SHIGA Lieko When that Night Leads (still) 2023. Single-channel video. Courtesy of the artist
12 April – 24 August 2025
Quietly powerful and immersive video works revealing the politics behind our view of landscape.
Featuring eight contemporary artists from across Japan, this exhibition includes subtle and immersive video works focused on the politics that shape our view of landscape. From biodiversity and environmental concerns to sexuality, identity and loneliness, these quietly powerful works share diverse perspectives on life and the natural world, inviting us to think about our own ideas and experiences.
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Curator:
Melanie Oliver -
Exhibition number:
1172
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Director's Foreword
Director’s Foreword
The start of a new year is always a good time to think about the last twelve months and ensure good plans are in place for the coming year. Our exhibitions are scheduled and developed a number of years ahead of opening, so it’s always exciting to see them finally come to fruition – and appear in print in each new edition of Bulletin.
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.
Commentary
1970年前後の日本について考える、もしくは風景について。 そしてチリについても。
はじめに、さらに20年さかのぼる。1951年、サンフランシスコ平和条約と同時に締結された「日本国とアメリカ合衆国との間の安全保障条約」（旧安保条約）は、米軍の日本駐留を可能にした。 同条約は1960年、当時の岸信介（安倍晋三元首相の祖父）首相とアイゼンハワー米大統領によって日米共同防衛が明文化されたかたちで改定され、月に調印された。