Wright Auction

Born in Tokyo, Yuko Shiraishi knew she wanted to be a painter by the age of five. As a young woman, she moved to London to study painting at the Chelsea School of Art in 1978, where she received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Fine Art. Influenced by Color Field Painting and Minimalism, Shiraishi is recognized for her sparse oil paintings that explore the properties of light and color through layered compositions of contrasting pigments, as well as her architectural endeavors and conceptually driven pursuits, including installation, music, and poetry.

“It strikes me that Shiraishi collects color in the way that a scientist collects samples or a butterfly collector collects butterflies,” wrote critic Waldemar Januszczak. While painting (and color) may have been Shiraishi’s first loves as an artist, she has increasingly embraced more experimental disciplines. She made her first installation in 1995 upon the invitation to participate in a project located in a dilapidated building near London Bridge. This early venture incorporated sound, but it was not until 2010 that she would more wholeheartedly dedicate herself to the possibilities of sound and music in her practice.

Commenting on her simultaneous engagement with both painting and interdisciplinary forms, Shiraishi has said, “What I seek to do is take these two sometimes opposing and sometimes mutually enhancing forms of expression in order to create an organic world that evolves like bacteria, transforming themselves as they bind with and separate from each other.” Shiraishi has collaborated on large-scale architectural projects, including hospitals in London and Japan, crosswalks in Korea, a mural for Regent’s Canal in London, and a broadcasting building and media center for the BBC. Shiraishi’s works are included in the collections of the Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Museum, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, and the Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo, among many others.