“Informed by my cross-cultural heritage I remove, relocate and reconstruct objects in different geographic territories. I renegotiate memory and investigate our capacity to anchor experience in tangible forms.”

Anna Gonzalez Noguchi

About the project

For the month of June, La Boulangerie! has invited Japanese-Spanish artist Anna Gonzalez Noguchi for an in-house residency and an exhibition featuring an entirely new body of work.

The exhibition will open on the 2nd of June and features a body of work that bears the signature elements of Noguchi’s work; notably her engraved metals of species of orchids and an assemblage of seemingly random items that are rich in narrative and provenance as they originate from her grandparents’ home in Japan. Hand-crafted objects, industrially finished surfaces, prosaic artefacts and images are layered, and through this a shift in meaning and purpose is acquired. Gonzalez Noguchi is seeking to challenge and refine the combination of industrial, handmade, and pre-existing objects towards articulating different states of remembering.

The display includes two new works made particularly for the space of La Boulangerie! that reference the French luxury influence and infiltration in the mainstream Japanese culture particularly in the 80s and 90s. The works titled Comfort cavity I & II, illuminate a collection of personal archives that form the integral structure of her sculptural language, of innocuous possessions and images that compress to form a relief.  The biscuit tins presented in the window of La Boulangerie!, habitual gifts that once satisfied one’s sweet tooth, now house accumulated buttons, diary annotations, towel offcuts, photographic documentation of orchids and engraved copper plates.  After sweetness comes decay.  After one state of functionality comes another, the tins become simultaneously rooms, sculptures and screens.  A record and a projection where principles of hybrid thinking and hybrid making are felt through orchids and text, hobbies and professions, internalisations and expressions are played out into the Parisian dusk at the plane between public and private domain.

About Anna Gonzalez Noguchi

“Almost all my practice is informed by my personal background. Being half Spanish and half Japanese, and brought up in a lot of countries messed with my identity. Naturally, I focused on my Japanese side because I am most conflicted with it. Feeling both intimately connected and disconnected and for most of my life being physically distant and unable to communicate. These reoccurring motifs have entered my practise as they are things that have existed in these spaces that I have been dipping in and out of my whole life. In a way it is an obsession”.

Gonzalez Noguchi (b.1992) is a UK born artist of Japanese-Spanish extraction who lives and works in Athens, Greece. She holds a Masters in Sculpture by the Royal College of Arts (UK) and studied Fine Art Sculpture at the University of Brighton (UK).

Her recent exhibitions include Portable Elastic Temple, Pet Projects, Athens GR (2022); An hearing of an absence, Haus N, Athens GR (2022); Art Athina with South Parade, Athens GR (2022); On the Other Hand, Canary Wharf Estate, London UK (2021); 5th Edition of Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, Buckinghamshire UK (2021); Squeezebox, Collective Ending HQ , London UK (2021); Apotropaion, Felios Collection, Athens GR (2021); Against the Linear, KEIV, Athens GR (2021); Under the Volcano at Studio Block M74, Mexico City; NEW FOUND LAND at Caustic Coastal Salford, UK (2019); To The Core at White Crypt, London (2018); Nomadic Vitrine at Recent Activity, Birmingham; SPVI#2 at Turner Gallery, Tokyo (2015). Participated in AIR Yamanashi Residency, Japan and NAIR Residency – Nagano, Japan

Download full cv here.

About the project

For the month of June, La Boulangerie! has invited Japanese-Spanish artist Anna Gonzalez Noguchi for an in-house residency and an exhibition featuring an entirely new body of work.

The exhibition will open on the 2nd of June and features a body of work that bears the signature elements of Noguchi’s work; notably her engraved metals precision of species of orchids and an assemblage of seemingly random items that are rich in narrative and provenance as they originate from her grandparents’ home in Japan. Hand-crafted objects, industrially finished surfaces, prosaic artefacts and images are layered, and through this a shift in meaning and purpose is acquired. Gonzalez Noguchi is seeking to challenge and refine the combination of industrial, handmade, and pre-existing objects towards articulating different states of remembering.

