Exhibitions
Events
On display
Disruptive Landscapes: The Artists Present
MIYAGI Futoshi Variations on the Theme of (The Ocean view Resort) (still) 2025. Single-channel HD video. Adapted for ALOHA NŌ, Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 with support from the National Center for Art Research, Japan and Aupuni Space, Honolulu. Courtesy of the artist and Yutaka Kiktake Gallery
Special Event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
Join us for an afternoon focus on contemporary art from Japan with visiting artists brought to Ōtautahi Christchurch through The Japan Foundation. This is a unique chance to learn more about the artworks in Disruptive Landscapes, addressing themes from biodiversity and sexuality to history and collective identity.
2pm
FILM Flower Names by Futoshi Miyagi
Following the screening artist Futoshi Miyagi will talk about how he incorporates writing and artist book culture in his practice.
21 mins
2.30pm
PANEL DISCUSSION
Join artists Aya Momose, Maiko Jinushi, Atsushi Watanabe and Shiori Watanabe for a panel discussion hosted by curator Melanie Oliver.
3.30pm
TALK
Ainu artist Mayunkiki and collaborator Kanoko Tamura discuss cultural exchange, language and translation.
With support from The Japan Foundation.
Related reading: Japan
Exhibition
Disruptive Landscapes: Contemporary Art from Japan
12 April – 24 August 2025
Quietly powerful and immersive video works revealing the politics behind our view of landscape.
Commentary
Disruptive Landscapes
Disruptive Landscapes: Contemporary Art from Japan includes moving-image works that examine our relationships to the land, whether historical, mythological or contemporary. They reveal how landscapes at once reflect our imagination and endorse national identity and societal structures. Landscapes are the aestheticised and mediated form of our natural surroundings, encoded with politics, cultural memories and belief systems; through distinct framing and composition they assert certain politics and mindsets, such as the notion of an untouched, unoccupied land, or the ideal ecosystem for a site.
Commentary
Japan circa 1970, Landscape and Chile
In 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco formally ended the war between the Allied Powers and Japan. The United States and Japan also signed the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (known in Japan as Anpo), in which Japan agreed to host United States military bases. Nine years later a revised version of this treaty further formalising the arrangement between the two nations was negotiated by Japanese prime minister Kishi Nobusuke (the grandfather of future prime minister Abe Shinzo) and President Eisenhower.
