​Waugh Office was established in 2011 by Julia and Mark Waugh as a hybrid platform.
since then we have worked with curators, writers, theorists and artists to smudge
cultural differences and attitudes across physical and national borders.
Pushing this programme, exploring the traffic between peoples and ideas,
nomadic and unfixed perceptions rather than stereotypes and assumptions.
We come to play and escape prejudice and shout for renegade
values of the broken, unfixable and un-homely.
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© Waugh Office 2024.
Midori Mitamura
Art & Breakfast
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Midori Mitamura hosted Art & Breakfast for Leaving Language. A site specific installation was on view at The Metropole Gallery Folkestone England.
Art & Breakfast has been performed extensively throughout the world, its aim to make time in the first few hours of a day to discuss Art and creativity. Working within tropes of intimacy and the precarious, the Artist reimagines fragments of experience: a friend’s story of illness or the secrets hidden in books collected by her Father. Can found images in faded tomes be redrawn and collaged to reveal a Universal truth?
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There is a mysterious function to Art and Midori Mitamura wants to explore this economy, hosting events called Art & Breakfast that can occur anywhere in the world in coincidence with one of her exhibitions. Sometimes they are in gallery spaces; philosophically they are in latitudes that drift like radio frequencies across any horizon. So there are ingredients for breakfast, things we eat: toast, ongiri, croissants, cereal, miso, tea, coffee or fruit juice and then there is the chat, the morning discussions that can set the narrative for the day.
![the metropole art and breakfast 3_edited](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6e08d1_f41207e987194f5fabd02bbac0aabf1d~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_794,h_560,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/the%20metropole%20art%20and%20breakfast%203_edited.jpg)
Art is a crystal ball or skrying glass that can pull into focus waves of information that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. The Artist Medium looked mysterious dressed in black wearing large round Sunglasses, careful with words which we know carried dreamlike suggestions into conversation.
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In films and TV series you sometimes get scenes of ladies walking into antique shops and leaving with one or two discrete curios. So it is with Midori Mitamura who has an uncanny knack of picking psychic locks, in Folkestone finding a trove of vinyl records and proceeded to float them from a chandelier hook in the ceiling.
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![e4e15dc57264e59dd5a6c6dc9f09fb3f_edited.](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6e08d1_dff91d4e655e4cdd8543cd5cd8c8a967~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_433,h_562,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/e4e15dc57264e59dd5a6c6dc9f09fb3f_edited_.jpg)
The closest to the ground was an RCA label with an A side called Mental (Italian Job Edit) by Manic MC that featured Sara Carlson. As the black disks ascended, a cosmology of sounds spun into infinity. This piece towered and swung near the pinewood frames; constructed for visitors to move through and explore it's cornucopia; ooks, fruit, plates and a collection of works summoned with the assistance of members of the Folkestone Art Collection.
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These agents whom the Midori Mitamura befriended in a local bookshop, bestowed the transitory gift of several prints for display, such as Peter Blake's Alice. These were placed on the rectangular frame: built by the Artists as an architectural environment for all these temporary acquisitions.
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The images were suspended so their fronts and rears were exposed revealing names and dates, like The Knight by Elizabeth Frink. The multiple labels narrated a history of loans and exhibitions the works had previously participated in.
That fragile framework revealed a story of Art in Folkestone. There was a creative scene in the town before 2017 saw the large signs by Bob & Roberta Smith that declared "Folkestone Is An Art School."
![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6e08d1_00d6001ac6b14095bd16f1d45e312380~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_722,h_920,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/6e08d1_00d6001ac6b14095bd16f1d45e312380~mv2.jpg)
Waugh Office was established in 2011 by Julia Waugh and Mark Waugh,
as a hybrid platform curating exhibitions, events and publications internationally
​
© Waugh Office 2024.