Upcoming Events

FIGURE/S: drawing after Bellmer explores the body as a site of oppression and liberation through the work of modern and contemporary artists, including three from Japan: Kumi Machida, Fuyuko Matsui and Tabaimo. It takes as its starting point the radical and transgressive drawings of Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), whose work simultaneously mimicked and resisted the dehumanisation performed by fascism and racism.

An artist-led exchange project between four artists in Scotland (Gillian Macfarlane, Su Grierson, Inge Panneels, Kyra Clegg) and four in Japan. The project addresses the idea that ‘North’ is always conditional, a direction rather than a location, and that our ideas about it can be fundamental to how we see and relate to our own life and culture. Through real-time international digital links and a final publication, it will connect artists with audiences in both countries.

The Japanese Garden Society based in the UK in collaboration with the Gardens Trust is presenting a series of seven talks on Japanese Gardens. They are on varied dates at 6.30pm (UK time) from Saturday 23 October when the first speaker, Dr Jill Raggett, will talk on Japanese-style Gardens in the British Isles.

Organised in memory of the Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, PICTURING THE INVISIBLE explores the realities of life in the wake of “3.11.” The exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society brings together seven talented photographers, working in the affected territories. Their art makes visible the legacies of 3.11: the ghostly touch of radiation, lingering traumas, and the resilience of those communities rebuilding their lives in its wake.

This major exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford will explore Tokyo through the varied and vibrant arts it has generated over 400 years, from its beginnings as the headquarters of the Tokugawa shoguns in the early 1600s to the sprawling modern metropolis and dynamic centre of art, photography and design it is today. *Supported by Japan Society Small Grants.

Discover a collection of rare drawings by Katsushika Hokusai – one of Japan's most celebrated artists, best known for his iconic print, Under the Wave off Kanagawa, popularly called The Great Wave. In a global first, this exhibition will display 103 recently acquired drawings by Hokusai, produced in the 1820s–1840s for an illustrated encyclopedia called The Great Picture Book of Everything. *Supported by Japan Society Small Grants.

Sumida River in Sign Language brings the natural and human worlds together in a drama of physical gesture and facial expression. Performed by deaf, unmasked actors, the play is suffused with the life of the river: pines bending in the wind, flocks of Miyako birds and mist swirling in from the bay.