Miho Watanabe’s research investigates and theorises Awareness of Between-ness in the context of the Japanese aesthetic of ma. It asks, how can this concept support and deepen the visualisation of the invisible, the subject of in-between and Between-ness, and what methodology can be discovered that will introduce Between-ness as a full protagonist? The conceptualisation and theorisation of Between-ness and its practice reveal the importance of creating place, translucency, visibility and invisibility, and striking a balance between accidental and deliberate mark-making.

Awareness of Between-ness: Memory and Time is a body of work exploring the area between Watanabe’s visual memories of childhood and her memory of English street trees before COVID-19 started. The main focus of the project is upon places as spaces, where she can visualise using her memories that focus the length of time that has passed. This is not about why memories become old and far away, but is connected with her mind and with the physical ability to force memories into similar atmospheres – both her childhood memories and the places she experienced not so long ago.

Her memory of places associated with England’s street trees, for instance, could have been connected to similar memories of places associated with Australia’s trees if there had been no pandemic. However, the pandemic did turn her memory of English trees into an atmosphere like that of her childhood memories. The reduced light in the memories of her childhood, and in the memories of the English street trees, share an absence. What is lost in her memories is an amount of light, not an amount of time.

This installation is designed to encompass viewers, encourage them to be a part of the in-between and to initiate their own search for Between-ness.

The installations of Miho Watanabe explore photography’s potential to make visible frictions in memory, place and the invisible spaces that exist between subject, camera and the artist. As an intercultural artist who has lived half of her life in Japan and the other half in Australia, she uses photography, painting, light and installation to explore the concept of ‘between-ness’ and attempts to make the ‘invisible’ subject ‘visible’. Recent exhibitions include Beyond Human, 2022, Paddington Art Prize, Willoughby Visual Arts Biennial, 2019, Hidden Sculpture Walk, Ravenswood Art Prize, Awareness of between-ness: Trees of France and Australia, 2018, ‘Strangeness’ and ‘Betweenness’, Realising Mother, The North Sydney Art Prize, 2017; she received a University Scholarship, Elite Funeral Directors Award and was selected speaker for Cambridge AHRC DTP Conference, 2019. She holds a MFA from University of New South Wales and is completing her PhD at Australian National University School of Art and Design.

Miho is a Higher Degree Research Candidate, completing her Doctor of Philosphy at the ANU School of Art & Design.

Exhibition continues 22 April until 5 May 2022.