Life on Planet Earth by Noguchi Rika

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is pleased to present Noguchi Rika’s first solo exhibition in the UK since 2004, Life on Planet Earth.

Combining video and photographs, this exhibition conveys a sense of wonder at being in the world as well as the particularity of being human. This is epitomised by Hand and Rainbow (2010), a photograph of the shadow of a hand holding a glass cube splitting white light into a spectrum of colours, from red through yellow and blue to violet.

Rainbows, wonderful, also remind us of the limits of our perception: for example, we can only see within a narrow band of electromagnetic light waves. Noguchi, who became renowned early on for her evocative images of figures in landscapes, has become increasingly preoccupied with the way other creatures experience the world. Birds, mammals and fish have been her subject matter, and here, in this exhibition, we see a variety of insects: budworms (moth caterpillars), crane flies and carpenter bees. Characteristically depicting them as small details against broad backgrounds, Noguchi encourages us not only to see and appreciate these other life-forms, but also to imagine what it is like to be them. How does time pass for a budworm, suspended from a branch by a silken thread, on a windy day?

The Lucent Sea (2021/2023) is a video work made on a sea shore near where Noguchi lives in Okinawa. In a sequence of bleached-out vignettes, the movement of people, ships and clouds against the rhythms of waves and tides, is recorded at different speeds and so there is a pervasive strangeness, enhanced by our realisation that the filming happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. In an artist’s statement, Noguchi explains: “Maybe across the sea was another person looking out across the sea, trying to imagine what lay on this side. Did my gaze travel in a straight line across the sea? If my gaze travelled at a certain speed, how fast was that? Would my gaze intersect with that other person’s gaze somewhere on the sea’s surface?”

The imagined other might be non-human – an insect, even – and the vast ocean an analogy for the difference between us and them. The theme of alienness is threaded through Noguchi’s work overall and it applies equally to the way she sees other human beings and how they shape their environments. To the Night Planet (2015) is another video, documenting a bus journey through Berlin where she was living until 2015. It is night time and so the city is as darkly mysterious as the Okinawa seaside is lucent, the bright street lights and signs foiled by blackness. It is like travelling through a colourful galaxy, filmed in such a way as to suggest that we are alien to ourselves.

Text by Jonathan Watkins

 

9 October 2024 –24 January 2025
Monday–Friday 9:30 am–5:00 pm (except public holidays)
Admission free

 

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• This exhibition is curated by Jonathan Watkins.
• This exhibition has been presented in collaboration with the Japan Foundation and the generous support of Taka Ishii Gallery and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.
• Limited copies of the book Noguchi Rika: To the Night Planet (「野口里佳　夜の星へ」) are available for purchase at the exhibition for £30.00 (cash only).

Installation View

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