GOMA’s ‘seductive’ new Insta-worthy show

After GOMA’s most photographed exhibit - the stunning Ai Weiwei chandelier - was put away - the gallery has brought in a new instagram-worthy exhibition.

There are many threads to the artwork of Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. Many many threads. Possibly millions. The Berlin-based artist uses woollen thread quite liberally in her intricate, large scale, intriguing installations.

Some of these installations will fill the ground floor at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) for Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles, which opens on June 18, as our winter art blockbuster.

Shiota will be coming to Brisbane for the show along with her studio assistants. She needs them to help weave her magic, weave being the operative word.

One of Chiharu Shiota’s breathtaking installations.

Some readers might not know her work but a good way to explain it would be to put her in the context of another Japanese artist who is a gallery favourite, Yayoi Kusama.

Shiota is in her ballpark when it comes to eye-catching, even breathtaking work. And like Kusama, she has a global audience.

I had a sneak preview recently when wandering into a room at the Art Gallery of South Australia, a room framed by red woollen threads woven into a vast surrounding spider web. There was plenty of selfie and Instagram action going on and I imagine visitors will be posting madly when they enter GOMA for Shiota’s show. This is good news for anyone who misses the Ai Weiwei chandelier which was QAGOMA’s most Instagrammable work.

But there’s more to these works than photo opportunities as QAGOMA director Chris Saines points out.

“Shiota’s compelling immersive artworks draw on deeply personal emotions and experiences to give visible form to intangible concepts such as memories, anxiety, dreams and silence,” he says.

In Silence by Chiharu Shiota.

Curator of Contemporary Asian Art at QAGOMA, Reuben Keehan says Shiota’s artistic practice is “deeply personal, expressed through works with universal themes and ambitions”.

“The exhibition title refers to the inexpressible stirrings of the heart while the countless threads of the artist’s striking, room-filling installations allude to the complex connections that reach deep into our being,” he says.

“Highlights of the exhibition include Uncertain Journey, a series of boat forms interconnected by a vast membrane of red thread, and In Silence, an installation featuring a burnt baby grand piano connected to rows of singed empty wooden seats by a complex environment of black thread.”

That last piece is very personal as Shiota explains. “When I was nine there was a fire at the house next to ours,” she says.

Accumulation – Searching for the Destination by Chiharu Shiota.

“The next day, there was a piano sitting outside the house. Scorched until it was jet black, it seemed an even more beautiful symbol than before. An ineffable silence came over me and over the next few days, whenever the window blew that burning smell into our house I could feel my voice start to cloud over. There are things that sink deep into the recesses of my mind and others that fail to take either a physical or verbal form no matter how hard you try.”

Keehan points out her work will bowl people over because of the sheer scale.

“There are about 100 works in the show and seven of those are large installations,” he says. “It will be beautiful, seductive and Instagram friendly.”

A lot of gallery goers will be happy about that.

Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles, June 18 to October 3, Gallery of Modern Art, Stanley Place, South Brisbane; qagoma.qld.gov.au

Originally published as GOMA’s ‘seductive’ new Insta-worthy show