Weaving Metal, Making Art

Weaving Metal, Making Art is month long residency at R-Space with internationally acclaimed artist Toshinobu Takamitsu (Japan) where heilluminated the gallery with his large scale audio-visual installations.

Toshinobu Takamitsu collaborated with local artist-blacksmith Eamonn Higgins (Belfast) and sonic artist Matthew Whiteside (Lisburn/Glasgow), to create new works throughout the residency including “Ocean” which transformed the gallery into the bottom of a dark and quiet sea by covering a whole wall with light, filtered through Japanese paper to evoke a feeling of the ocean complete with wind, wave, swell, bubbles and mysterious floating objects. The second lighting installation “Volcano” featured a new audio composition by sonic artist Matthew Whiteside, to create a dynamic representation of a volcano with pulsating magma, vibrating and beating and likely to explode at any moment.

Japanese Artist Toshinobu Takamitsu and Blacksmith Eammon Higgins worked together to forge a metal lighting tree in the courtyard at R-Space.  The public were invited to watch this creative collaboration.

About the Artists

Toshinobu Takamitsu is an artist blacksmith and craftsman who runs a studio and craft shop named ‘Open Studio’ in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. After learning design in college, he studied glass blowing in the UK and became a successful glassware maker. Later, he studied blacksmithing in the US, and began making wood stoves and other iron products. He then focused his attention on the brooms used for cleaning the stoves made with his own unique way of weaving. He thus began creating brooms using all sorts of objects to act as rods including the neck of stringed instruments, hockey sticks, golf clubs, and pool cues. He learned how to tie and dye the thread used to hold the corn grass together from his wife, a professional weaver. In the future, he hopes to establish a school that will make learning product-making techniques more accessible.