Last Thursday the 1st October, Powerscourt Gallery hosted an artist talk by award-winning director, animator and artist Jimmy T. Murakami. Murakami who attended the renowned Chouinard Art Institute in California, spoke to a packed gallery about his life as an artist and specifically about pieces of his artwork which were on show in the gallery. All of the pieces included in the Artist Talk sold out.
For this talk, the artist focused on a series of ‘narrative’ paintings which feature in an upcoming, Irish Art Council -sponsored film on Murakami’s life. These paintings recall Murakami’s childhood experience of living in Tulle Lake Japanese-American “War Relocation Camp” in California. Since Murakami was a little boy when he was in Tulle Lake, he is one of the last living witnesses of one of these camps and his works are hugely important and unique social documents, they are Murakami’s way of telling a very personal story about a dark piece of American history that many people these days are not even aware of.
These works and other works by Murakami are on view in Powerscourt Gallery for the next two weeks.
The Arts Council funded biographical film of Murakami’s life is due to be released in February 2010.
