(click image for more details)Sheila I, 2008
oil on canvas
50.8cm x 45.8cm
Camera, 2008
25.5 x 30.6 cm
Hideko Inoue's starting point for her meticulous paintings was a collection of memories she bought with her on relocating from her native Japan in the late 1990s: the photographic albums of her grandfather, who had died before she left Japan. The photographs from his early life document a time from the opposite end of the last century to that of the artist's birth and youth. It is a reflection on these vast contrasts of time, geography, culture and family history that informs Inoue's current work.
Broadening the project out from her initial – and highly personal – starting point to include similarly poignant family photographs solicited from friends and associates, Inoue transplants individuals between both periods of history and countries.
For example, we might see the figure of her grandfather from a black and white photograph, originally taken half a century ago and half a world away, now inhabiting the richly coloured Scottish landscape of his granddaughter's adopted home.
Refusing easy historical and narrative interpretations, her work is both an examination of the nature versus nuture debate – as in what determines our personal identity and how this might be affected if we are subject to significant cultural and environmental shifts.
Paul Stone, 2008
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find out more about Paul Stone
