Masaki Ishikawa: Open Day

Masaki Ishikawa is a Japanese artist currently based in Glasgow. He is being hosted by the Creative Lab for July 2023 as part of the Creative Lab Residency, programmed by the Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow.

During the residency, he is working on a series of paintings that explore the physical experience of being in an urban environment, inspired by oral history from previous residents of multi-storey housing in Glasgow.

The body in an urban environment has been the primary subject of his artistic practice over the past five years. His current project’s main subject matter is high-rise housing in Glasgow, especially the Wyndford estate, whose housing styles have been prevalent since the 1950s worldwide, exemplifying post-war housing in Glasgow, and Tokyo – where he was born and raised.

While reviewing the oral histories and archives of previous residents of high-rise housing in Glasgow, he found that the accounts he discovered evoked strong memories of his own life and childhood, in Adachi-ku, Tokyo – with its multi-storey buildings and close-knit communities. Delving into the physical experience and sentiment of high-rise housing and its residents in Glasgow, he incorporates his boy-hood recollections of Adachi, alongside his experiences of the latter four years of his life in Scotland to present a new series of paintings for this residency.

His recent paintings capture the feeling of being at and around high-rise housings by depicting fragmented figure(s), ‘The Embrace’, illustrating a scene of a body beside a high-rise, and ‘Skyward’, portraying a body floating in midair, exploring physicality at height. He is currently working on a new painting titled ‘British Bulldog,’ inspired by a story of a previous resident in Glasgow, who recalled playing sporting games in their housing complex’s courtyard. He intends to juxtapose the physicality and potential violence of the game with the urban landscape. This artwork seeks to resonate with viewers on a visceral level, emphasising the body’s interactions within the cityscape.