Reception: 31 May 1 pm - 7 pm
31 May - 7 July 2025
749-4 Honide, Arao
Kumamoto 864-0012
Japan
09054898302
Visible Mending
stories, stitches, tears, and repairs
Visible Mending exhibition is a selection of embroidered drawings from 3 separate but connected bodies of work: Timekeeper, Common Threads and Mourning Piece by Frances Melhop. Each work meditates on human imperfection, temporality, and memory through the repetitive, embodied gesture of stitching—a practice that evokes the unconscious rhythms of care, loss, and repair.
Origin, 2025
Oil paint on linen cotton thread, 12” x 12” x 3” on stretcher + maple frame
Installation image of Visible Mending exhibition, Motomoto gallery, Arao, Kyushu, Japan
TIMEKEEPER
STATEMENT
The Timekeeper series hovers between embroidery, painting, drawing, and soft sculpture—each one a spiral quietly tracing time and memory. The spiral becomes a visual mantra, embodying the existential dilemma and delight of living within unstoppable time: its relentless forward motion, its circling returns, and our deeply human impulse to mark its passage.
Stitch by stitch, the spiral grows outward from a central origin, echoing the cyclical nature of life and the quiet energy spirals produce. Like the rings in a tree trunk, each line of stitching maps time, emotion, and experience—capturing heartbreaks, joys, injuries, revisited again and again as the stitch line returns on itself while persistently moving forward. The humanness of each sometimes-wonky stitch is intentional, a mark of presence and vulnerability. They are records of lived time.
Gardens of layered oil paint lie beneath the embroidered stitches on the linen substrate, while hidden Morse code messages whisper from within the stitches—emitting secret transmissions, an archive of invisible information embedded in the work. These messages are not always meant to be decoded, but rather felt, like a pulse or breath.
With each Timekeeper, I focus on the journey of the stitch, the act of marking time, the intimacy of repetition. What may appear futile becomes, instead, a meditation, where imperfection and process animate each spiral, giving it an energy of its own.
Becoming Aware, 2025
Oil paint on linen cotton thread, 8” x 8” x 3” on stretcher
Installation image of Timekeepers at the Visible Mending exhibition, Motomoto gallery, Arao, Kyushu, Japan
yes, yes, yes, actually NO. 8” x 8” x 3” oil paint and cotton thread on linen, 2025. PRIVATE COLLECTION
Installation image of Timekeepers and Mourning Piece at Visible Mending exhibition, Motomoto gallery, Arao, Kyushu, Japan
Dreaming a Life, 24” x 24” x 4” oil paint on linen, with hand embroidery, 2025
Frances Melhop
Artist Statement
Human touch, the traces we leave behind, and the interplay between presence and absence—both in physical and virtual spaces—are recurring themes throughout my work. I reflect on how sensory interactions have shifted in the age of photography, screens, and digital platforms, which increasingly demand our attention, time, and connection, often at the expense of sleep and embodied human interaction.
Through a female lens, my research and studio practice unfold across analogue and digital photography, embroidery, printmaking, oil painting, and installation. These processes require me to slow down, to be still, and to engage deeply with making. Each body of work manifests as a tangible artifact, an act of contemplation and resistance against the speed and spectacle of contemporary life.
I am particularly interested in how we now experience the world, whether through physical interaction or the mediated realities offered by screens, and what we consider more real.
The current work emerges after 28 years working as an editorial photographer in the fashion industry, creating images of women and girls, for women and girls. It spans a significant cultural shift: from the pre-internet era through the collapse of the magazine industry to today’s landscape, where we wield increased agency over our recorded identities and visual narratives.
Installation image of Lightbulbs from Common Threads series and Mourning Piece at Visible Mending exhibition, Motomoto gallery, Arao, Kyushu, Japan
Mourning Piece #51, 10” x 10” silk organza, tea stained cyanotype and hand embroidered cotton thread
Installation image of Lightbulbs from Common Threads series and Timekeeper, Becoming Aware 8” x 8” x 3” at Visible Mending exhibition, Motomoto gallery, Arao, Kyushu, Japan
Installation image of Lightbulbs from Common Threads series, each 7” x 7“ oil paint and cotton thread on canvas, 2025, at Visible Mending exhibition, Motomoto gallery, Arao, Kyushu, Japan
EXHIBITION ESSAY/REFLECTIONS
By Madoka Muramatsu
Visible Mending - Reclaiming the Wounds
“I don’t quite know why, but I’ve been drawn to the image of the lightbulb.”
The artist explained, standing before the audience gathered to hear her speak.
Frances Melhop.
For many years, she stood at the forefront of the fashion industry as a photographer for some of the world’s most iconic magazines—Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, and more—often shaping narrative-rich, ethereal editorials.
Now, she devotes herself to fine art—where her hands return, again and again, to the tactile, the intimate, and the handmade, seeking what was lost in the rise of the digital.
During the gallery talk, Frances spoke about how her years as a fashion photographer continue to shape her work as an artist.
“I’m endlessly fascinated by the human presence that reveals itself through imperfection. That’s where I find beauty. Back when I worked in fashion, if a model had a little gap between her teeth, I’d fall in love with that detail—and that’s when I’d press the shutter.”
The world seen through the camera’s viewfinder and the one traced by hand—her work was born in the layers where those two converged. She breathed and thrived in that in-between.
And now, through her art, it seems to me that she is reclaiming the depth, time, space, and texture that once vanished into the digital…
Madoka Muramatsu – Bio
Language & Life Coach / Executive Coach | Writer | Former News Journalist, Speechwriter, and Interpreter/Translator
Madoka Muramatsu is a bilingual coach and writer/editor whose work centers on transformation — through language acquisition, speech delivery, embodied presence, and inner alignment.
Muramatsu began her career as a field reporter and investigative journalist with Jiji Press, one of Japan’s two major national wire services, covering politics, international relations, U.S. military affairs, and socio-economic issues from Tokyo and Okinawa.
Her interviews with visiting high-level officials and her insightful, thought-provoking feature stories appeared not only on the agency’s platform but also in The Japan Times and The Japan News, two of Japan’s leading English-language newspapers.
Muramatsu later held a wide range of communications roles at the Embassy of South Africa and JOICFP (Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning), serving as an official interpreter to the Ambassador and managing bilingual communications materials across digital platforms and media outreach.
At the Australian Embassy in Tokyo, she worked as Speechwriter to the Ambassador and Communications Officer, overseeing communications strategy, crafting and editing bilingual content, and strengthening press relations.
Throughout her career, Madoka has also contributed as a freelance journalist to major digital media platforms such as Yahoo! News Japan, combining journalistic insight with cross-cultural storytelling.
Raised in rural Kumamoto in southwestern Japan, she taught herself English without the privilege of immersion abroad. She went on to achieve a perfect TOEIC score (990), studied sociology and journalism as an exchange student at UC Berkeley, and later earned her B.A. in English Language Studies from Sophia University in Tokyo.
As a former journalist, Madoka trained her mind to distinguish fact from interpretation with razor-sharp clarity and sophistication. While she is trained to chase facts, her deepest allegiance is no longer to facts alone — it is to truth.
Business contact
Email: info@coaching-light.com
Website: https://coaching-light.com/about
Instagram: @thecoachmadoka
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メールアドレス：info@coaching-light.com
ウェブサイト：https://coaching-light.com/about
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Lightbulb 3 from Common Threads series, each 7” x 7“ oil paint and cotton thread on canvas, 2025, at Visible Mending exhibition, Motomoto gallery, Arao, Kyushu, Japan
