Fukushima Colours

3 May 2012

6:00 – 7:00pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:00pm

Daiwa Foundation Japan House

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

Fukushima Colours

Published by Langenskiöld

By Elin Lindqvist

The catastrophe on 11 March 2011 has had a deep impact on the Japanese society, and on our global world. Almost twenty thousand people were left dead or missing after the disaster, and the tsunami destroyed entire communities. It will take years for the full extent of the nuclear crisis’ impact on Japan to become clear. Yet, a year after the tsunami, it is possible to see some of the consequences that the disaster has had on agriculture, the fishing industry, people’s health and research about renewable energy sources.

In her reportage book Fukushima Colours, multilingual author Elin Lindqvist has documented the aftermath of the crisis, in collaboration with Japanese journalist Yuko Ota, and Japanese photographer Yoshikazu Fukuda. She has closely followed eight individuals or groups of individuals representing different parts of Japanese society all through 2011, in order to see how people affected by the crisis have recovered. Through these individual stories, we hear the emergence of a common voice striving towards a more sustainable and ecological future in Japan.         

* The book will be available on the day at the discounted price of £18.

Elin Lindqvist

Elin Lindqvist was born in Tokyo in 1982 and currently lives in England. She has studied at New York University in New York and Sophia University in Tokyo. She is an international writer, and has published three novels in Swedish (Tokyo natt, 2002; Tre röda näckrosor, 2005 and Facklan, 2009). She also works as a freelance journalist, dramaturge and translator. In the spring of 2011, she reported about the catastrophe in Japan for Sweden’s largest newspaper Aftonbladet, and she wrote about the aftermath of the crisis for leading daily newspapersSvenska Dagbladet in Sweden and Aftenposten in Norway.

Dr Akira Matsuda

Dr Akira Matsuda studies the relationship between archaeology – and more broadly cultural heritage – and the general public from anthropological and sociological points of view. He is currently doing research into the representation of damage caused by natural disasters in Japan over the last 500 years. Matsuda completed his PhD in public archaeology at University College London in 2009. He worked as a project-based consultant in UNESCO’s Division of Cultural Heritage in 2004 and 2005, and was a Handa Japanese Archaeology Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures from January 2009 to August 2011. Since 2010, he has been teaching at the School of World Art Studies and Museology, UEA, and most recently co-edited a book, New Perspectives in Global Public Archaeology (Springer, 2011) with Okamura Katsuyuki. He is the Membership Secretary of the World Archaeological Congress, and is now working on the publication of a book on cultural heritage in East Asia.

BOOKING FORM

Patterns of Shadows by Pip Dickens

6 Mar 2012 to 17 Apr 2012

Monday – Friday, 9:30am – 5:00pm.

At the Daiwa Foundatin Japan House Gallery

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

“…we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.” Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows.

Patterns of Shadows is an exhibition of oil paintings by Pip Dickens, derived from her research in Kyoto in 2011 as part of a Leverhulme Trust Award Artist in Residence project within the Music Department of the University of Huddersfield and collaboration with composer Professor Monty Adkins. The paintings (oil on canvas) draw upon colour, pattern, rhythm and vibration, associated with kimono fabrics and katagami stencils, and frequently juxtapose these with quieter, understated greys, shadows and subtle interplays of light. These extractive works observe distinctions within Japanese visual culture – sometimes celebratory, playful and exuberant, at other times subtle, introspective and reflective.  The works are produced using bespoke tools, combs and ‘dysfunctional’ brushes to produce intriguing oscillating effects set against quieter, meditative, colour fields. Dickens draws on references such as Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s essay on aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows, as well as her own private collection of katagami stencils and kimonos.

 

Pip Dickens (MFA Slade) is a painter concerned with visual perception, in particular, examining and challenging theories and methodologies of light and movement within the second dimension.  She has exhibited regularly in London, other areas of the UK, and also San Francisco, USA. She was shortlisted for the NatWest Art Prize (1997) and was the recipient of the Jeremy Cubitt Prize (Slade). She won the Edna Lumb Art Travel Prize (1995), and shortlisted for the Celeste Painting Prize 2009. A book – SHIBUSA-Extracting Beauty – including texts by Monty Adkins, Pip Dickens, arts writer Roy Exley and kimono designer Makoto Mori is to be published early in 2012. She also has a substantial solo exhibition, Toward the Light – Pip Dickens, at The Brindley Arts Centre, Cheshire (31 Mar – 12 May 2012), which is a Bradford Museums and Galleries touring exhibition.  www.pip-dickens.com