06/07/2023 - 22/10/2023
Contemporary - Graphics & Illustration
WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts
Mon-Sat: 10-8pm; Sun: 12-6pm
The work of a selection of 60 Japanese artists is presented, with late 20th-century innovators Tanaami Keiichi and Yumura Teruhiko featured alongside a number of emerging artists being exhibited for the first time in the UK.
Graphic arts featured in the exhibition include elements of pop art, surrealism and illustration, as well as the concept of heta-uma, which translates as ‘bad, but good’, and refers to apparently unskilled art which reveals greater merit upon close inspection. Emerging in the underground manga magazine GARO in the 1970s, heta-uma challenges our perspective of what is ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful’ and our definitions of art itself.
Variety and anarchy are ever-present in WAVE, with Jenny kaori’s bold, punky depictions of girlhood juxtaposed against Yukishita Mayu’s brooding photorealist portraits and husband and wife team tupera tupera’s delightful children’s book illustration.
High St Kensington 111 Kensington High St, W8 5SA