Shigetoshi Furutani
We are delighted to announce that Shigetosi Furutani will be one of our commissioned artists in The Arts House. Furutani was selected from a group of artists as part of the partnership between The Arts House and the Royal College of Art, a landmark institution just a short walk from the development. Two artists have been selected to create works that will be featured in communal areas of The Arts House to reflect its values of heritage and modernity through art.
Furutani is currently completing an MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art, having previously gained degrees in Design and Environmental Design from the Tokyo University of the Arts. Before coming to London he worked as a set designer for television, exploring the relationship between two-dimensional and three-dimensional art. However, five years ago he started to focus on his art full-time and found quick success as one of his works, Tokyo Dizzy Land received the Asia Digital Art Award Finalist Prize and was shown at the Saatchi Gallery.
Furutani’s piece for The Arts House, [A House of Southwell Garden], is a digital collage that has been conceived to also function as an archive for the building and surrounding area. “The idea came from an experience with an old picture,” he said. “It always made me imagine what kind of event happened, how people walked through and as time passed at that specific place.”
He hunted through archives for old photographs and illustrations and began to layer them. The piece was inspired by the work of Escher as well as the 16th – 18th century rakuchuu rakugai-zu (Views In and Around Kyoto), screen paintings by an unknown artist showing a melting pot of everyday life in a capital city. The viewer is offered a glimpse inside various rooms of The Arts House, while local landmarks and transport hubs surround it. White space punctuates the piece to represent Southwell Gardens.
By creating an archive, Furutani encourages people to consider the rich history of the area, with its artistic heritage and bustling social scene. However, it also prompts thoughts of the future and how the development will seem to those in centuries to come. One of the connecting themes throughout Furutani’s work is the desire to explore social phenomena and expand the limits of two dimensions in a world dominated by video and social media. [A House of Southwell Garden] does just this, offering a detailed and imaginative insight into life in Kensington, celebrating its past and future.
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