7 June 2018
On Thursday 7th June, the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize 2018 private view was held, with the work of the three shortlisted finalists, Kate Groobey, Keith Milow and Mark Neville, on display. Midway through the event Jonathan Watkins, Director of Ikon Gallery, announced Kate Groobey as this year’s winner.
10 May 2018
Collaborating together for the first time, Tokyo Rumando and Hideka Tonomura are at the cutting edge of an exciting and groundbreaking generation of new photographers working in Japan today. Using photography to confront basic and instinctive key human issues, Rumando and Tonomura continually reverse expectations and take their audiences into complex and moving interior spaces through their emotionally engaging practices. Both photographers participate in a fictitious dream, based on a shared optimism about the potential for art to transcend the problems of daily life.
20 March 2018
Goro Murayama expresses self-organising processes and patterns through painting and drawings. He is particularly interested in fundamental theories of life systems, namely autopoiesis (self-creation), and the diverse life-like patterns implemented in computer-simulated cellular automata (discrete models studied in science).
Murayama’s works attain a unique expression by introducing these self-organising processes into them. For Murayama, painting is a mandala of emergences that appears when the mind, affected by forms and shapes, reiterates and amasses actions.
15 February 2018
In 2018 Japanese artist Setsuko Ono will bring her work to London for the first time.
Ono creates steel sculptures characterised by their cut-out shapes, forming open and closed figures and designs. The cut-out silhouettes are bent in an animated way, while the cut-out negatives let sunlight and views of nature through.
The exhibition will include sculpture and mixed media paintings that reflect the artist’s interest in international politics; visitors will be able to use virtual reality goggles to experience Ono’s permanent installations in Japan.
11 January 2018
Bridges are one of the main subjects of the work of Toshio Shibata, one of Japan’s preeminent landscape photographers, and known for exploring the delicate balance between man-made structures and nature. This exhibition does not only display many of Shibata’s bridges, but also “bridges” Shibata’s forty-year career. The artist was joined in conversation by Dr Phillip Prodger, Head of Photographs, National Portrait Gallery.
2 November 2017
Combining memories of her mother’s garden in Gifu with inspiration found in the parks of London, the work of Hitomi Hosono demonstrates a meticulous study of botanical forms. Hosono makes use of hand-carved models and plaster moulds, to make individual porcelain plant forms that are then applied to vase or bowl forms, enveloping the object’s underlying shape to create an intensely intricate texture that captivates with its delicate beauty.
3 October 2017
Takashi Kawashima creates works to suggest ‘absent’ stories, which recount catastrophes caused by overwhelming natural powers, tracing the memory of the land via the imaginary narrative woven by the artist’s own experiences and questions. In the artist’s first UK solo exhibition Absence and Ambience, one of the two rooms of the gallery was dedicated to the project Unfinished Topography/Collection, a collection of fragmented stories of catastrophes which happened after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. In the other room, Kawashima examined the uncertainty surrounding us in our daily lives through the motif of ‘shadow’.
14 September 2017
While working to promote their traditional works, the artists of Decorative but Calm have realised that craftsmanship is an international language; crafts appeal to the personal sensibility of each viewer. In this exhibition the pursuit of elaborate designs aims, in a true expression of Japanese aesthetics, to create a “decorative but calm” space for reflection that does not intend to overwhelm the viewer.
20 July 2017
In this exhibition, several famous Kyoto tea houses were introduced through photographs, architectural diagrams and other forms, to convey an understanding of key concepts such as wabi-sabi.
During the Private View event, Japan’s leading calligrapher Tomoko Kawao offered a calligraphy demonstration, and the portable tea room Kian built by Masayuki Inaida was also on display.
30 May 2017
The first London solo exhibition of the artist Toshiaki Hicosaka invited us to reflect on the world through fire: the driver of evolution, life, comfort and violence. From ocean to fire, his immersive installations of painting embraced elements of the everyday. Through this new body of work by the artist, viewers were able to rethink the social and cultural environment that they live within.
