Events category: Private view

Private View: TENTACLE by Bikky Sunazawa

This event provides the opportunity to have a first look at the work of Bikky Sunazawa. Bikky Sunazawa was one of Japan’s most prominent post-War sculptors. Born in Hokkaido, he was self-taught, developing a practice that was concerned essentially with self-expression through capturing the spirit of human and animal subjects. He is most renowned for his woodcarving, sometimes for public sculptures, but also made abstract paintings and drawings, accessories and furniture. This exhibition, TENTACLE, showcases a number of Bikky’s sculptures, wooden masks, paintings and drawings, made during his mature period, 1975 – 1986, when he was living in Otoineppu village, Hokkaido.

Private View and Artist Talk: AKI INOMATA in conversation with Dr Lena Fritsch

This event provided the opportunity to have a first look at the work of AKI INOMATA and hear her discuss with Dr Lena Fritsch the ideas and inspiration behind her work. The show will centre around one of INOMATA’s most recent projects, Memory of Currency (2018-2021) and introduce her practice, which for many years has involved collaboration with non-human creatures such as hermit crabs, bagworms, octopuses and ammonites. Memory of Currency is a project in which INOMATA collaborated with pearl oysters to create currency ‘fossils’. INOMATA implanted artificial nuclei into the tissues of the pearl oysters, with the shape of each nucleus modelled on the portrait of a figure depicted on one of today’s major currencies.

Private View: La Mer by Yuken Teruya

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is pleased to showcase Yuken Teruya’s first UK show, marking the 50th year of Okinawa’s reversion to Japan after the American occupation. Teruya is fascinated by human perceptions of the ever-changing moment. For him, the modest practice of drawing is a mighty tool not only to observe hierarchies, but to rebalance them. Teruya’s work utilises temporary, fragile materials: his cut-out pieces can be described as expanded drawings, but also as delicate sculptures. The sea is a constant presence in the Okinawan landscape and a recurring theme in Teruya’s work. The exhibition La Mer encapsulates Teruya’s perspective: historic and present references to the Okinawan condition, ecological systems within material cultures, and power relationships between countries.

Private View: HIROSHIMA by Iri Maruki and Toshiko Akamatsu

From 1950 to 1982 Iri Maruki and Toshiko Akamatsu (also known as Toshi Maruki) created the Genbaku no Zu series of artworks, internationally known as the Hiroshima Panels. The works became an apparatus to convey the story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the general public, first during a period of censorship, then during protests against nuclear weapons by the artists and their supporters. Amidst a mood of fear and anger towards the Cold War, almost 20 countries invited the works to be exhibited in a gesture of peace and transnational solidarity. As we potentially enter an era of escalating nuclear rhetoric, the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation showcases the panels’ drawings and exhibition archives in an opportunity to reflect on the consequences of nuclear warfare.

Private View: Somewhat Infrequently by Daisuke Kosugi

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is pleased to present Daisuke Kosugi’s first UK solo exhibition Somewhat Infrequently, showcasing Kosugi’s two latest works, A False Weight (2019) and All that goes before forget (2021). Kosugi utilises video as his primary medium to produce work that focuses on dislocated subjectivity in a normalised social milieu. He uses moving images to distort our sense of time – fixed, universal, always marching forward – and make us question what we thought we knew about our memory. While the world tries to advance and grow, desperately trying to keep up with the pace of change, Kosugi’s works make us pause and allow us to experiment with different relations and connections to ourselves and others.

Private View: The wind blows in by Asako Shiroki

The Private View was a chance to have a first look at the exhibition The wind blows in by Asako  Shiroki.

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is pleased to showcase Asako Shiroki’s first UK solo show, The wind blows in. Originally trained in silversmithing, Shiroki moved on to working in wood. She describes this natural material as simultaneously confrontational, adaptable, and a means to explore the temporal process of bringing form to raw material. The performative act of working the wood crystallises in the exhibition space as an installation, choreographed in physical relationships, balance, and tension between shapes. Shiroki respects the ephemeral nature of reality and how metamorphosis takes place in our environment; she reflects fragility and strength through her practice, hence her works can be dismantled to lie dormant until they are ready to be re-assembled.

Fluctuating Fluctuations: now＝then here＝elsewhere

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is proud to present the first solo exhibition of award-winning artist Yukako Tanaka, who currently lives and works in London. Tanaka’s practice spans a range of media from video and sound installations to the use of the latest viewing technologies including holographic visualisation and tactile 3D modeling. These modes of creation culminate in a fusion of art, science and philosophy where her art is positioned as a potential vessel that contains and informs disciplinary processes and their varying approaches to knowledge production.

Private View: The Myth of Survival by Rui Matsunaga

The Private View was a chance to have a first look at the exhibition The Myth of Survival by Rui Matsunaga. The exhibition title points to the links between ‘myths’ and ‘survival’. Survival itself is something of a myth, as we live in a world in which famine, plague and war have not been solved. Meanwhile, we need myths for survival. The ‘human story’ described by Yuval Harari binds humans together by building our social identity as the strongest species on the planet.

Private View: Beauty and Power by Mika Ninagawa

The Private View is a chance to have a first look at the exhibition Beauty and Power by the celebrated photographer and director Mika Ninagawa. Ninagawa was commissioned to take photographs of Japanese para-athletes, capturing their uniqueness, highlighting their power, and revealing their unexpected sides. This exhibition conveys the beauty of their inner strength and their remarkable abilities. Ninagawa brings a new perspective to her images of athletes by integrating them with the visual language of fashion, whether by framing them against her iconic intensified-colour backgrounds or by shooting them in action. By juxtaposing her emblematic studio images with filmic action shots, this exhibition celebrates equality, diversity, and inclusion. She shows that when we accept and embrace uniqueness, our individuality enriches society and makes the world a more fulfilling place.

EVENT CANCELLED - Private View: Creation between Creatures by AKI INOMATA

It is with great regret that in light of the current Covid-19 outbreak we have taken the decision to cancel AKI INOMATA’s exhibition and the Private View. We hope to be able to rearrange it for a later date.