Icy Hearts - Mieko Meguro

We are delighted to have Mieko return to the gallery for her solo show.

Icy Hearts:
Mieko says "This is 'self portrait' I struggle with this feeling. I feel that I might have "icy heart'."

Images of Dan Graham:
Mieko says "My images of Dan Graham come out of a combination of Manga tradition and domestic vernacular. While Dan is lauded as an intelligent, esoteric conceptual artist; as his wife I know his charming side, and I wanted to show this side of him to the world."

Artists Biography

Mieko Meguro was born and raised on the Japanese island of Hokkaido in 1969.  

Mieko Meguro works in various areas: as a sculptor, watercolour artist as well as making illustrated books.  These books are a hybrid of the English children’s ‘picture book’ form combined with Japanese Manga style and Japanese water-colour.

She attended a Catholic school where she became aware of the period in early Japan history when the Spanish Jesuit priest, Francis Xavier, colonised the island and deeply influenced Japanese culture.  Catholic symbols are a recurring element in Meguro’s artistic vocabulary.

After graduation, she was hired by the leading architectural firm in Hokkaido.  Her job took her to Scandinavia, to research wood and marble materials and construction, beginning a life long love of travel. She visited the major art museums of Italy and France and, during her work at an architecture office in Sapporo, 1991, she travelled to the city of Kitakyushu to attend an advanced workshop organised by CASK (now CCA), where she studied with Dan Graham.  

She would often travel to America and England and eventually took up residence in England where she worked on four artist's books using her own English idiom. Her first book,  Condiments!!! Flavours of Mieko, reflects on Japan’s post-WWII consumer culture and the influence of American ‘comfort food’ and packaged food products.  Mieko has also created a series of books about domestic life with her husband, Dan Graham, Dan Eats and Dan Naps.  More recently, she has produced hand-embroidered T-shirts with illustrations of Dan Graham. 
  
Mieko Meguro’s solo exhibitions, outside of Japan, were at the Roche Gallery in 2002, then A&D Gallery in 2003.  More recently her work was included in “Sweethearts” curated by the critic Kathy Battista, at the Pippi Houldsworth  Gallery, London (2012).  Her watercolours were also exhibited alongside Matt Mulligan, Michael Smith, William Wegman, and Ceal Floyer in “Drawings” curated by Dan Graham at Micheline Szwajcer Gallery, Antwerp.  

Mieko’s works combine vulnerability and humour with her unique view of cultural history.