The display includes two new works made particularly for the space of La Boulangerie! that reference the French luxury influence and infiltration in the mainstream Japanese culture particularly in the 80s and 90s. The works titled Comfort cavity I & II, illuminate a collection of personal archives that form the integral structure of her sculptural language, of innocuous possessions and images that compress to form a relief.  The biscuit tins presented in the window of La Boulangerie!, habitual gifts that once satisfied one’s sweet tooth, now house accumulated buttons, diary annotations, towel offcuts, photographic documentation of orchids and engraved copper plates.  After sweetness comes decay.  After one state of functionality comes another, the tins become simultaneously rooms, sculptures and screens.  A record and a projection where principles of hybrid thinking and hybrid making are felt through orchids and text, hobbies and professions, internalisations and expressions are played out into the Parisian dusk at the plane between public and private domain.

Available works

C. Maxima, 2023

engraved copper, towel, aluminium

15 x 21 x 2 CM

Dokudami, 2022

engraved anodised aluminium

30 x 18 x 15 CM

Noted ‘85, 2021

year planner paper, sheet glass, post-it notes, paper pulp board, pins, towel, felt, aluminium

33 x 32 x 2.5 CM

Installation views

Exclusive interview

La Boulangerie! in conversation with Anna Gonzalez Noguchi

La Boulangerie!: Anna, let’s take things from the beginning- you have studied Sculpture in the UK and you are a RCA graduate. Talk us through your technical and aesthetic approach to your sculptures.

Anna Gonzalez Noguchi: I guess I have a technical, meticulous and intricate approach, including wood turning, metal bending, drilling, tapping, engravings, ceramics and the list goes on. There will be a lot of things that go unnoticed.  I might spend two days straight in the studio turning down on the metal and the bespoke parts just to hang my work, but these details are important for me—giving care and commitment.  It’s been super important to have a proper workshop set up in my studio in Athens so that I can be completely involved in the making process and through this there can also be unexpected moments that leads to new works.  The aesthetics is often naturally driven by intuitive process in which different translucent images of orchids, bits of note pads, medical documents, text and innocuous objects settle in together.  Things are not always completely pre-designed before production but sometimes there are intentional formats that my work operates within, like using pin board materials or magnetic surfaces that allow for the possibility of things to be reconfigured in more than one way. It is a hybrid between an intuitive and technical approach.

In your work there are recurring elements- both technical (metal engraving) and emotional (found items at your grandparent’s home in Japan). What urges you to bring the two together?
In a way, what does the juxtaposition of the industrial/workshop metal making process with the fragility of old, seemingly random objects (like buttons) mean to you?
Originally the idea of these engravings came about because I was looking at Japanese wood block prints that my grandfather had made.  So, the process of engraving the surface/removal of the top
layer of a material to reveal an images mirror this.  This technique has become a defining part of my sculptural language because it can punctuate so many different surfaces, from metal, ceramics and glass—the original material translating into an emotive language of its own, reflecting moments of this personal archive that I am dealing with.  In a way I don’t really think much about these industrial/technical process as a juxtaposition to the collection of personal archives, one is part of the process to house the other, a copper plate becomes a photographic cut out of an orchid collected, nestled in blind-like towels, reflecting and absorbing the light of the space that it inhabits. It’s a personal making experience.  I can be folding aluminium and placing buttons in the same day but I don’t see them as a different thing. Nothing is random, everything becomes personal. 

Dokudami, 2022

engraved anodised aluminium

30 x 18 x 15 CM

Being of dual nationality and having lived in various countries, it seems that your identity and roots are a complex affair that you are compelled to explore and figure out via your art. Tell us a little about your internal processes in this direction.

I guess not being able to claim ownership of being from one place has always been conflicting for me. I have been more sensitive to my Japanese side as it’s somewhere I have always felt both intimately connected with but at the same time disconnected to through physical distance, a lack a language and unique culture.  In a way because of this, I have always been trying to make sense of the lives lived and define them instead through the small accumulations of materials and
possessions.

What part of your research is a favourite and why is that?
My work isn’t research driven, something I’m starting to become more unapologetic about these days. The context of my work is so intensely personal to me that “the research” is more led through the personal archive, like researching different orchids from my Grandfather’s collection. But it’s interesting because having an orchid obsession is definitely a thing, and through my lack of communication in Japanese the English names of the orchids have become something that I can understand and pick up on.  Furthering my interest in the relationship between personal intimate
moment and the categorisation of flowers— the whimsical names and manipulations of colours, species and crossing of cultures, in order to draw out personal moments of joy and expression.

