O JUN + Chikanobu + Ishida 14 days 119 years later

11 Jun-10 Jul 2016

Overview

For his first UK exhibition Tokyo based artist O JUN has produced new works on paper 14 days 119 years later, in response to a series of woodblock prints from 1897, that are also on show in the gallery. The thirty Ukiyo-e prints from Jidai Kagami (Mirror of the Ages), by Toyohara Chikanobu, each portrays an imagined female ‘Beauty’. Through elaborate hairstyles, costumes and posture each Beauty is tasked with representing an era of Japanese history, while background pictorial insets show scenes from her daily life.