Faultlines
by Tomoko Yoneda

This exhibition presents photography and film made over the past thirty years by London-based Japanese artist Tomoko Yoneda.

The result of detailed research and careful observation, Yoneda’s quietly affecting work traces the enduring effects of war and natural disasters. Her mysterious images and their accompanying captions bring to the surface hidden histories in landscapes, people and archives. Often focusing on the fallout from Japanese imperialism and the Second World War, they highlight the humanity at the heart of global conflicts, casting light on unknown protagonists, the resilience of survivors, and the ambivalence of younger generations facing their legacy.

The title of the exhibition refers to faults in the earth’s surface created by rock-mass movements. Buried in the earth’s crust, these cracks continuously grow and shift, gathering tension which is eventually released through earthquakes or the eruption of volcanoes. For Yoneda, these faults have a poignant, personal relevance, with 2025 marking 30 years since the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake in the area where she grew up. In her earlier series A Decade After (1995/2024) and recent work Premonition (2024), Yoneda revisits her hometown, pointing to the earthquake’s continued resonance. In her work, geological faults also serve as a metaphor for the largely invisible boundary lines that have been fought over and redrawn by nation-states throughout history. Ongoing questions surrounding the moral ramifications of these fault-lines – the guilt carried by war-torn generations, for instance – are raised through her photographs’ nuanced representations.

In the Regency Room, Heat I (1996) and Heat III (1996) capture heat stains on the wallpaper of an abandoned flat in East London. Part of Yoneda’s earliest series Topographical Analogy, the sparse image of decay evokes the ghostly absence of previous inhabitants. In the Park Side Gallery, Entwined Barbed Wire with Flowers II (Near DMZ Cheorwon, South Korea) (2015) shows the flora that have thrived in the desolate perimeter of Korea’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The country’s contested boundaries are further referenced in Wedding –View of the wedding party on the river that divides North Korea and China, Dandong, China (2007), in which a married couple travel by boat along the Yalu River, a historic border between North Korea and China. In the distance, the faint outline of a bridge built by the Japanese to consolidate trade across occupied Korea subtly contrasts with the joyful subject of marital union.

Adjacent toWedding, Crash Site of B-29 Photographic Reconnaissance Plane used in 1946 at Bikini Atoll in the first postwar atomic bomb tests, Peak District, England (2015) similarly shows a landscape marred by foreign conflict. Deployed by the American military in Japan during the Second World War, the B-29 airplane was used to gather military intelligence and was the carrier that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. In this pastoral scene, the remnants of a B-29 point to this destructive history while also conveying a sense of peace through the crash site’s surrounding nature. The impact of espionage is also highlighted in images from The Parallel Lives of Others (Encounter With Sorge Spy Ring) (2008). Photographed by Yoneda with a blurred lens, the silver gelatin prints highlight places where Soviet military intelligence officer Richard Sorge and various spies met in secret. The hazy quality of the images shrouds these well-known locations with an air of mystery, alluding to the covert nature of intelligence gathering.

Above a fireplace in Park Side Gallery and a heater in Mews Side Gallery are images from Japanese House (2010). Filmed front-on with a shallow depth, the series records the former Taiwanese homes of political figures close to General Chiang Kai-Shek, leader of the island’s post-war government. The combination of Chinese and Japanese decorative styles in these homes, such as red paint (an auspicious colour in Chinese culture) and tokonoma wooden alcoves, reveals their origins in Taiwan’s Japanese colonial era and its tensions with the new political class. While these images trace Japanese imperialism in the east, The Island of Sakhalin (2012) touches on its traces further north. A penal colony under Tzarist Russia – whose inhumane treatment of prisoners was exposed in a study by Anton Chekhov in 1890 – Sakhalin was also partially occupied by the Japanese after the Russo-Japanese War until 1945. In the series, individuals navigating the island’s rugged, wild landscape evoke the resilience of its inhabitants, including the indigenous people who have lived there for more than 1,000 years.

The presence of people in The Island of Sakhalin echoes the humanity of a Korean soldier in the DMZ offering a flower (Soldier and Flower, 2015/2023) and a young woman from Kobe (30 years on, Kanehara-san, 2024). The hopeful gaze of the woman, who was born on the day of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, calmly confronts the viewer, belying the unease surrounding her birth date. In Chrysanthemums (2011) and Sadako’s paper cranes of prayer, Hiroshima (2011), the trauma of natural and nuclear disaster finds poetic release. In the former, three chrysanthemum flowers appear both fragile and strong, their delicate pale petals accented by the stark, dark background. Standing firm, the flowers resemble two parents with their child facing the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan. In the latter, an origami crane made from a medicine wrapper forms a moving portrait of hope and peace. Made by Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese girl and victim of atomic radiation, it forms one of 1,000 cranes that she made in hospital in the hope her leukaemia would heal.

A display in the Ground Floor Library features images from Between Visible and Invisible (1998-). Hidden in bookshelves, the small format photographs focus on texts that were of personal significance to intellectual figures of the 20th century such as Berthold Brecht, Sigmund Freud and Junichiro Tanizaki. Viewed through the spectacles worn by these figures, the intimate images invite audiences to imagine their thoughts as they read the original texts. The role of the archive in recovering forgotten histories is also explored in Yoneda’s new short film The Gaze of Soldiers (2025). The film centers on photographs by American journalist Agnes Smedley of Japanese soldiers who were captured by the Chinese military during the Second World War. Members of the Awakening Movement who later fought alongside the Chinese Communist Party, these individuals – whose stories are recounted by Yoneda – offer fresh insight on an unexpected alliance that changed the course of history.

Text by Melanie Pocock, Artistic Director (Exhibitions), Ikon Gallery

 

27 March 2025 – 18 July 2025 (Extended)
Monday–Friday 9:30 am–5:00 pm (except public holidays)
Admission free

 

• Curator: Melanie Pocock, Artistic Director (Exhibitions), Ikon Gallery
• This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of ShugoArts.

Installation view

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