The art of the everyday
Midori Mitamura, Art & Breakfast, Melbourne (detail), 2011, installation view. Photo: Midori Mitamura
An exhibition so personal that visitors have had the opportunity to breakfast with the artist in the gallery space is currently showing at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA).
Following previous incarnations in Tokyo, Stockholm and Berlin, the Melbourne exhibition of Art & Breakfast, by Japanese artist Midori Mitamura, is a work in progress.
Ms Mitamura, a trained photographer, is developing the installation over the course of her three months as artist in residence at MUMA, focusing on themes of fleeting moments and memory.
Visitors to the gallery can expect to see a range of everyday objects, such as photographs, cups, record covers, magazines and magnifying glasses stacked in sculptural arrangements. Music plays. Snippets of text on the wall include statements like “I wonder why I always buy the wrong size.”
MUMA’s Rosemary Forde, curator of the exhibition, said Ms Mitamura’s work can be thought of as an intimate studio performance with the artist making daily rearrangements and additions to the space.
“Ms Mitamura’s installation can be seen as a form of visual diary or still life, a journal of interior life, full of markers and associations, expressing the fleeting, ever-changing thoughts, moods and moments that make up existence,” said Ms Forde.
The breakfast aspect of the exhibition has proven popular, with gallery visitors so keen to meet the artist over a meal that all sessions have booked out.
“Bringing breakfast into the gallery as an event is not only a meaningful way for Ms Mitamura to meet and establish cultural exchange with local people, it also sits with a contemporary movement to bring art closer to everyday life,” said Ms Forde.
Art & Breakfast, Melbourne is showing at MUMA until 23 July, 2011.
Artist’s talk – Midori Mitamura with curator Rosemary Forde – 31 May, 2011, 12.30pm.