world in between | seiko hayase

26 February - 30 april 2022
(This exhibition is now closed). Between happiness and sadness, beauty and ugliness, fear and relief. These are some emotions that can’t be expressed with socialised words, there’s the World In Between.

GOMA’s Connect 5 Awardee
Born in Shiga, Japan in 1987, Seiko Hayase is a Japanese artist based in Mallow, Co. Cork. She works with Painting, Sculpture, Mixed media, Installation, Video work, she’s trying to develop her artwork theme “World In-Between”, not bound to specific materials. She lived in Marseille, France after she graduated from Nagoya Uni- versity of Arts. In 2018 she settled down in Cork, Ireland.
This exhibition is brought to you as part of GOMA’s Connect 5 Award, a pilot scheme of exhibition exchanges that provides a platform throughout Ireland where artists can create work and participate in a peer-led exchange process while providing a bursary and support network for artists. Partnering organisations taking part are GOMA, Sample Studios, Engage Artists Studios, Wickham Street Studios and BKB studios over a eighteen-month period. Funded by the Arts Council and Waterford City and County Council

In society, we are living in one world with others. The world has many news, everyday, happy and sad. Your emotions, born each second in your body, happy or sad, every day. Ears hear it, eyes watch it, the nose smells it, the body touches it, the brain makes emotions. Between happiness and sadness, beauty and ugliness, fear and relief…
These are some emotions that can’t be expressed with socialised words, there’s the World In Between. It’s a really burning feeling and it seems like a small volcano in your heart pipes.
People are hiding emotions and living in society to go well with others.
These emotions become harder and get stuck in your body, why don’t you release them?
Because most of them are about suffering without an answer…
My art practice process is picking up hidden emotions from my brain and finding a way to share them with society.
Thinking about a question suffering without an answer is painful and tough but I hope that I can share my emotions through my art and maybe you see it and it becomes your trigger to think about your hidden emotion…
I’m not a doctor to cure your suffering without an answer.
I’m not a scientist to make super medicine for suffering without an answer.
As an artist, I’m researching the World In Between in order to share it with you and exchange about our questions.
Since I was in art university in Japan, my core art practice is painting, mostly water- colour or pencils on paper wrapped wood panel. When I find an emotion which overflows from my brain, I sit down in front of paper and I start to find an emotional view. However, I’m trying to develop my practice to have more potential for sharing with audience in order to experience it. Installation, sculpture, collaborating project, video work, etc. Art is one of the tools to explore emotions, and art has infinite potential to share with society. It’s about finding the right tool to share emotions with society.

Seiko Hayase

GOMA Gallery of Modern Art is an artist-led space located at Lombard Street in Waterford City. Operating under the Directorship of Jenna Whelan, GOMA aims to foster within society an awareness, understanding and involvement in visual arts through policies and programmes which are excellent, innovative and inclusive. GOMA aims to support artists with an exhibition programme, incubation spaces, residencies, technical facilities, skill development and opportunities to engage and establish.