Event category: Special Events

An evening exploring and expanding on the themes of Art Without Heroes: Mingei. 

6.30pm & 7.30pm – Exhibition tours: Korea and the Mingei Movement, by Dasom Sung

Join us for a special tour of the exhibition, examining Korea’s influence on the Mingei movement. Korea and its crafts played a crucial role in the early development of Mingei theory, as key figures in the movement sought an alternative aesthetic to counter the modernisation and Westernisation of Japanese crafts. This tour explores the activities of Mingei theorists and artists in collecting and researching Korean crafts and establishing the Korean Folk Arts Gallery in 1924 in Seoul. It takes visitors beyond the objects on display to understand the relationship between the Mingei movement and Korea within the historical context of Japan’s colonisation of Korea from 1910 to 1945.

This tour has been specially commissioned by the Gallery and written by Dasom Sung, Assistant Curator at the V&A and contributor to the book Mingei: Art Without Heroes that accompanies the exhibition.

7pm  – Live art performance with Moe Asari

Moe Asari’s Auto Exotic – Japanning explores the perception of Japanese identity in Britain and cultural hybridity through the craft of japanning, a British and European imitation of East Asian lacquerware. Reacting and engaging with Art Without Heroes: Mingei, Asari critically examines the principles of beauty in everyday things by Yanagi Sōetsu. The performance involves a video essay reflecting the process of interpretation of the artist’s version of japanning, alongside a demonstration of the action of japanning an object. 

8pm – Making demonstration with Kaori Hirano

A unique opportunity to witness Kaori Hirano demonstrate how to create traditional Japanese Tatsuke trousers. Hirano and her brand Itoshiro Yohin specialises in natural dyeing and pattern making passed down by the community of Itoshiro and is fascinated by the shape of Japanese textiles. For Hirano, the pattern and its shapes hold the historic wisdom of Japanese artisans. The demonstration will explain in detail how to pattern cut the Tatsuke trousers on display in the exhibition. In Japanese with in-person English translation.

6pm – 9pm Make Your Own Self-led Mingei Crafts – Café

Take part in some simple self-led Mingei crafting activities whilst you have a drink and relax in our Café:

Twine Woven Cups – Weaving with natural materials is one of the many crafts associated with the Mingei movement. Collect a paper cup and twine from one of our baskets and follow the instructions provided to weave your own cup.

Sashiko bookmark – Using a simple running and back stitch, embroider your own bookmark using traditional Japanese sashiko patterns. All materials provided, along with some instructions and patterns ideas to inspire you.

Doors open at 6pm and Deeney’s Café will be open for organic beers, wines, snacks and other refreshments.

This event forms part of the Mingei on the Move public programme, designed in response to the William Morris Gallery’s Art Without Heroes: Mingei exhibition. The programme spotlights the diasporic nature of Mingei and why artists from all cultures and backgrounds are continually inspired by the movement’s ethos. Through this, we hope to inspire our audiences to engage reflexively with Mingei and apply its ideas of harmonious balance between people, objects and their surroundings to their own daily lives. 

Artist biographies

Dasom Sung is Assistant Curator of Korean Arts at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She was a lecturer at Seoul National University from 2020 to 2021 and is currently a doctoral candidate there, researching the design and material culture of factory-made porcelains in Korea. Her research interests lie in the history of materials, the government’s craft export policies of Korea and Japan, and East Asian modern design history. Sung’s recent publications include Chilbo: Korean Traditional Enamelling (Korea Craft & Design Foundation, 2022). 

Moe Asari is a visual artist with a research-based practice often using the process of making as a medium. Her work consists of site responsive, experiential installations and performances which explore the material quality of connection between place and multi-cultural identity alongside ideas of  belonging. Her background in product and spatial design with her positionality of being a second generation British Japanese person, is reflected in physical making, craft processes and domestic objects used as tools to research and investigate plural narratives alongside existing popularised narratives of identity and place.

Kaori Hirano is the founder of sustainable fashion brand Itoshiro Yohin. Her work is profiled by Yoshizawa Tomo in the exhibtion’s accompanying book Mingei: Art Without Heroes:

“Itoshiro village is a community of 220 people, high up in the mountains in Gifu prefecture. Over a decade ago, Hirano Kaori (b.1981) and her husband Akihide moved to Itoshiro and founded Itoshiro Yohin Ten, an indigo dye studio, workshop and gallery, with the aim of learning and preserving the region’s textile craft traditions.”

Drop in to the Gallery for Spoken Vinyl, an Open Night with Pearl Home Records, the record label for DIY experimental music, sound art and spoken word.

Learn about record cutting with a vinyl lathe demo, take part in open mic, create record covers using photo collage, hear spoken word performances by Dominique & Nik, AKA SILKess Demon, Graham Clifford and Ruth Wiggins, and hear a special sound art playlist throughout the evening.

• 6.45pm – 7.00pm – Vinyl lathe demo
• 7.00pm – 8.00pm – Poetry open mic (approx. 10 slots – sign up at front door)
• 8.15pm –8.30pm – Sound art/spoken word by Dom and Nik AKA SILKess Demon
• 8.30pm – 9.00pm – Poetry sets by Graham Clifford & Ruth Wiggins
• 6-00pm – 9.00pm –  Special sound art playlist and record cover collage making

Deeney’s Café will be open for organic beers, wines, snacks and other refreshments.

