Events category: Private view

3 October 2019

Private View: The Post-Anthropocene by Naoya Inose

The Private View was a chance to have a first look at the exhibition The Post-Anthropocene by the London-based Japanese artist Naoya Inose. The main work in this exhibition, Ave Maria, depicts a Ferris wheel quietly enshrined in a huge cave. This Ferris wheel left by humans is a metaphor of humanity itself and it slowly rotates, climbing up and plunging down from top to bottom. Indeed, the Ferris wheel embodies the time constraints by which humanity is bound. If life and death are the motif of the Ferris wheel, the Ferris wheel in the work Ave Maria has stopped, and time restrictions no longer exist.

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6 June 2019

Private View: Everything Comes in Waves by Kentaro Yamada

The Private View was a chance to have a first look at Kentaro Yamada’s exhibition ‘Everything Comes in Waves’. Yamada creates poetic installations and structures that allow viewers to experience encounters of human life and material history. In this exhibition, Yamada presents a combination of new and old works, which will include light installations, dyeline prints and a series of sculptural objects as a poetic installation, creating a space to experience encounters of human creativity and materials, and the two coming together as one, as part of a larger Life in cosmic space and time. This exhibition is curated by Francesca von Zedtwitz-Arnim.

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16 April 2019

Private View: JIZAI by Haruo Mitsuta

The Private View was an opportunity to have a first look at the works of the acclaimed Japanese artist Haruo Mitsuta. Mitsuta is the only living artist who makes contemporary Jizai Okimono (“articulated animals”) – flexible animal figures made from metal pieces, which can replicate the movements of the original animals. Mitsuta will be showcasing some of his most impressive and startlingly realistic pieces in this exhibition. During the evening Dr Clare Pollard, University of Oxford, gave an introduction to Jizai Okimono.

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5 March 2019

Private View: 'untitled yet' by Shuhei Yamada

The Private View was an opportunity to have a first look at Shuhei Yamada’s exhibition “untitled yet”. In his early works, Yamada focuses on eliminating from images the key objects that enable the viewer to easily understand them. Yamada suggests that viewers should read various meanings into his art. After the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, he became interested in exploring the absurdities of the society that surrounds us. In recent years, his work has included not only photography and videos, but also 3D art and installations.

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29 January 2019

Private View and Artist Talk: Susumu Matsuura in conversation with Dr Lee Campbell

This event provided the opportunity to have a first look at the work of Susumu Matsuura and hear him discuss the ideas and inspiration behind his work with Dr Lee Campbell. Susumu’s work has “humans” as its main theme, and most of his work expresses human emotions. He is interested in exploring the two-sided nature of human beings, who harbour both positive feelings and greed. Works on display at the Foundation include: symmetrical portraits inspired by the Rorschach test; works inspired by the feelings of depression that the artist himself has experienced; and the series Caress a Cat.

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6 November 2018

Private View: Jailhouse Locke by Tsuyoshi Anzai

The kinetic works and paintings presented in Tsuyoshi Anzai’s first solo exhibition in the UK pose questions about the ‘thereness’ of everyday items. Taking inspiration from the Platonic philosophical assumption of a world of ideas which is hidden from human senses, Anzai’s works attempt to disrupt the way we unconsciously and passively perceive “representation”, and challenge visitors to look beyond simplifications and into the intertwined complexities of our modern world.

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2 October 2018

Private View: Resonating Surfaces by Akira Yamaguchi

The works exhibited here present Akira Yamaguchi’s attempt to resolve the contradiction of being a painter inheriting the legacy of classical Japanese art, but also trained at art school to follow Western (oil-based) painting techniques. Experimenting with different media and questioning the cultural significance of “oil on canvas”, Yamaguchi’s works urge the viewer to reconsider arbitrary boundaries within art history, while inviting us to contemplate the visible and invisible “resonances” of painting.
This exhibition is held in collaboration with Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo.

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7 June 2018

Daiwa Foundation Art Prize 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. 

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10 May 2018

Private View: Double Method by Tokyo Rumando×Hideka Tonomura

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.

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20 March 2018

Private View: Emergence of Order by Goro Murayama

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.

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