Your work is either large scale sculptural installations or small, intimate compositions. What makes you work at the two polar scales?
When the opportunity presents itself, I do make works at a much larger scale and it’s interesting to see the implications it has, like scaling up a wood cut print from my Grandfather and engraving it into 96 tiles, amplifying the original print to dominate a space.  Some of the processes I work with,
like the engraved tiles and engraved aluminium surfaces are modular and can expand and contract— both making a larger impact and having the potential to exist outside.   More recently, I have been focusing on smaller potent works, the size of the pre-existing objects like accumulated
buttons, a page of an old diary calendar, things that can fit in the palm of your hand, whic naturally sets the more intimate scale of works.  Giving time and care, becoming intricate universes.

The exhibition at La Boulangerie! is titled ‘Kazuko Splendor’. Who is Kazuko and what is her story? What Splendor stands for?
Kazuko (Noguchi) is actually the name of my Grandmother.  Her name first name and last name often is punctuated in different parts of my work like her handwritten name curving around the
internal circumference of a tape roll.  Some years back, I moved to Japan for two years as it felt like it was now or never moment to go and learn Japanese intensively and spend time and care for my Grandmother.  Ironically, she developed dementia and never realised that I could not speak
Japanese and as I spent time with her it became apparent that she name tags everything, her fork, salt, pens, soap dispenser— a mechanism to remind herself what is hers.  Splendor is a type of orchid so I wanted to play with the language in which these flowers are classified, making my own
hybrid ‘Kazuko Splendor’.

The exhibition at La Boulangerie! The two works in the window front were new works produced for this exhibition, how did these come about?  Overall, how would you describe this group of works and what would you like the viewer to take away from the experience?
The two works in the window front came about as I had these used biscuit tins that I had relocated from Japan were sat in my studio for some years.  So, through this opportunity it felt like a really the befitting moment for these tins to become illuminated and have a presence in the street in the evening, perhaps impacting a passerby experience ever so slightly.   I think the text I wrote about Comfort cavity I & II gives a sense of the thoughts surrounding the work and there is a continuous thread that weaves itself throughout the whole exhibition.

Comfort cavity I & II, illuminates a collection of personal archives, that form the integral structure of my sculptural language, of innocuous possessions and images that compress to form a relief. Gifts that once satisfied sweet tooth’s now house accumulated buttons, diary annotations, towel offcuts,  photographic documentation of orchids and engraved copper plates. After sweetness comes decay.  After one state of functionality comes another, the tins become simultaneously rooms, sculptures, and screens.  A record and a projection where principles of hybrid thinking and hybrid making felt through orchids and text, hobbies and professions, internalisations and expressions are played out into the Parisian dusk at the plane between public and private domain.

About Anna Gonzalez Noguchi

Exclusive interview

La Boulangerie! in conversation with

Anna Gonzalez Noguchi

La Boulangerie!: Anna, let’s take things from the beginning- you have studied Sculpture in the UK and you are a RCA graduate. Talk us through your technical and aesthetic approach to your sculptures.

Anna Gonzalez Noguchi: I guess I have a technical, meticulous and intricate approach, including wood turning, metal bending, drilling, tapping, engravings, ceramics and the list goes on. There will be a lot of things that go unnoticed.  I might spend two days straight in the studio turning down on the metal and the bespoke parts just to hang my work, but these details are important for me—giving care and commitment.  It’s been super important to have a proper workshop set up in my studio in Athens so that I can be completely involved in the making process and through this there can also be unexpected moments that leads to new works.  The aesthetics is often naturally driven by intuitive process in which different translucent images of orchids, bits of note pads, medical documents, text and innocuous objects settle in together.  Things are not always completely pre-designed before production but sometimes there are intentional formats that my work operates within, like using pin board materials or magnetic surfaces that allow for the possibility of things to be reconfigured in more than one way. It is a hybrid between an intuitive and technical approach.