William Morris Gallery is excited to be part of this year’s William Morris Design Line, which shines a light on the richness of Waltham Forest’s past and present creative community and encourages visitors to discover, learn and interact with an incredible range of design, making and creative activity.

The William Morris Design Line was created by Wood Street Walls in 2020, as part of the Local Trust’s Creative Civic Change Programme in collaboration with William Morris Big Local. It helped establish a community-led design route through Walthamstow as part of London Design Festival.  The 2024 edition, programmed in partnership with Waltham Forest Council, will extend to Lea Bridge for the first time to showcase designers and makers across the Argall Industrial Area. It is a Design District for London Design Festival 2024.

Artist biographies

Dominique and Nik co-run Pearl Home Records (founded in 2018), which is a small record label producing vinyl records of spoken word combined with sound art and art house music by various artists. Nik has reconditioned a rare record lathe machine that is able to cut into vinyl and produce a mono quality sound. In addition to hand made vinyl Pearl Home Records broadcast radio shows on Repeater Radio and organise various artist showcase evenings. They also facilitate ‘The Booth of Truth’ which is a portable workshop installation in which participants can record straight to vinyl. Dominique’s visual art is incorporated into the Pearl Home Records aesthetic whilst Nik operates the lathe as well as producing and mastering artists’ works. They are also performers in their own right, currently exploring the intersection of sound art and spoken word. They have previously created folk art in Jesus Licks and country art pop in SILKess Demon. They have worked with The Tate, The Southbank Centre, Blackhorse Road Workshops and Artillery for the Walthamstow Garden Party.

Graham Clifford was born in Portsmouth and grew up in Wiltshire. He studied Fine Art at the Swindon College of Art and Design, then at Middlesex University. At the University of East Anglia, he was awarded a master’s in creative writing. His first, award winning pamphlet collection is Welcome Back to the Country, 2011, published by Seren. Followed by his full-length collection The Hitting Game, in 2014, again by Seren. In January 2017, the Black Light Engine Room published Computer Generated Crash Test Dummies. March 2019, Against the Grain published Well. In Charge of the Gun was the follow up and most recent collection by The Black Light Engine Room in 2021. Graham also produced a poetry single with Pearl Home Records in 2019, featuring selected poems from Well. He currently lives in East London with his partner and two daughters.

Ruth Wiggins is a British poet. She is based in East London but is happiest in the great outdoors, something which deeply informs her work. Her poetry and essays have been published internationally, and her debut collection, The Lost Book of Barkynge was published by Shearsman in 2023 – this lyric history of Barking Abbey is told through the eyes of the women that lived there and has been described as ‘doing for poetry what Wolf Hall did for fiction.’ Ruth also has three pamphlets: Myrtle (Emma Press, 2014); a handful of string (Paekakariki Press, 2020); and Menalhyl (a private letterpress edition of earlier poems, 2023). In 2023 she produced a double single with Pearl Home Records entitled Holy Loaf which included spoken word extracts from The Lost Book of Barkynge.

Join us for the resurgence of Film Night at William Morris Gallery, showcasing four films by independent filmmakers who each explore the themes of the natural world as a space for artistic inspiration, spiritual connection, and political and cultural explorations.

Great Sale Wood (2024) – Michaela Davis

A short, animated film crafted through the sustainable process of cyanotype, featuring over 2,800 hand-printed frames. Shot around Highams Park Lake, the film explores themes of ecology and climate crisis. A study of interconnected beauty in nature, the film contains a score featuring digitally manipulated audio recordings of the lake.

2:02 mins

The Land we Seek the Land we Dream (2022) – Fourthland

Fourthland’s film is a deep remembrance of, ‘the first story´, performed through various acts in the landscape and a conversation between a group of cross-cultural and intergenerational hands. This piece is an invitation to feel ourselves as part of nature. The main elements of the piece are filmed on and around Leyton Marshes.

17 mins (including meditative piece)

OCAK (2020) –  Zeynep Kaserci

OCAK offers an intimate portrait of a family harvesting hazelnuts, where questions of labour, gender, family, and love come to the fore. With its observational cinematography and unhurried editing style, it offers glimpses into the daily life in rural north-eastern Turkey and explores peoples’ connection to land and their hazelnut gardens, which have been inherited for generations. In Turkish with English subtitles.

28:20 mins

Effigy for a Black Soldier / Protector of the Children (2022) – Maya Campbell

Effigy for a Black Soldier uses a reworking of the folk song Wayfaring Stranger as a storytelling device to explore memories of the artist’s estranged father, who served in the British Army and had a strong Christian faith. This meditates on the complexities that come with being a black man in service of the British Army, suggesting themes of migration, longing for home and the lingering phantom of the British Empire on the diaspora. The unnamed location suggests borders, emphasised by the dynamic presence of the sea and watery interlude that follows.

Protector of the Children alludes to the Nepali folklore figure of the Lahkey, who is said to be a man-eating demon who protects children and townspeople, dwelling deep in the forests of Nepal. The work draws from the artist’s early encounter with the Lahkey mask, when placed into her grandmother’s care at the age of four, and is an intimate video-performance filmed during the artist’s residency at Space A in Kathmandu, Nepal, exploring walking as a methodology to build connection with ancestral land.

10:32 mins

 Image: Still from ‘Great Sale Wood’ Michaela Davis, 2024