WORKS OF THE WEEK: Nao Matsunaga

Nao Matsunaga
Family of Yew, 2025
Yew
135 x 33 x 33 cm / 53 x 13 x 13 in.
144 x 33 x 30 cm / 56 ⅗ x 13 x 11 ⅘ in.
120 x 36 x 35 cm / 47 ¼ x 14 x 13 ⁷⁄₁₀ in.

Installed in the gallery as part of our current exhibition, Nao Matsunaga: A Year’s Thought, Nao Matsunaga’s wood carvings were all conceived and created at Roche Court, from timber collected throughout the sculpture park.

Since 2020, Nao has regularly returned to Roche Court to work on these carvings. During this time, he has rooted himself into the landscape, looking, walking and experiencing. As a result, his engagement with a material is dictated by a combination of factors; the world around him, his experience, his methodical process and his subconscious.

Family of Yew embodies Nao's passion for working with found materials and allowing them to express themselves. He calls this the "surrender" element of his practice, since it is a series of chance events which has lead to a new work.

In the wall series, In These Days of Quiet, Nao has used a ceramic turning wheel to draw concentric lines in coloured pencil onto the beech with direct immediacy. In this, he echoes the ancient histories of the landscapes, and the narrative of ever-changing, ever-growing form.

Nao Matsunaga
In These Days of Quiet 1, 2025
Beech, pencil
80 x 80 x 10 cm
31 ½ x 31 ½ x 4 in.

Born in Osaka, Japan, Nao Matsunaga (b. 1980) studied at the University of Brighton (1999 – 2002) on the ‘Wood, Metal, Ceramic and Plastic’ course. He completed his MA in Ceramic and Glass at the Royal College of Art in 2007. His work has been included in numerous major solo and group exhibitions across the world. From 2017 to 2018, Nao’s work was shown in Things of Beauty Growing, a major exhibition curated by Simon Olding, Martina Droth and Glenn Adamson at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Things of Beauty Growing toured to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Recent one-man shows include in Tokyo, Japan, Pseudo Stone Phenomenon, at Komagome Soko (2022); Hybrid of sorts/hybrid of thoughts, Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London (2022) and Deepcuts, curated by Anthony Shaw at Marsden Woo Gallery, London (2020).

Nao Matsunaga has completed many artist residences across the world, such as at the Arizona State University Art Museum, in Phoenix, USA (2013); the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2014); the 29th International Symposium of Ceramics Bechyně, Czech Republic (2021), and in Japan at the Shigaraki Cultural Ceramic Park in both 2022 and 2025. In 2012, Matsunaga won the Jerwood Makers Open, and in 2013, was the winner of the British Ceramics Biennial Award. He attained a Bursary from the British Council in Indonesia in 2016. His work can be found in public collections including the York Museum and Art Gallery, York; Crafts Council, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Nao Matsunaga lives and works in London.

Our current exhibition, Nao Matsunaga: A Year’s Thought, will continue in the gallery throughout the summer.

Installation View: Nao Matsunaga, A Year's Thought, in the gallery at Roche Court Sculpture Park.

“Central to Nao’s way of working is this process of collecting, storing, and then bringing together; adding a wedge or a word here, balancing this with that. It’s all a juggle between chaos and order, restlessness and patience.”

– Laurie Britton Newell in her essay, Chance Element, for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Nao Matsunaga: A Year’s Thought at Roche Court Sculpture Park, 2025.