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Akane Takayama Sculptures: Car and Amonites

Car and Amonites was the main feature of Takayam's solo exhibition at the Cafe Gallery in
2005. The sculpture is the development of a vital element of her work, the co-existence of
opposing forces. In this piece she explores the notions of the organic and the natural
juxtaposed with manufactured products. Smooth streamlined aerodynamic shapes in the
body of the car against the rough and textured surface of the stone containing the
aqualine ammonites.

Akane Takayama's work appears on Human Rights TV's "Artists for Human Rights" because she
is an artist who has given her time to human rights work voluntarily for many years. Her work carries
the idea of juxtaposition, a dynamic between shapes, materials and construct which brings seemingly
implausible connections together. The inspiration for her work comes from her identity of a person from
one culture who has settled, lived and worked in another culture. As she has said, "If you leave the
land and place of your birth to live in a culture that is alien to you then there has to be something wrong
in your relationship with your cultural homeland."

This sense of 'something wrong' whispers constantly in Takayama's work. Her sculptures are possessed of
clean precise lines which flow through the form with stunning precision. She places the incongruous into a
harmonic partnership which is contained and made credible by the disciplined perspectives she always
maintains. The questions which naturally spring from seeing her work are compelling however, when presented
with the sculptures themselves, the viewer becomes drawn into a world of colour painted in a pallette made
vibrant by the shadows created in the shapes.

Akane Takayama

(b. 1957, Tokyo, Japan.)

Akane has lived and worked in London since 1985.

Selected exhibitions at:

Pomeroy Purdy Gallery, London (1992)

Atlantis Gallery, London (1992)

Daiwa Foundation, London (1995)

Blue Gallery, London (1995)

Mizuma Fine Art, Tokyo (1995)

Henry Peacock Gallery, London (2001)

Chelsea Physic Garden Sculpture Show, London (2002)

Domo Ball Gallery, London (2002)

Short listed for the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2002)

Café Gallery Projects London (2004)

Space Exhibition, London (2005)

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