in my thoughts today.

Artist information

Miles Collyer (born, 1983 in Toronto) is a visual artist whose practice is motivated by photo-based sources and issues relating to cultural identity. He studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design where he was the recipient of several academic scholarships and awards before graduating with a BFA in photography in 2006. After completing his undergraduate studies Collyer has gone on to receive further grants and awards for his work, most notably a Gold medal in 2008 from the Canadian National Magazine Awards in the category of Best Art Direction for a Single Magazine Article. His work has been published and exhibited across Canada, the United States, Australia, Switzerland, Germany and several curated exhibits online. In 2012 he was accepted into a program of Fine Art Graduate study at Toronto’s York University, leaving the artist-run centre Art Metropole and the position of Shop Manager, which he had held since 2005.

Official Website: Miles Collyer