Pump House Gallery

Art, Performance & Activism in Contemporary Japan

19 Jan - 26 Feb 2012

© Yamashiro Chikako , 2010
Sinking Voices, Red Breath
performance video still
Courtesy of the artist
ART, PERFORMANCE & ACTIVISM IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN
DumbType, Teiji Furuhashi, Soni Kum, Bubu de la Madeleine & Sohei Yamada, Yoshiko Shimada, Chikako Yamashiro
19 January - 26 February 2012

Art, Performance & Activism features the work of artists/activists based in Japan who push the boundaries of where art, performance and activism intersect. Presenting visually powerful and pioneering works from the mid-1990s to the present the exhibition explores differing strategies of intervention that seek to engage in contemporary debates and to change how we think and act.

Engaging with contemporary themes of art and action, private and public, memory and identity, the exhibition is the first to present their work in the UK and to provide a context for their interventions. Works include Teiji Furuhashi’s mesmerising solo production, The Lovers (Dying Pictures, Loving Pictures) and S/N performance by the Kyoto-based art collective DumbType, the print-based activist work of Yoshiko Shimada, and the visceral performance-based film work of emergent artists Soni Kum and Chikako Yamashiro. Provocative, beautiful, haunting, disturbing...moving.

Curated by Professor Fran Lloyd of Kingston University, London and Professor Rebecca Jennison of Kyoto Seika University, Japan,
 

Tags: Bubu de la Madeleine, Yoshiko Shimada