TAASA VICTORIA – TAASA Review June 2021

20 April 2020 Sodeisha Zoom lecture Daniel McOwan gave a fascinating zoom lecture on Sodeisha, an avante garde ceramic art movement begun in Kyoto in 1948 by Yagi Kazuo along with Yamada Hikaru and Suzuki Osamu.

As Daniel explained, Sodeisha was a youthful and intellectual movement negating past conceptions of Japanese pottery, particularly Mingei pottery and the Momoyama revival exemplified by Rosanjin and Toyozo Arakawa.

Sodeisha represented a dramatic departure from pottery with purpose (eg tea bowls and vases), towards pottery as sculptural elements in their own right. Daniel also talked on important Sodeisha holdings in Australian institutions, including the AGNSW, Hamilton Art Gallery and Newcastle Art Gallery, the latter being particularly important as it held the first exhibition of Sodeisha art outside of Japan in 1979, exhibiting the work of 32 Sodeisha artists, not least Yagi Kazuo himself...