2014: GOMA turns 10 countdown

In 2014, as part of a major season of Japanese art, cinema and design, the Gallery presented ‘Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion’ (1 November 2014 – 15 February 2015) and ‘We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989’ (6 September 2014 – 20 September 2015).

‘We can make another future’ surveyed the art of Heisei or ‘enlightened peace’, the current era in the Japanese imperial calendar, through 100 works by over 40 contemporary Japanese artists.

We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989 Installation view GOMA

We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989 Installation view GOMA / View full image

We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989 Installation view GOMA

We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989 Installation view GOMA / View full image

We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989 Installation view GOMA

We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989 Installation view GOMA / View full image

Beginning in 1989, Heisei has seen significant challenges for Japan, but it has also been the period of ‘Cool Japan’, with widespread international interest in Japan’s contemporary cultural production. As well as 25 years of Heisei, this also marked 25 years of the Gallery’s public engagement with the contemporary art of Japan.

The exhibition was an opportunity to experience the breadth of Japanese art that the Gallery has accumulated since 1989, making it the most significant representation in Australia and follows a number of exhibition and publishing projects that have enabled the Gallery to research and analyse significant areas of the Collection by region. These exhibitions have included ‘The China Project’ (2009), ‘Unnerved: The New Zealand Project’ (2010) and ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’ (2013).

We can make another future features works by artists including Yayoi Kusama, Lee Ufan, Takashi Murakami, Yasumasa Morimura, Daido Moriyama, Yoshitomo Nara, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Yukinori Yanagi. QAGOMA’s collection of contemporary Japanese art is the most extensive in Australia and is uniquely positioned to shed light on these artists and various aspects of culture and society in Japan.

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion Installation view GOMA

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion Installation view GOMA / View full image

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion Installation view GOMA

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion Installation view GOMA / View full image

‘Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion’ explored the tremendous innovation of Japanese fashion designers from the early 1980s to the present. With over 100 garments featured in the exhibition, ranging from the classic and elegant to outrageous, this was a rare opportunity to view these unique creations first hand.

EXPLORE THE EXHIBITION FURTHER

DELVE DEEPER INTO JAPANESE FASHION

Japanese fashion made an enormous impact on world fashion in the late 20th century. Designers such as Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto revolutionised the way we think of fashion.Their works were shown alongside examples of techno-coutour and the new generation of radical designers.

Curated by eminent Japanese fashion historian Akiko Fukai, Director of the esteemed Kyoto Costume Institute in Japan, this exhibition explored the unique sensibility of Japanese design, and its sense of beauty embodied in clothing.

Brisbane’s Harajuku Girls dressed up and visited the exhibition’s Super Kawaii Zone

Brisbane’s Harajuku Girls dressed up and visited the exhibition’s Super Kawaii Zone / View full image

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion Hello Kitty designer Yuko Yamaguchi visits GOMA and Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion to celebrate Hello Kitty’s 40th anniversary

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion Hello Kitty designer Yuko Yamaguchi visits GOMA and Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion to celebrate Hello Kitty’s 40th anniversary / View full image

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion Hello Kitty designer Yuko Yamaguchi visits GOMA and Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion to celebrate Hello Kitty’s 40th anniversary

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion Hello Kitty designer Yuko Yamaguchi visits GOMA and Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion to celebrate Hello Kitty’s 40th anniversary / View full image

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion GOMA Comme des Garçons Pocket

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion GOMA Comme des Garçons Pocket / View full image

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    Designing ‘Future Beauty’

