Yoko Ogata

Yoko Ogata’s prints celebrate the beauty of flowers and plant life. Living in central Tokyo, her immediate surrounds are largely void of nature and her practice acts as a compensation for this absence. Monotype allows Ogata to combine a free and spontaneous painting technique with the unpredictability of the printmaking process. As well as making prints with bright hues and strong contrasts, her practice includes the production of “ghost prints” which are soft and poetic. By displaying these differently constructed prints alongside each other, Ogata creates a duality of strength and subtlety. Ogata’s works are loosely based on images sourced online. Photographs of renowned Dutch gardener Piet Oudolf’s work have been used to provide much of her subject matter. She often selects a small part of these found images as a starting point, recreating it and painting it repeatedly over the picture plane to create a new “garden”.