Toshiko Oiyama / FLOW

Thursday 5 June 2025 6:00 pm
Sunday 22 June 2025 5:00 pm

31A Enmore Road Newtown Newtown NSW 2042 Australia (map)

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At DRAW Space in June 2025, Toshiko Oiyama explores what it means for all things to be in a constant state of change. This concept is explored through subtle interventions such as puncturing, cutting, tearing folding and sewing.

For Toshiko Oiyama, drawing is a way of asking questions that cannot be answered in words. One question she has been asking for over a decade in her art practice is what it means for all things to be in a constant state of change. Flow explores the nature of transience through various experimental approaches, which can be playful and/or ambiguous.

In her work, things flow into something else. Flat 2D drawings are transformed into 3D by cutting and lifting, or turned into bold forms that come off the wall.

The materiality of paper, ink, pencil and thread is thoroughly exploited and brought out for them to interact, while magnets and pins turn themselves into drawing. Happy accidents among the media are welcomed and are set to work with the consciously created marks. The free-flowing ink dances with systematic grids that appear and disappear. Randomness and logic intermingle.

Is there an unchanging force beneath the surface transience that we live in? After all, physicists the world over have been trying to find the Theory of Everything. The exhibition Flow explores the fundamental nature of transience, which also seems to contain—paradoxically—the unchanging law that governs everything.

Artist Biography

Born in Japan and trained as a graphic designer in the United States, Toshiko Oiyama had a long design career in the USA, Holland, Indonesia, Singapore and New Zealand before coming to Australia in 2001. Changing her direction in Sydney, she studied fine art, obtaining masters and PhD degrees from the University of New South Wales. For her art she draws inspirations equally from the outback of Australia, the ancient pilgrimage trails of Japan, science and philosophy.

She exhibits regularly, and has won prizes and grants including the Tim Olsen Drawing Prize and a residency in Paris. She has been a finalist in Dobell Drawing Prize, Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award, Adelaide Perry Drawing Award, and Kedumba Drawing Award. Currently Toshiko Oiyama divides her time between her art practice and teaching at the National Art School.

EXHIBITION ESSAY