Shimabuku was born in Kobe in 1969. He currently lives and works in Berlin. Much of Shimabuku’s work focuses on travel and relocation through conceptual and performance based process. His works take place in the public realm and draw on his personal experience of locality. Based on thoroughly whimsical investigation, Shimabuku’s practice uses elements of interactivity offering passers by the opportunity to become in involved in the evolution of his ideas.
While in Lumsden he proposed a new project entitled ‘Make Cow Smile’. Aware that livestock form a potentially larger audience in this location than people, and having observed the gentle but intense interest with which cows greet people, Shima proposed an event in which villagers devise means to make their neighbourhood cows smile.
The images are concept sketches, and some of Shima and Rika in and around Lumsden
2001 ‘The Octopus Returns,’ Kobe Art Village Center/Suma Rikyu Park, Kobe, Japan ‘Passing through the rubber band,’ Air de Paris, France
2002 ‘Frog’s Sky,’ Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, Austria
2003 ‘Watching the River Flow,’ Shugoarts, Tokyo, Japan ‘Swansea Jack Memorial Dog Swimming Competition,’ Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, UK
2004 ‘Yoyo on the Moon, ‘ Maejima Art Center/Yume-R, Okinawa ‘Born as a Box,’ Wilkinson Gallery, London, UK
2005 ‘Catching Octopus with sel-made ceramic pots,' Air de Paris, Paris