    In this glimpse behind the scenes, we explain the inspirations that underpin the creative realisation for the exhibition ‘Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion’, from the collection of the Kyoto Costume Institute. The ‘Future Beauty’ exhibition is a celebration of simplicity, designed to showcase the garments on display. The result is a landscape of forms and shadows that are poetic, and embrace the Japanese forms of origami. ‘Future Beauty’ is characterised overall by a minimalist white interior. In The Fairfax Gallery 1.1, the exhibition’s five themes — In Praise of Shadows; Flatness; Tradition and Innovation; Cool Japan; and Designer Focus — take on the elements of the featured garment designs. The Long Gallery is defined by the use of black and shadow play. Incorporated across both galleries are the abstracted origami-inspired patterns, present in partitions and wall elements. The division of these spaces and the layout of the garments create a meandering path of travel that conceals the next grouping. The shift and angling of the partitions within these spaces are arranged to enable them to unfold as one moves through the spaces, with contrasting palettes and spatial associations enhancing the individual themes. The overall design of ‘Future Beauty’ draws parallels with architect Tadao Ando’s purist aesthetic and simple construction techniques. This aesthetic, combined in the Long Gallery with a monochromatic palette, mirrors established aesthetics within the contemporary Japanese fashion scene. The Gallery’s exhibition design team also found inspiration in the Japanese art of origami, seen through the fold and play of angular wall panels, which turn down into key sculptural elements within the space. The principles of origami, also prevalent in Japanese modern art, are expressed in the ‘Tradition and Innovation’ section through Junya Watanabe and Issey Miyake garments. Captured below these folds is one rectilinear plywood box that holds a wealth of rare books, catalogues and magazines highlighting Yamamoto, Miyake and Kawakubo’s collaborations with artists, photographers and designers. Black is used within the Long Gallery, drawing on a cultural sensibility attuned to light and shade and the power of black, prevalent in contemporary Japanese fashion. RELATED: Japanese Fashion RELATED: Behind the costume: Lady Gaga SIGN UP NOW: Subscribe to QAGOMA Blog for the latest announcements, recent acquisitions, behind-the-scenes features, and artist stories. The softness of the shadow is critical to the design experience within ‘In Praise of Shadows’, the first section in the exhibition. The tactile nature of the fibre curtains subtly reveals the space through a six-metre-high fabric drop, which evokes a cathedral-like experience. Mannequins are silhouetted in groups between tensioned fabric panels, adding to the layered tones of shadows. The rectilinear plinth design will resonate with the patrons’ sense of drama and the theatre of a catwalk parade. At the end of this section, plays a large-screen projection of a runway show where Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto first introduced some of these concepts to the fashion world. Flatness’ explores the simple geometries and interplay of flat planes and volume, particularly in the work of Issey Miyake and Comme des Garçons (Rei Kawakubo). Here, designers reference the Kimono as carrying a defined sense of space. The use of the suspended tactile fibre curtain has been gathered to provide more visual separation between ‘Flatness’ and ‘Tradition and Innovation’. The next section in the lower galleries focuses on the spectacle that is ‘Cool Japan’, allowing a design approach that tends to the outrageous rather than the discreet. The layout of the partitions assists to define this unique and playful collection of garments, accompanied by a selection of films set within this zone. The black wall and plinth provide a strong contrast as a backdrop for the colourful garments. The final section focuses on each of the exhibition’s principle designers. A key feature within this space is the reproduction of three fabric patterns used as a wallpaper blanket on each display plinth and adjacent wall, emphasising each of the show’s key fashion collections. Situated within the River Room, adjacent to the exhibition, is a custom-designed seating platform for Up Late, accompanied by a kaleidoscopic backdrop closely connected to the ‘Cool Japan’ theming. The overall graphic style of the surrounding stage has been influenced by J-pop star and model Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s videos, an all-out assault on the senses. The overall effect, we hope, is one of overwhelming cuteness and colour, albeit tinged with a dark twist. Patrons are encouraged to have their photo taken in front of the stage and upload their image to a live feed to be seen on one of the ten screens embedded in the stage backdrop. A cloud of soft toys, inspired by Harajuku fashion styles and the ‘Kawaii’ design leader Sebastian Masuda. The ‘Future Beauty’ design is a result of both the Project Exhibition Designer Grace Liu and Assistant Exhibition Designer Rebecca Shaw’s collective efforts to nurture the design with a sense of the authenticity it deserved. Subscribe to YouTube to go behind-the-scenes / Watch our fashion in-conversations / Read more about your Australian Collection
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    We can make another future

