Hiromi Tango's practice is often collaborative and site-specific. She weaves together vibrantly coloured materials to create participatory art projects. Designed to evoke emotional responses — and as
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a means for exploring her own — her works test the boundaries of social engagement; they emerge from an ongoing process of self-analysis and reflect an intimate consideration of her physical body, thoughts and emotions. Working with an assortment of materials — wool, twine, paper, plastic flowers, books, notes, letters, dolls and personal effects that are meaningful to the artist and her collaborators — Tango's works are a visual riot of colour and woven textures.
Hiromi Tango is highly attuned to feelings of vulnerability and anxiety — as she says, she has 'given much thought to the act of existence, to the business of living'.
For 'Contemporary Australia: Women', Tango's works X chromosome 2012 and Pistil 2012 draw on both her and her collaborators' personal histories and experiences in the wake of two natural disasters in 2011: the floods that inundated Queensland, particularly Brisbane, the artist's current home; and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the country of her birth. X chromosome — both its form and title — recalls a DNA double helix. A literal reference to the female chromosome, Tango has also made use of materials and techniques typically associated with 'women's work'. As its title suggests, Pistil draws connections with the reproductive structure of the flower — a metaphor for the joyful overabundance of Tango's art.
'Contemporary Australia: Women' includes more than 70 works in painting, sculpture, photography, installation, textiles, video, and performance. The exhibition will explore key themes such as 'performing' femininity; the place of personal and intimate spheres such as sexuality, the body, motherhood and ageing; the return to everyday materials; and the ways some artists are 'redressing the canon' of painting.
Contemporary Australia: Women | 21 April -- 22 July 2012 | Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) | Free admission
For more details visit http://qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/contemporary_australia_women/artists
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