Hino Gallery is pleased to present "噴: Erupt" by Tim Hemington from Saturday, March 8th, 2025.

Hemington is an artist from Cheshire in the north-west of England. Since moving to Japan in 2006, he has been based and worked in Yokosuka. This is his third solo exhibition at Hino Gallery and this time he will be showing a series of his most recent paintings.

The exhibition, entitled "噴: Erupt," is a series of paintings related to 'fire,' and each work has a title associated with it. In addition, although it is easy to identify this element with the visual information obtained from the works themselves (he uses Burnt Sienna for the initial grounds) the artist has attempted to make works that also reflect a conceptual response to 'fire' rather than simply depicting factual phenomena.

Having lived in Japan for almost 20 years, Hemington has been exposed to and admired the climate, culture and aesthetics of the country, but has also frequently experienced the threats posed by the natural environment here. Having previously had a studio on the island of Anglesey, adjacent to the north-west coast of Wales, the artist became aware of the power of the ocean, but the sheer force of the tsunami he witnessed in this country surpassed that recognition. In an earthquake-prone land, he has learned first-hand that we are constantly exposed to these threats, which can happen at any time and in any place in Japan. However, Hemington is concerned that this is not just a problem for Japan, and that it is not only the fury of nature, but that the whole world is now overshadowed by all kinds of threats, including the rise of right-wing and fascist politics, which undermine democracy and the dignity of freedom. The artist recently stated that, 'serious art does not exist in a vacuum and it is hard for an artist not to be affected by world events.' Hemington may have succeeded in projecting an invisible energy that heats and bubbles up, and eventually becomes an enormous force, onto the real world in his works.

In his two previous solo exhibitions, Hemington has presented paintings focusing on the paradoxical relationship of things, such as 'chaos and order,' 'yin and yang,' and its 'in between.' The artist's focus could be seen as an act of questioning 'a way of being' if we consider that all things exist only within this context. His latest paintings seem to suggest that our existence is only founded in that betweenness, where an unknowable threat and a trial for resisting and quelling coexist. Hemington declares that his task as an artist is 'to make the impermanent permanent': to arrest the transient somehow. This is also another suggestion as to how he could work in between two opposites as an artist.

In terms of questioning 'a way of being,' Hemington's experiments with painterly space cannot fail to be mentioned. He says, most of his large-scale works, as well as the works which will be presented in the exhibition, are based on the human figure. The artist, who builds from a support/canvas, seeks to create a 'place' through his work that transcends two dimensions and brings viewers into some kind of physical engagement with the work, as if they were in a three-dimensional theatrical space. The dramatic spatiality of his work is also evident in the works of Caravaggio and Francis Bacon, whom he has acknowledged as long-time inspirations, and in this series he especially uses the Japanese fusuma sliding door as a reference. It is obvious that the fusuma, sliding door panels, are closely related to the human body, but the scenes depicted in the vertical compositions on the split screen as fusuma-e (paintings) are imbued with a spatiality that is uniquely Japanese. A typical fusuma is around 170 -180 cm high and 90 cm wide, but the support Hemington builds is a 182 x 91 cm panel, with a narrower, half or third width panel, joined together and the canvas stretched over to form the basic screen. The artist considers the joints to be extremely important, because when the liquid paint is poured into the canvas while it is laid down horizontally, it forms a very subtle ridge between the two, which affects the finely changing flow of paint and brings an unexpected matiere to the painting. In addition, bar-shaped panels, which the artist calls 'breakers,' are sometimes attached to either side of the basic screen. These literally provide empty space and allow the image to breathe, which also relates to the ancient Japanese sense of space, and at the same time can be a device that works in terms of physical engagement. Hemington's work transcends painting (he negates perspectival illusionism) and is only realised when it appears as a 'place,' in which the viewer perceives anew, 'a way of being.'

Hemington's last exhibition at Hino Gallery was held in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and was forced to be temporarily suspended. Now, almost five years have gone by, the tensions of that time have subsided, but new issues, no matter how large or small, are constantly arising, and the reality is that we still have to live and survive. Hemington's work reflects these turbulent times, but on the other hand, it could be a 'place' or 'space' that encourages a deep peace of mind, wishing for serenity in contrast, perhaps like the sense of relief when putting out a 'fire.' We hope you will visit the exhibition and experience it for yourself.

Tim Hemington Website