    More than 37 senior, mid-career and emerging artists’ works, created and collected over the past 25 years, are showcased in ‘We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989’ at GOMA until September 2015. Here, we elaborate on the works themselves and the significance of this milestone. Over the past few years, the Gallery has undertaken a number of exhibition and publishing projects that have enabled it to research and analyse significant areas of the Collection by region. These exhibitions have included ‘The China Project’ (2009), ‘Unnerved: The New Zealand Project’ (2010–11) and ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’ (2013). In 2014, as part of a major season of Japanese art, cinema and design, the Gallery presents ‘We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989’. The exhibition is an opportunity for visitors to experience the breadth of Japanese art that the Gallery has accumulated since 1989, making it the most significant representation in Australia; for the Gallery to take stock of the Collection’s development, looking deeply into the development of Japanese art over the past 25 years; and to examine the Gallery’s role in introducing Japanese culture to audiences in Queensland and Australia over the period. The framework of the exhibition has been influenced substantially by a happy coincidence regarding the development of the Gallery’s Collection and recent Japanese history. 1989 was the first of the current era in the Japanese calendar, known as Heisei or ‘enlightened peace’ after the reign of Emperor Akihito, which began in January. In September that year, the Queensland Art Gallery began its public engagement with Japan’s contemporary art through the landmark exhibition ‘Japanese Ways, Western Means: Art of the 1980s in Japan’, organised in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in Saitama as part of a sister state agreement between Queensland and Saitama prefecture. Featuring the work of no less than 42 Japanese artists, ‘Japanese Ways, Western Means’ included representatives of the Gutai, Mono‑ha and post- Mono-ha movements; the veteran international avant-gardists Ay-O and Yayoi Kusama; cuttingedge media art and installation works; and emerging superstars Yasumasa Morimura, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Mika Yoshizawa. Importantly, the exhibition enabled the acquisition of several key works, kick-starting the Gallery’s collection of contemporary Asian art and leading to an engagement with Japanese art through the APT and other exhibiting and collecting initiatives, which have lasted for a quarter of a century. One upshot of this historical coincidence is that the Gallery’s Collection can serve as a tool for examining the development of Japanese art in the Heisei era and its relationship to broader social and cultural changes within Japan. By studying the Collection, it is possible to determine some of the major tendencies in the art of the recent past, to explore a few of the major preoccupations, and to place these in context. Several factors distinguish this period in Japanese art history from others: for instance, the Heisei era was the point at which Japanese art became truly international — affordable air travel and a general appetite for art produced outside Europe or North America allowed Japanese artists to become increasingly mobile, and their work became integrated into the global art market and curatorial repertoires. Also, Japanese popular culture, cinema, literature, design and architecture become globally successful, providing a rich context for the interpretation of the more specific aspects of the country’s art. At the same time, Japan endured a prolonged economic downturn, provoking widespread social questioning that affected the mood of the works being produced, as well as engendering new strategies by artists and art workers to make their practices sustainable. To some degree, it appears contradictory to concentrate on the work of a single country at a time when it operates globally, but it is precisely this dual character that makes it so interesting: Japanese art operates both within and beyond its own context. In this sense it offers both a tool for studying the culture and an example of how that culture is re-imagined from within, informed by a dialogue with the world. Early works by Morimura in the exhibition restage key works from the European art canon — namely Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Parable of the Blind 1568 and Marcel Duchamp’s Rrose Sélavy 1921 — with the insertion of his own image as a playful expression of Japan’s assimilation of Western art during its rapid modernisation in the late nineteenth century. Yukinori Yanagi toys with national symbols such as the rising sun and the chrysanthemum in the stunning lithographs of his Hinomaru Portfolio 1991, while Jun Nguyen-Hastushiba, Tsuyoshi Ozawa and Tadasu Takamine offer visions of a Japan that exists within a broader Asian region. The assertion of female sexuality appears in the work of Emiko Kasahara and Michiko Kon, as well as the irrepressible Yayoi Kusama, who re-entered the consciousness of global art during the Heisei period to become one of the best known artists operating in the world today. Rampant consumerism also became a major subject of art-making during this time and artists integrated vernacular culture, such as comics and rock music, into their work — seen here in major pieces by Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara — or attempted to come to terms with the new modes of seeing and understanding presented by communications technologies, as in the work of Kohei Nawa and Teppei Kaneuji. Deeper philosophical strivings are a hallmark of the period, as in the ongoing work of Mono-ha mainstay Lee Ufan, the expansive installations of the post-Mono-ha generation, and the dynamic postmodern syntheses of such artists as Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tatsuo Miyajima and Rei Naito. Also present is the ongoing tension between human civilisation and the natural world, as evidenced in the striking landscapes of Toshio Shibata and Yoko Asakai. The above list is indicative only; the exhibition includes the work of some 37 artists. Naturally, as a project composed by a specific collection, it does not purport to tell the complete history of Japanese art and is open...
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