Frieze London: Mark Corfield-Moore and Rio Kobayashi

Kate MacGarry is pleased to announce a dual presentation of works by Mark Corfield-Moore and Rio Kobayashi. The dialogue between the two artists highlights their deep knowledge of craft and interest in traditional heritage. Pushing the boundaries of materials with curiosity, colour, and experimentation, their works reflect a nomadic way of seeing created in the fertile ground between cultures.

Rio Kobayashi (b.1989, Japan, lives and works in London) grew up in the pottery town of Mashiko, Japan. With both Austrian and Japanese ancestry, his design practice draws from his multicultural background, blending traditional crafts with modern sensibilities. Kobayashi’s eclectic work takes a collaborative and playful approach to fine craftsmanship, experimenting with fabrication techniques based on a rigorous knowledge in materials. Before setting up his own studio and workshop in East London in 2017, he worked with international studios in Milan, Berlin, Innsbruck and Paris.

Mark Corfield-Moore (b.1988, Bangkok, lives and works in Hastings, UK) reflects on his Thai and British heritage to investigate themes of transience and cultural memory. Eschewing and repurposing the ancient art of ikat, a weaving technique he learnt in Thailand, his distorted and glitchy imagery is a recollection and recreation of personal and collective histories. Various phrases evoke fragmented communication, particularly through the lens of cultural and intergenerational difference. Situated between textile and image, memory and materiality, his paintings make tangible questions of identity, translation, and diasporic inheritance.