Provoking Calm: The Artworks of Colin K. Okashimo

Provoking Calm explores the contemplative artworks and landscapes of Colin K Okashimo. 

Provoking Calm is itself a poetic rumination, forming an extension of the art it depicts. 

Okashimo is both landscape architect and sculptor, and all his landscapes and artefacts exude his desire to provide opportunities for self-reflection and contemplation in a 21st-century urban lifestyle. 

Okashimo’s art continually researches the potential for people to react to the juxtapositions of material and context, and to interact with objects placed in a specifically choreographed location. 

In contrast to the benign and generic landscape design now seen throughout Asia, Okashimo’s environmental art is slyly provocative. 

Okashimo's artworks ask introspective and open-minded questions that might encourage a meditative response, and provide a moment of ‘calm’.

Of Japanese descent with a Canadian upbringing, Okashimo has lived in Southeast Asia for thirty years, and set up Colin K Okashimo and Associates design studio in 1995. 

His artworks and landscapes are located in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, and Seychelles.

Written and photographed by Patrick Bingham-Hall

Dimensions: 250 x 300mm (Portrait) Hardback Quarterbound Cloth

Extent: 288pp

Date of publication: May 2014

ISBN: 978-981-4428-01-9