Upcoming Events

‘Nippon Connection’, as well as being a popular festival of Japanese film and culture in Frankfurt (Germany), has, for twenty years been a Mecca for Japanese film enthusiasts and scholars from far afield. This year, Nippon Connection has had to embrace the restrictions of the coronavirus and is going online. Some 70 new Japanese films are to be streamed over the course of 6 days. Films will be available on Vimeo for a small fee and other events, workshops and lectures will also be offered.

An exhibition at the V&A presenting the kimono as a dynamic and constantly evolving icon of fashion, revealing the sartorial, aesthetic and social significance of the garment from the 1660s to the present day, both in Japan and the rest of the world.

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.

At the age of seven years old, Sakubei Yamamoto (1892-1984) moved with his family to the coal mines of the Chikuho region in Kyushu. He was apprenticed to a colliery blacksmith at the age of twelve, and later worked as a mine blacksmith and coalminer until the age of 63 in 1955. He then became a colliery security guard when he started painting his memories of the mining industry. Organised as part of a World tour by the Bridge Together Project, this exhibition focuses on a small selection of the 2000 drawings and paintings by the artist.

E. A. Hornel took and collected thousands of images throughout his life, and he used many of these to inspire the paintings that made him wealthy and successful. This exhibition of the Glasgow Boy’s paintings and photographs examines how Hornel worked, explores how he looked at the world as a white, western man photographing young women in ‘exotic’ locations and interrogates the way we look at him today. It introduces visitors to Hornel and his early style and illustrates how strongly his art was shaped by photography.