Loved visiting Nissa Nishikawa’s temporary exhibition at Camden Art Centre today - hopped on the number 13 to Langland Gardens and accidentally went in the centre through the cafe garden. Embarrassingly, considering I live ten minutes down the road, I’ve never been to the art centre before - even after two years of going past it on the bus home from work. Luckily I had my friend (and regular art centre visitor) Nuria to be my guide, and we trundled around the gallery together: first looking at the young Bloomberg exhibition (lots of interesting things) before crossing across the first floor to see the room of Nishikawa’s work. 

The setting for this installation is perfect - tentatively spring light streams in through the windows and makes the polished ceramic and stone pieces sing. It would seem that the 24th February is also an ideal time for the kind of sunlight that these pieces need - understated and cool. 

I’m really drawn to work that explores themes of ritual and ceremony - Nishikawa’s piece “IT WILL RETURN TO WATER’ (made of charred wood, bison hair, plants, lard, stones from Mount Fuji and natural resins and pigments) is the sort of thing that realy intrigues me. Added to by the black glass antler poised behind, ominous on its own red plinth, and I felt captivated. 

This work had such an air of stillness about it - tinged with a faint air of danger and warning. I feel very drawn to work exploring cermony and ritual, and this installation felt like a new ritual in process. 

You can see more of Nishikawa’s work here: nissa-nishikawa.com