‘Haiku Prelude – Haiku Kami’ 2013 Exhibition

POSK Gallery
238-246 King Street
London W6 0RF

Sunday 17 February – Friday 1 March 2013
(Private view: Sunday 24 February  6.00-8.00pm)

Free entry

Project “Haiku Prelude – Haiku Kami” 2013 by Carolina Khouri

Haiku Prelude – Haiku Kami project is dedicated to the victims of the Great Eastern Tohoku Earthquake, 11 March 2011.  An exhibition of the project in POSK Gallery in 2013 will mark a second anniversary of the disaster. Last year on Sunday 11 March at 2.46pm the exhibition and series book was launched in Pop Up Gallery in South Kensington. The project supports Momo – Kaki Orphans Fund by donating proceeds from the publication. The artist hopes that the project will serve as an evolving memorial to those that suffered as a result of the March 2011 tragedies in Japan.

It is the first publication of it’s kind and as such it has received support and encouragement from all the living authors’ haiku which is included in the project.  The book also includes an introduction by Kuniharu Shimizu (haiku poet and haiga artist) and a foreword by President of the European Council, Mr Herman Van Rompuy (haiku poet).

The project Haiku Prelude – Haiku Kami has been reviewed by the British Haiku Society and recommended to the public and donors. The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and Polish Cultural Institute provided financial support for the publication and in 2012 Baltic Restaurant also sponsor the project.

Featured haiku poets:
Bashõ, Buson, Darek Brzóska Brzózkiewicz, David Cobb, Juan delGado, Caroline Gourlay, James William Hackett, Gary Hotham, Teiko Inahata, Issa, Jack Kerouac, Ezra Pound, Herman Van Rompuy, Ryõkan, Ryõta, Kuniharu Shimizu, Takaya Soshu, Takaha Shugyo, Alison Williams, Richard Wright, Goto Yahan

Artist Statement
‘That evening, in the Rue Raynouard, I realised quite vividly that if I were a painter, or if I had, often, that kind of emotion, or even if I had the energy to get paints and brushes and keep at it, I might found a new school of painting, of “non-representative” painting, a painting that would speak only by arrangements in colour.’ – Ezra Pound.
The moment as described by Ezra Pound which led to his famous haiku Metro.

The project Haiku Prelude – Haiku Kami developed out of a series of paintings that reminded Carolina Khouri of haiku verse.  After researching haiku further and discovering the quote by the poet Ezra Pound in his note about the moment, the encapsulating core idea for the project Haiku Prelude – Haiku Kami was conceived.

The Haiku Prelude – Haiku Kami art series is inspired by traditional and contemporary Japanese and western haiku. It features 27 haiku coupled with abstract paintings. Free of any intellectual analysis this intuitive approach makes a statement about the actual feelings expressed in each haiku.  The style used in the project is adapted from the painter Jaroslaw Kobylkiewicz, who is responsible for originating this particular style and composition of painting.  It is a process of simplifying an idea to an absolute point.

The complexity of each individual element of the paintings is built on other details to create a simple yet inseparable form and from this point the Haiku Prelude – Haiku Kami project was born.

Sponsors of the book: Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Polish Cultural Institute

Publisher: Haringey

Arts Supporter: British Haiku Society, Studio AnD

Supporter 2013: POSK Gallery