In your work there are recurring elements- both technical (metal engraving) and emotional (found items at your grandparent’s home in Japan). What urges you to bring the two together?
In a way, what does the juxtaposition of the industrial/workshop metal making process with the fragility of old, seemingly random objects (like buttons) mean to you?
Originally the idea of these engravings came about because I was looking at Japanese wood block prints that my grandfather had made.  So, the process of engraving the surface/removal of the top
layer of a material to reveal an images mirror this.  This technique has become a defining part of my sculptural language because it can punctuate so many different surfaces, from metal, ceramics and glass—the original material translating into an emotive language of its own, reflecting
moments of this personal archive that I am dealing with.  In a way I don’t really think much about these industrial/technical process as a juxtaposition to the collection of personal archives, one is part of the process to house the other, a copper plate becomes a photographic cut out of an orchid collected, nestled in blind-like towels, reflecting and absorbing the light of the space that it inhabits. It’s a personal making experience.  I can be folding aluminium and placing buttons in the same day but I don’t see them as a different thing. Nothing is random, everything becomes personal. 

Being of dual nationality and having lived in various countries, it seems that your identity and roots are a complex affair that you are compelled to explore and figure out via your art. Tell us a little about your internal processes in this direction.

I guess not being able to claim ownership of being from one place has always been conflicting for me. I have been more sensitive to my Japanese side as it’s somewhere I have always felt both intimately connected with but at the same time disconnected to through physical distance, a lack a language and unique culture.  In a way because of this, I have always been trying to make sense of the lives lived and define them instead through the small accumulations of materials and
possessions.

What part of your research is a favourite and why is that?
My work isn’t research driven, something I’m starting to become more unapologetic about these days. The context of my work is so intensely personal to me that “the research” is more led through the personal archive, like researching different orchids from my Grandfather’s collection. But it’s interesting because having an orchid obsession is definitely a thing, and through my lack of communication in Japanese the English names of the orchids have become something that I can understand and pick up on.  Furthering my interest in the relationship between personal intimate
moment and the categorisation of flowers— the whimsical names and manipulations of colours, species and crossing of cultures, in order to draw out personal moments of joy and expression.

Your work is either large scale sculptural installations or small, intimate compositions. What makes you work at the two polar scales?
When the opportunity presents itself, I do make works at a much larger scale and it’s interesting to see the implications it has, like scaling up a wood cut print from my Grandfather and engraving it into 96 tiles, amplifying the original print to dominate a space.  Some of the processes I work with,
like the engraved tiles and engraved aluminium surfaces are modular and can expand and contract— both making a larger impact and having the potential to exist outside.   More recently, I have been focusing on smaller potent works, the size of the pre-existing objects like accumulated
buttons, a page of an old diary calendar, things that can fit in the palm of your hand, whic naturally sets the more intimate scale of works.  Giving time and care, becoming intricate universes.

The exhibition at La Boulangerie! is titled ‘Kazuko Splendor’. Who is Kazuko and what is her story? What Splendor stands for?
Kazuko (Noguchi) is actually the name of my Grandmother.  Her name first name and last name often is punctuated in different parts of my work like her handwritten name curving around the
internal circumference of a tape roll.  Some years back, I moved to Japan for two years as it felt like it was now or never moment to go and learn Japanese intensively and spend time and care for my Grandmother.  Ironically, she developed dementia and never realised that I could not speak
Japanese and as I spent time with her it became apparent that she name tags everything, her fork, salt, pens, soap dispenser— a mechanism to remind herself what is hers.  Splendor is a type of orchid so I wanted to play with the language in which these flowers are classified, making my own
hybrid ‘Kazuko Splendor’.

The exhibition at La Boulangerie! The two works in the window front were new works produced for this exhibition, how did these come about?  Overall, how would you describe this group of works and what would you like the viewer to take away from the experience?
The two works in the window front came about as I had these used biscuit tins that I had relocated from Japan were sat in my studio for some years.  So, through this opportunity it felt like a really the befitting moment for these tins to become illuminated and have a presence in the street in the evening, perhaps impacting a passerby experience ever so slightly.   I think the text I wrote about Comfort cavity I & II gives a sense of the thoughts surrounding the work and there is a continuous thread that weaves itself throughout the whole exhibition.

Comfort cavity I & II, illuminates a collection of personal archives, that form the integral structure of my sculptural language, of innocuous possessions and images that compress to form a relief. Gifts that once satisfied sweet tooth’s now house accumulated buttons, diary annotations, towel offcuts,  photographic documentation of orchids and engraved copper plates. After sweetness comes decay.  After one state of functionality comes another, the tins become simultaneously rooms, sculptures, and screens.  A record and a projection where principles of hybrid thinking and hybrid making felt through orchids and text, hobbies and professions, internalisations and expressions are played out into the Parisian dusk at the plane between public and private domain.