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.

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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. 

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