Puzzle Pieces: Siri Johansen, Pati Passero and Celia Pym in Kyoto
A knitting swatch pulled from a bin, a paper napkin from a café table, a shard of ceramic left over from the kiln. These are not the materials most exhibitions are built from, but Puzzle Pieces, opening at Gojozaka Shimizu Gallery in Kyoto on 23rd May, makes a persuasive case for taking them seriously.
Waste Yarn Project and Celia Pym, Patch Test Sweater front and back (2025).
The show brings together three artists and designers who work across different disciplines and different cities. Siri Johansen, the Norwegian knitwear designer behind Waste Yarn Project, is based in Paris. Pati Passero, a visual designer whose practice moves fluidly between graphic design, print and art, works from Oslo. Celia Pym, the London-based artist and Associate Lecturer in Textiles at the Royal College of Art, has spent nearly two decades mending garments and thinking hard about what that act means. Despite the distance between them, they share a commitment to materials that would ordinarily be thrown away, and to process itself as a form of research.
Above: Pati Passero Drawings - development for Puzzle Pieces. Below: Waste Yarn Project, Celia Pym, and Pati Passero Drawings - development for Puzzle Pieces.
The work on show has been made specifically for Gojozaka Shimizu Gallery, taking advantage of the gallery's own ceramic waste alongside the knitted test swatches and everyday paper ephemera each artist has gathered. The logic of the exhibition is one of accumulation and assembly: layering, patching, unravelling and rearranging until something new emerges from the leftover pile. The title is well chosen. These are genuinely puzzle-like questions the artists are asking about value and material, and the answers are deliberately open.
Waste Yarn Project and Celia Pym patch test (2025) for Puzzle Pieces
Visitors are encouraged to participate directly. Throughout the week, drop-in activities include arranging WYP knitted swatches into floor mosaics and trying on the collaborative Patch Test Sweater, which will be photographed to build an ongoing archive.
Several workshops run alongside the exhibition. On the opening Saturday, a free newspaper collage workshop invites adults and children to play with colour and shape using WYP swatches. On Sunday 24th May, a stitching session explores how to join two pieces of knitting together, treating the connecting thread as its own active element in the work rather than a means to an end. The week closes on Saturday 30th May with an Everything Puzzle Making Workshop, using every material in the gallery simultaneously.
Celia Pym and Siri Johansen (WYP) developing the Puzzle Pieces Exhibition in the Waste Yarn Project studio.
Rounding out the week is Celia Pym's Mending Workshop on Thursday 28th May, an evening class in woven darning on knitwear. Pym, whose most recent book SOCKS: Imaginative Mending was published earlier this year, brings a thoughtful exactitude to repair. Participants are asked to bring their own damaged woollen items. No prior experience of any kind is required.
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Further Information:
Puzzle Pieces runs 23rd–30th May at Gojozaka Shimizu Gallery, Kyoto. All workshops are delivered in English and Japanese.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Waste Yarn Project and Celia Pym, Newspaper patch sweater (detail).
All images courtesy of the artists and as credited in photo captions.