Output details

Shibusa - Extracting Beauty

Shibusa – Extracting Beauty celebrates numerous artistic endeavours: music, painting and the skill of making in general with particular reflection upon Japanese aesthetics. Composer, Professor Monty Adkins and visual artist, Pip Dickens (through a Leverhulme Trust Award Artist in Residence) investigate commonality and difference between the visual arts and music exploring aspects of rhythm, pattern, colour and vibration as well as outlining processes utilised to evolve new works within these practices.

The book reviews examples of a number of contemporary artists and craftspeople and their individual approaches to ‘making things well’. It explores the balance between hand skills and technology within a work’s production with particular reference to Richard Sennett’s review of material culture in The Craftsman. It includes contributing essays by arts writer, Roy Exley, who examines convergence and crossover within the arts and an in-depth history, and review, of the kimono making industry by Kyoto designer, Makoto Mori.

Shibusa – Extracting Beauty is a 138 page book which forms the written centrepiece of a collaborative audio-visual project between electroacoustic composer, Professor Monty Adkins and Pip Dickens which also resulted in new paintings and compositions.

The collaborative research project was funded by a £12,329 grant from the Leverhulme Foundation which supported Dickens as Artist-in-Residence in the Music Department at the University of Huddersfield October 2010-June 2011. Pip Dickens undertook research in Kyoto, Japan through host institution, Doshisha University where she interviewed three Kyoto craftspeople. The publication also examines the artworks of visual artists Bridget Riley, Estelle Thompson, Liz Rideal and Paddy Hartley.

As co-editor, Dickens designed and authored 5 of the publication’s 8 chapters. She also edited Japanese designer, Makoto Mori’s, written contribution. The project culminated in a solo exhibition of resultant paintings by Dickens at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation London plus a lecture at the venue (March-April 2012).