Mimi Joung

Mimi Joung, originally from Korea, gained her Masters in Ceramics and Art from the Royal College of Art. Much of Mimi’s works are installation and situation/relational projects. They are suggestive of landscapes and stories, combining clay or glass sometimes bundled together with mundane, found materials such as elastic bands, knitting wool, silk thread, a needle box, objects found in charity shops, the natural environment or through people and conversations. She focuses her work on issues of “Displacement”, with objects addressing a wider discourse, beyond origin and usage, to reference human situations and experience. She is a long way from home and the important influences there and has become a commentator, observer and historian reflecting the important cycle of roots and change.

Process is all important to the artist. Mimi’s hands instinctively seek to resolve ideas through the act of making and follow a playful approach, reflecting her own life, what she reads and what she learns from other people and situations. She feels that her comfort with materials and techniques allow her to seek a deeper meaning in the historical context of ceramic materials, forms and colour.

Recently, the artist’s work has evolved to create sculptural pieces based on a slim novel called ‘In Watermelon Sugar’ by the American writer, Richard Brautigan. Cavaliero Finn was particularly drawn to these pieces, their bright colours and playfulness. Mimi creates these sculptures by tracing and clay taping each chapter of Brautigan’s surreal landscape which are reflections of displacement within imagined utopias and dystopias. Each sculpture relates to a chapter in the book, featuring the exact words from Brautigan’s novel.

Mimi has been awarded membership of the Royal Society of Sculptors. She has made site specific and project-based exhibitions inspired by her interest in exploring ideas surrounding her materials (clay) and their history. She completed an Artist in Residence program at the Banff Arts Centre, Canada, which celebrates conceptual art in Canada and allows international artists to explore the future of their ideas And also received various arts grants and commission from Korea, England, Wales, and other countries.

Mimi Joung has been awarded the following awards and grants.

Oriel y Parc Resident artist selected by Cardiff Museum and Safle, Arts Council Wales, 2010
Banff Arts Centre, Scholarship, Future Idea of art residency, Arts council Canada, Sept 2006
Grant for Arts, Art council North East, individual development grant, March 2006
Rootstein Hopkins Foundation, Project Grant, 2006
NCSP Grant, Symposium support, July 2006
Grant for Arts, Art council North East, Travel grant, March 2006
Designed and Made Industry Bursaries, European union, Northern rock foundation, 2006
British Craft in Japan Travel Grant, Crafts council, UK investment & trade, 2006
Next move, Craft council UK, Sunderland university, Arts council England, 2005 – 2007
Faenza international Ceramic Art Competition, 2004/5
Oversea student Bursaries, Royal college of Art, UK, 2004/5

In 2004, Juliana Cavaliero and Debra Finn curated their first exhibition as Cavaliero Finn in a home in South London and they haven't looked back since.

For this exhibition, Cavaliero Finn returned to its South London roots to celebrate its 20th birthday at Stockwell Studio. The exhibition featured a wide range of artists who have shown with the gallery over the last 20 years including work by our current portfolio of artists and work from some of our earlier artists, like painters Holly Frean, Daisy Cook and Caroline Popham, paper artist Thurle Wright, designer makers Sam Edkins and Deborah Bowness, and sculptors Tom Stogdon, Danuta Solowiej, Merete Rasmussen and Patricia Volk who returned to the gallery as guest artists for this show. The exhibition also included an installation by textile artist Isabelle Fletcher and new work by Lise Herud Braten, the most recent additions to the Cavaliero Finn portfolio.

Revisit this exhibition online now.